In 1880 a meeting was held between a group of wealthy businessmen in New York. Their uniting cause was the limited number of box seats available at the Academy of Music, the city’s primary venue for opera. The solution they posited was to build an entirely new opera house. A design was commissioned from J. Cleaveland Cady that included boxes ...
The history of opera is dominated by Italian and Austro-German composers. It is in Italy and Germany that we find the greatest number of opera houses. La Scala in Milan lays claim to be the most famous opera house in the world, and its opening night every season is a major event in the country’s social calendar. The theatre, ...
The claque, a French word for ‘slap’ or ‘clap’, was a crowd of supporters hired by composers, impresarios or performers to work up enthusiasm for an opera or, alternatively, sabotage the work of rivals. Most professional claques were indistinguishable from the rest of the audience and flourished more in France and Italy than they did in Germany ...
‘The Triptych’ In constructing an operatic triple-bill, Puccini followed no precedent. He had nursed the idea for some time, to the despair of Giulio Ricordi, who felt it would be a box-office disaster. With the publisher’s death in 1912, Puccini soon felt able to work on the project. His librettist for La rondine, Giuseppe Adami, ...
Puccini visited the Metropolitan Opera in New York during 1907 to see the US premieres of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. While there he saw David Belasco’s play The Girl of the Golden West and his next opera began to take shape. La fanciulla del West is notable particularly for the vital part the vast orchestra plays in depicting the characters’ ...
Franz Liszt, the great Hungarian composer whose daughter Cosima married Wagner in 1870, conducted the first performance of the three-act opera Lohengrin at the Court Theatre, Weimar on 28 August 1850. Wagner provided a blueprint for productions of Lohengrin, just as he did for Tannhäuser, and emphasized the duty of the stage manager not to leave ...
With Manon Lescaut, Puccini took his place at the head of the Italian operatic table. Ricordi worked hard to persuade Puccini of the dangers inherent in setting a story that had already received successful treatment by Massenet, but the young composer was not to be swayed. Puccini’s determination proved well-founded, for the opera received an ecstatic reception after ...
The Queen of Spades, based on another story by Pushkin, was Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera and one in which western influences were particularly evident. It was first produced at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 19 December 1890. However, 20 years passed before it was staged at the Metropolitan Opera, New York on 5 March 1910 and ...
John Adams, a purveyor of much-admired and accessible music has had his opera, The Death of Klinghoffer performed across the world. The troubling story, set on a cruise ship, addresses the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish man, by Palestinian hijackers. While meeting controversy about its subject matter, it would seem that for previous ...
1915–2006 German soprano Schwarzkopf made her debut at the Städtische Oper in 1938 as a flower maiden in Parsifal. She joined the Vienna State Opera, with which she appeared on the company’s visit to Covent Garden in 1947. She then joined the resident company at Covent Garden, singing many German and Italian roles. She made her Salzburg and La ...
1926–2010 Australian soprano Sutherland studied in Sydney and sang in public there before travelling to London for further study at the Royal College of Music. She joined the Covent Garden company in 1952 and sang many roles, including Jenifer in the premiere of Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage. Her performance as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor under Serafin in 1959 launched her ...
b. 1944 New Zealand soprano Having come to England to study at the London Opera Centre, Te Kanawa made her Covent Garden debut as the Countess (Mozart’s Figaro) in 1971. Appearances quickly followed at Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. She became increasingly associated with the music of Richard Strauss, especially the roles ...
b. 1959 English conductor and pianist Born in England to Italian parents, he studied in the US, working as assistant conductor at the New York City Opera and in Europe (including at Bayreuth). While music director of Norwegian Opera 1990–92 and La Monnaie, Brussels 1992–2002 he made distinguished debuts at Berlin, Vienna and the Met. He was ...
1922–92 Welsh baritone Evans joined the Covent Garden company in 1948, singing Mozart’s Figaro in his second season. He sang at Glyndebourne 1950–61, and made his debut at La Scala in 1960. Appearances in America included Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger (Chicago, 1959) and Verdi’s Falstaff (Metropolitan Opera, 1964). Renowned for many years in Mozart roles, in ...
b. 1944 English baritone Allen’s early career was spent with the Welsh National Opera, in works ranging from Mozart to Britten. He made his Covent Garden debut as Donald in Britten’s Billy Budd in 1971, and his Metropolitan Opera debut as Papageno (The Magic Flute) in 1981. He appeared at English National Opera as Busoni’s Faust in 1986 and ...
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