La Scala (), is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala (). The premiere performance was Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

Most of Italy's greatest operatic artists, and many of the finest singers from other nations, too, have appeared at La Scala during the past 200 years. Today, the theatre is still recognised as one of the leading opera and ballet theatres in the world and is home to the La Scala Theatre Chorus, La Scala Theatre Ballet and La Scala Theatre Orchestra. The theatre also has an associate school, known as the La Scala Theatre Academy (), which offers professional training in music, dance, stage craft and stage management. , by night]]

Overview

La Scala's season traditionally opens on 7 December, Saint Ambrose's Day, the feast day of Milan's patron saint. All performances must end before midnight; long operas start earlier in the evening if need be.

The Museo Teatrale alla Scala (La Scala Theatre Museum), accessible from the theatre's foyer and a part of the house, contains an extraordinary collection of paintings, drafts, statues, costumes, and other documents regarding opera and La Scala's history. La Scala also hosts the Accademia d’Arti e Mestieri dello Spettacolo (Academy for the Performing Arts). Its goal is to train a new generation of young musicians, technical staff, and dancers (at the Scuola di Ballo del Teatro alla Scala, one of the Academy's divisions).

History

A fire destroyed the previous theatre, the Teatro Regio Ducal, on 25 February 1776, after a carnival gala. A group of ninety wealthy Milanese, who owned palchi (private boxes) in the theatre, wrote to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este asking for a new theatre and a provisional one to be used while completing the new one. The neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini produced an initial design but it was rejected by Count Firmian (the governor of the then Austrian Lombardy). A second plan was accepted in 1776 by Empress Maria Theresa. The new theatre was built on the former location of the church of Santa Maria della Scala, from which the theatre gets its name. The church was deconsecrated and demolished, and over a period of two years the theatre was completed by Pietro Marliani, Pietro Nosetti and Antonio and Giuseppe Fe. The theatre had a total over 3,000 seats organized into 678 pit-stalls, arranged in six tiers of boxes above which is the 'loggione' or two galleries. Its stage is one of the largest in Italy (16.15m d x 20.4m w x 26m h).

Building expenses were covered by the sale of palchi, which were lavishly decorated by their owners, impressing observers such as Stendhal. La Scala (as it came to be known) soon became the preeminent meeting place for noble and wealthy Milanese people. In the tradition of the times, the platea (the main floor) had no chairs and spectators watched the shows standing up. The orchestra was in full sight, as the golfo mistico (orchestra pit) had not yet been built.

Above the boxes, La Scala has always had a gallery where the less wealthy can watch the performances. It is called the loggione. The loggione is typically crowded with the most critical opera aficionados, who can be ecstatic or merciless towards singers' perceived successes or failures. La Scala's loggione is considered a baptism of fire in the opera world, and fiascos are long remembered. (One recent incident occurred in 2006 when tenor Roberto Alagna was booed off the stage during a performance of Aïda, forcing his understudy, Antonello Palombi, to quickly replace him mid-scene without time to change into a costume.) As with most of the theaters at that time, La Scala was also a casino, with gamblers sitting in the foyer. Conditions in the auditorium, too, could be frustrating for the opera lover, as Mary Shelley discovered in September 1840:

At the Opera they were giving the Templario. Unfortunately, as is well known, the theatre of La Scala serves, not only as the universal drawing-room for all the society of Milan, but every sort of trading transaction, from horse-dealing to stock-jobbing, is carried on in the pit; so that brief and far between are the snatches of melody one can catch.

La Scala was originally illuminated with 84 oil lamps mounted on the palcoscenico and another thousand in the rest of theater. To prevent the risks of fire, several rooms were filled with hundreds of water buckets. In time, oil lamps were replaced by gas lamps, these in turn were replaced by electric lights in 1883.

The original structure was renovated in 1907, when it was given its current layout with 2,800 seats. In 1943, during WWII, La Scala was severely damaged by bombing. It was rebuilt and reopened on 11 May 1946, with a memorable concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini—twice La Scala's principal conductor and an associate of the composers Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini—with a soprano solo by Renata Tebaldi, which created a sensation.

