I've heard so many horror stories about this woman's teaching habits: tantrums, flying objects, yelling, etc. All of that behavior sounds like the Juilliard piano department in the 70s and 80s. Juilliard's Adele Marcus was notorious for yelling and throwing scores. Curtis' Isabelle Vengerova was dubbed "Beloved Tyranna" by her student Leonard Bernstein. Vengerova taught my own teacher and the stories I heard were astounding. Claudio Arrau's disciple, Rosalina Sackstein, is NOTORIOUS for screaming at her students. Students leave that woman's studio in tears.
And, these teachers became some of the piano world's most respected, sought after, and sometimes beloved, pedagogues. By no means am I glorifying those teaching techniques. I'm merely stating what was so in the piano world.
I've never met Ms. McCaffery (does she teach tenors?), but it seems like she would have been a successful professor of piano somewhere.
