The Evening Herald

BOY IS LEADER
OF ORCHESTRA

ITALIAN LAD OF 18 YEARS DIRECTS
100-PIECE ORCHESTRA PLAYING SELECTIONS OF WAGNER,
BEETHOVEN, ROSSINI AND GRIEG

ROME, July 14.-Willy Ferrero, aged 18, who leads a 100-piece orchestra in selections of Wagner, Beethoven, Rossini, Grieg and others, is an American and was born in Portland, Me. The child has attracted the attention of Europe since he was four years old, but it was only recently that his American birth was revealed by his parents, who are Italians.

The father told the Associated Press correspondent that Willy carried an American passport but that his name thereon was Willy Ferrero, a name he had chosen for him while he had worked in Maine when the child was born.

The father said that at the age of two, the lad was brought to Italy, whither his parents were returning to take up their residence in their old home in Turin. When Willy was four he began his musical career leading an orchestra in the Folies Bergere in Paris. A year later he appeared in the Costunza theater, Rome, where for the first time he led an orchestra of 100 pieces. The program was composed of Wagner, Beethoven and other heavy selections.

The child took his orchestra before Emperor Nicholas in 1913, and conducted two concerts for the monarch. In the same year his orchestra was filling an engagement in London, and he was commanded to appear before Queen Alexandra of England, at Marlborough house. He appeared before Pope Benedict XV in 1915.

In April, 1915, just before Italy's declaration of war, Willy was presented with the Gold Medal by the Italian Minister of Education after he had made a successful appearance in the Augusteum, where he had conducted an orchestra and chorus aggregating 500 participants. All the players in the orchestra are men of long musical experience.