La Scala hosted the prima (first production) of many famous operas, and had a special relationship with Verdi. For several years, however, Verdi did not allow his work to be played here, as some of his music had been modified (he said "corrupted") by the orchestra. This dispute originated in a disagreement over the production of his Giovanna d'Arco in 1845; however the composer later conducted his Requiem there on 25 May 1874, and in 1886 announced that La Scala would host the premiere of his penultimate opera Otello. The premiere of his last opera, Falstaff was also given in the theatre.

In 1982, the Filarmonica della Scala was established, drawing its members from the larger pool of musicians that comprise the Orchestra della Scala.

Recent developments

Major renovation, 2002 to 2004

The theater underwent a major renovation from early 2002 to late 2004. The theatre was closed following the traditional 7 December 2001 season opening performances of Otello, which ran through December. From 19 January 2002 to November 2004, the opera company was transferred to the new Teatro degli Arcimboldi, built in the Pirelli-Bicocca industrial area 4.5 miles from the city centre.

The renovation by renowned architect Mario Botta proved controversial, as preservationists feared that historic details would be lost. However, the opera company was said to be impressed with improvements to the structure and the sound quality, which was enhanced when the heavy red carpets in the hall were removed. The stage was entirely re-constructed, and an enlarged backstage allows more sets to be stored, permitting more productions. Seats now include monitors for the electronic libretto system, allowing audiences to follow opera libretti in English and Italian in addition to the original language.

The opera house re-opened on 7 December 2004 with a production, conducted by Riccardo Muti, of Salieri's Europa riconosciuta, the opera that was performed at La Scala's inauguration in 1778. Tickets for the re-opening fetched up to €2,000.

The renovations cost a reported €61 million, and left a budget shortfall that the opera house overcame in 2006.

Principal conductors/Music directors of La Scala

Daniel Barenboim, (2006–) (as Principal Guest Conductor)

Riccardo Muti, (1986–2005)

Claudio Abbado, (1968–1986)

Gianandrea Gavazzeni, (1966–1968)

Guido Cantelli, (1956) (Died in an airplane crashone week after his appointment)

Carlo Maria Giulini, (1953–1956)

Victor de Sabata, (1930–1953)

Arturo Toscanini, (1921–1929)

La Scala closed from 1918 to 1920

Tullio Serafin, (1917–1918)

Tullio Serafin, (1909–1914)

Arturo Toscanini, (1898–1908)

Franco Faccio, (1871–1889)

Premieres

2007: Teneke by Fabio Vacchi

1988: Montag aus Licht by Karlheinz Stockhausen

1984: Samstag aus Licht by Karlheinz Stockhausen

1957: Dialogues of the Carmelites by Francis Poulenc

1926: Turandot by Giacomo Puccini

1924: Nerone by Arrigo Boito

1904: Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini

1893: Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi

1892: La Wally by Alfredo Catalani

1889: Edgar by Giacomo Puccini

1887: Otello by Giuseppe Verdi

1885: Marion Delorme by Amilcare Ponchielli

1876: La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli

1870: Il Guarany by Antônio Carlos Gomes

1868: Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito

1845: Giovanna d'Arco by Giuseppe Verdi

1843: I Lombardi alla prima crociata by Giuseppe Verdi

1842: Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi

1840: Un giorno di regno by Giuseppe Verdi

1839: Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio by Giuseppe Verdi

1835: Maria Stuarda by Gaetano Donizetti

1833: Lucrezia Borgia by Gaetano Donizetti

1831: Norma by Vincenzo Bellini

1829: La straniera by Vincenzo Bellini

1827: Il pirata by Vincenzo Bellini

1820: Margherita d'Anjou by Giacomo Meyerbeer

1814: Il turco in Italia by Gioachino Rossini

1813: Aureliano in Palmira by Gioachino Rossini

1812: La pietra del paragone by Gioachino Rossini

1800: Idante, ovvero I sacrifici d’Ecate by Marcos Portugal

1794: Demofoonte by Marcos Portugal

1778: Europa riconosciuta by Antonio Salieri

Notes

See also

Milan Symphony Orchestra

Museo Teatrale alla Scala

References

Beauvert, Thierry, Opera Houses of the World, New York: The Vendome Press, 1995

External links

La Scala official website

Accademia Teatro Alla Scala official website

David Willey, "La Scala faces uncertain future", BBC News online, 12 November 2005

Toscanini's reforms at La Scala

Virtual Tour

Category:Buildings and structures in Milan Category:Italian orchestras Category:Music in Milan Category:Opera houses in Italy Category:Visitor attractions in Milan Category:1778 architecture

Name	Keith Jarrett
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Born	May 08, 1945Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Instrument	PianoOrganSoprano Saxophone
Genre	Jazz, Western classical music, Jazz fusion, Free Improvisation
Label	Atlantic RecordsImpulse! RecordsECM/Universal Classics
Occupation	PianistOrganistComposer
Years active	1966–present

Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American pianist/composer who has performed in both jazz and classical music.

Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music; as a group leader and a solo performer. His improvisations draw not only from the traditions of jazz, but from other genres as well, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.

In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first (and to this day only) recipient not to share the prize with a co-recipient, and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.

In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame by the Down Beat 73rd Annual Jazz Readers' Poll.

Early years

Jarrett, who is of Hungarian and Scottish extraction, grew up in suburban Allentown, Pennsylvania, with significant early exposure to music. He possessed absolute pitch, and he displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons just before his third birthday, and at age five he appeared on a TV talent program hosted by the swing bandleader Paul Whiteman. The young Jarrett gave his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers including Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Saint-Saëns, and ending with two of his own compositions. Encouraged especially by his mother, Jarrett took intensive classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute.

In his teens, as a student at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, Jarrett learned jazz and quickly became proficient in it. In his early teens, he developed a strong interest in the contemporary jazz scene; a Dave Brubeck performance was an early inspiration. At one point, he had an offer to study classical composition in Paris with the famed teacher Nadia Boulanger—an opportunity that pleased Jarrett's mother but that Jarrett, already leaning toward jazz, decided to turn down.

Following his graduation from Emmaus High School in 1963, Jarrett moved from Allentown to Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended the Berklee College of Music and played cocktail piano in local clubs. After a year he moved to New York City, where he played at the Village Vanguard.

In New York, Art Blakey hired Jarrett to play with the Jazz Messengers. During a show with that group he was noticed by Jack DeJohnette who (as he recalled years later) immediately realized the talent and the unstoppable flow of ideas of the unknown pianist. DeJohnette talked to Jarrett and soon recommended him to his own band leader, Charles Lloyd. The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed not long before and were exploring open, improvised forms while building supple grooves; without quite realizing it at first, they were moving into terrain that was also being explored, although from another stylistic background, by some of the psychedelic rock bands of the west coast. Their 1966 album Forest Flower was one of the most successful jazz recordings of the mid-1960s and when they were invited to play the Fillmore in San Francisco, they won over the local hippie audience. Although the band would become plagued by internal instability and (according to Jarrett) siphoning-off of show revenue by Lloyd, its tours across America and Europe, even to Moscow, made Jarrett a widely noticed musician in rock and jazz underground circles. It also laid the foundations of a lasting musical bond with drummer Jack DeJohnette (who also plays the piano). The two would cooperate in many contexts during their later careers.

In those years, Jarrett also began to record his own tracks as a leader of small informal groups, at first in a trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Jarrett's first album as a leader, Life Between the Exit Signs (1967), was released on the Vortex label, to be followed by Restoration Ruin (1968), which is arguably the most bizarre entry in the Jarrett catalog. Not only does Jarrett barely touch the piano, but he plays all the other instruments on what is essentially a folk-rock album, and even sings. Another trio album with Haden and Motian, titled Somewhere Before, followed later in 1968, this one recorded live for Atlantic Records.

Miles Davis

This version of the Charles Lloyd Quartet came to an end in 1969 because of disputes over money as well as artistic differences. Jarrett was asked to join the Miles Davis group after Miles heard him in a New York City club (according to another version Jarrett tells, Miles had brought his entire band to see a tour date of Jarrett's own trio in Paris; the Davis band being practically the only audience, an attention that made Jarrett feel embarrassed). During his tenure with Davis, he played both Fender Contempo electronic organ and Fender Rhodes electric piano, alternating with Chick Corea; they can be heard side by side on some 1970 recordings, for instance the August, 1970 Isle of Wight Festival performance preserved in the film . After Corea left in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously. Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, he continued with the group out of respect for Davis and because of his desire to work with Jack DeJohnette. He has often cited Davis as a vital influence, both musical and personal, on his own thinking about music and improvisation.

Jarrett is heard on several Davis albums: , The Cellar Door Sessions (recorded December 16–19, 1970, at the Cellar Door club in Washington, DC), and Live-Evil, which is largely composed of heavily edited Cellar Door recordings. The extended sessions from these recordings can be heard on The Complete Cellar Door Sessions. Jarrett also plays electric organ on Get Up With It; the song he is featured on, "Honky Tonk", is an abridged version of a track available in its entirety on The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions. In addition, part of a track called "Konda" (recorded May 21, 1970) was released during Davis's late-1970s retirement on a compilation album called Directions (1980). The track, which features an extended Fender-Rhodes piano introduction by Jarrett, was released in full on 2003's The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions.

1970s quartets

From 1971 to 1976, Jarrett added saxophonist Dewey Redman to the existing trio with Haden and Motian. The so-called American quartet was often supplemented by an extra percussionist, such as Danny Johnson, Guilherme Franco, or Airto Moreira, and occasionally by guitarist Sam Brown. The quartet members played various instruments, with Jarrett often being heard on soprano saxophone and percussion as well as piano; Redman on musette, a Chinese double-reed instrument; and Motian and Haden on a variety of percussion. Haden also produced a variety of unusual plucked and percussive sounds with his acoustic bass, even running it through a wah-wah pedal for one track ("Mortgage on My Soul," on the album Birth). The group recorded two albums for Atlantic Records in 1971, El Juicio (The Judgement) and Birth; one on Columbia Records, Expectations that included rock-influenced guitar by Sam Brown as well as string and brass arrangements, and for which his contract with Columbia was immediately terminated; seven albums on Impulse! Records; and two on the ECM label.

The last two albums, both recorded for Impulse!, feature mainly the compositions of the other band members, as opposed to Jarrett's own, which dominated the previous albums.

Jarrett's compositions and the strong musical identities of the group members gave this ensemble a very distinctive sound. The quartet's music is an amalgam of free jazz, straight-ahead post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle-Eastern-sounding improvisations.

In the mid- and late 1970s Jarrett led a "European quartet" concurrently with the American quartet, which was recorded by ECM. This combo consisted of saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson, and drummer Jon Christensen.

This ensemble played in a style similar to that of the American quartet, but with many of the avant-garde and Americana elements replaced by the European folk influences that characterized the work of ECM artists at the time.

Jarrett became involved in a legal wrangle following the release of the album Gaucho in 1980 by the U.S. rock band Steely Dan. The album's title track, credited to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, bore an undeniable resemblance to Jarrett's "Long As You Know You're Living Yours," from the Belonging album. When a Musician magazine interviewer pointed out the similarity, Becker admitted that he loved the Jarrett composition and Fagen said they had been influenced by it. After their comments were published, Jarrett sued, and Becker and Fagen were forced to add his name to the credits and to include him in the royalties.

Solo piano

Jarrett's first album for ECM, Facing You (1971), was a solo piano date recorded in the studio. He has continued to record solo piano albums in the studio intermittently throughout his career, including Staircase (1976), The Moth and the Flame (1981), and The Melody at Night, With You (1999). Book of Ways (1986) is a studio recording of clavichord solos.

The studio albums are modestly successful entries in the Jarrett catalog, but in 1973, Jarrett also began playing totally improvised solo concerts, and it is the popularity of these voluminous concert recordings that has made him one of the best-selling jazz artists in history. Albums released from these concerts include The Köln Concert (1975) which became the best selling piano recording in history; and Sun Bear Concerts (1976) - a 10-LP (and later 6-CD) Box Set.

Jarrett has commented that his best performances have been when he has had only the slightest notion of what he was going to play at the next moment. An apocryphal account of one such performance had Jarrett staring at the piano for several minutes without playing; as the audience grew increasingly uncomfortable, one member shouted to Jarrett, "D sharp!", to which the pianist responded, "Thank you!", and launched into an improvisation.

Jarrett's 100th solo performance in Japan was captured on video at Suntory Hall Tokyo on April 14, 1987, and released the same year. The recording was titled Solo Tribute. This is a set of almost all standard songs.

Another video recording, titled Last Solo, was released in 1987 from a live solo concert at Kan-i Hoken hall, Tokyo, Japan, recorded January 25, 1984.

Both Solo Tribute and Last Solo were reissued on DVD in 2002.

Another of Jarrett's solo concerts, Dark Intervals (1987, Tokyo), had less of a free-form improvisation feel to it because of the brevity of the pieces. Sounding more like a set of short compositions, these pieces are nonetheless entirely improvised.

In the late 1990s, Jarrett was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and was unable to leave his home for long periods of time. It was during this period that he recorded The Melody at Night, With You, a solo piano effort consisting of jazz standards presented with very little of the reinterpretation he usually employs. The album had originally been a Christmas gift to his second wife, Rose Anne.

By 2000, Jarrett had returned to touring, both solo and with the Standards Trio. Two 2002 solo concerts in Japan, Jarrett's first solo piano concerts following his illness, were released on the 2005 CD Radiance (a complete concert in Osaka, and excerpts from one in Tokyo), and the 2006 DVD Tokyo Solo (the entire Tokyo performance). In contrast with previous concerts (which were generally a pair of continuous improvisations 30–40 minutes long), the 2002 concerts consist of a linked series of shorter improvisations (some as short as a minute and a half, a few of fifteen or twenty minutes).

In September 2005 at Carnegie Hall, Jarrett performed his first solo concert in North America in more than ten years, released a year later as a double-CD set (The Carnegie Hall Concert).

On November 26, 2008, he performed solo in the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and a few days later, on December 1, at London's Royal Festival Hall, marking the first time Jarrett had played solo in London in seventeen years. These concerts were released in October 2009 on the album .

The Standards Trio

In 1983, at the suggestion of ECM head Manfred Eicher, Jarrett asked bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, with whom he had worked on Peacock's 1977 album Tales of Another, to record an album of jazz standards, simply titled Standards, Volume 1. Two more albums, Standards, Volume 2 and Changes, both recorded at the same session, followed soon after. The success of these albums and the group's ensuing tour, which came as traditional acoustic post-bop was enjoying an upswing in the early 1980s, led to this new Standards Trio becoming one of the premier working groups in jazz, and certainly one of the most enduring, continuing to record and tour for more than twenty-five years.

The trio has recorded numerous live and studio albums consisting primarily of jazz repertory material. The trio members each cite Ahmad Jamal as a major influence in their musical development for his use of both melodic and multi-tonal lines..

The Jarrett-Peacock-DeJohnette trio also produced recordings that consist largely of challenging original material, most notably 1987's Changeless. (These recordings are noted above.) Several of the standards albums contain an original track or two, some attributed to Jarrett but mostly group improvisations. The live recordings Inside Out and Always Let Me Go (both released in 2001) marked a renewed interest by the trio in wholly improvised free jazz. By this point in their history, the musical communication among these three men had become nothing short of telepathic, and their group improvisations frequently take on a complexity that sounds almost composed. The Standards Trio undertakes frequent world tours of recital halls (the only venues in which Jarrett, a notorious stickler for acoustics, will play these days) and is one of the few truly successful jazz groups to play both straight-ahead (as opposed to smooth) and free jazz.

A related recording, At the Deer Head Inn (1992), is a live album of standards recorded with Paul Motian replacing DeJohnette, at the venue in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, 40 miles from Jarrett's hometown, where he had his first job as a jazz pianist. It was the first time Jarrett and Motian had played together since the demise of the American quartet sixteen years earlier.

Classical music

Since the early 1970s, Jarrett's success as a jazz musician has enabled him to maintain a parallel career as a classical composer and pianist, recording almost exclusively for ECM Records.

In The Light, an album made in 1973, consists of short pieces for solo piano, strings, and various chamber ensembles, including a string quartet and a brass quintet, and a piece for cellos and trombones. This collection demonstrates a young composer's affinity for a variety of classical styles, with varying degrees of success.

Luminessence (1974) and Arbour Zena (1975) both combine composed pieces for strings with improvising jazz musicians, including Jan Garbarek and Charlie Haden. The strings here have a moody, contemplative feel that is characteristic of the "ECM sound" of the 1970s, and is also particularly well-suited to Garbarek's keening saxophone improvisations. From an academic standpoint, these compositions are dismissed by many classical music aficionados as lightweight, but Jarrett appeared to be working more towards a synthesis between composed and improvised music at this time, rather than the production of formal classical works. From this point on, however, his classical work would adhere to more conventional disciplines.

Ritual (1977) is a composed solo piano piece recorded by Dennis Russell Davies that is somewhat reminiscent of Jarrett's own solo piano recordings.

The Celestial Hawk (1980) is a piece for orchestra, percussion, and piano that Jarrett performed and recorded with the Syracuse Symphony under Christopher Keene. This piece is the largest and longest of Jarrett's efforts as a classical composer.

Bridge of Light (1993) is the last recording of classical compositions to appear under Jarrett's name. The album contains three pieces written for a soloist with orchestra, and one for violin and piano. The pieces date from 1984 and 1990.

In 1988 New World Records released the CD Lou Harrison: Piano Concerto and Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra, featuring Jarrett on piano, with Naoto Otomo conducting the piano concerto with the New Japan Philharmonic. Robert Hughes conducted the Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra. In 1992 came the release of Jarrett's performance of Peggy Glanville-Hicks's Etruscan Concerto, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. This was released on Music Masters Classics, with pieces by Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. In 1995 the record label Music Masters Jazz released a CD on which one track featured Jarrett performing the exquisite solo piano part in Lousadzak, a 17-minute piano concerto by American composer Alan Hovhaness. The conductor again was Dennis Russell Davies. Most of Jarrett's classical recordings are of older repertoire, but Jarrett may have been introduced to this modern work by his one-time manager George Avakian, who was a friend of the composer.

In addition to his classical work as a composer, Jarrett has also performed and recorded classical music for ECM New Series since the mid-1980s, including the following:

In 2004, Jarrett was awarded the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. The prestigious award usually associated with classical musicians and composers has only previously been given to one other jazz musician—Miles Davis. The first person to receive the award was Igor Stravinsky, in 1959.

Other works

Jarrett also plays harpsichord, clavichord, organ, soprano saxophone, drums, and many other instruments. He often played saxophone and various forms of percussion in the American quartet, though his recordings since the breakup of that group have rarely featured these instruments. On the majority of his recordings in the last twenty years, he has played acoustic piano only. He has spoken with some regret of his decision to give up playing the saxophone, in particular.

On April 15, 1978, Jarrett was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. His music has also been used on many television shows, including The Sopranos on HBO. The 2001 German film Bella Martha (English title: Mostly Martha), whose music consultant was ECM founder and head Manfred Eicher, features Jarrett's "Country," from the European quartet album My Song.

Idiosyncrasies

One of Jarrett's trademarks is his frequent, loud vocalizations (grunting, squealing, and tuneless singing), similar to that of Glenn Gould, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Ralph Sutton, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Paul Asaro, and Cecil Taylor. Jarrett is also physically active while playing, writhing, gyrating, and almost dancing on the piano bench. These behaviors occur in his jazz and improvised solo performances, but are for the most part absent whenever he plays classical repertory. Jarrett has noted his vocalizations are based on involvement, not content, and are more of an interaction than a reaction, ultimately enhancing the quality of the music.

However, Jarrett is notoriously intolerant of audience noise, including coughing and other involuntary sounds, especially during solo improvised performances. He feels that extraneous noise affects his musical inspiration, and distracts from the purity of the sound. As a result, cough drops are routinely supplied to Jarrett's audiences in cold weather, and he has even been known to stop playing and lead the crowd in a group cough. This intolerance was made clear during a concert on October 31, 2006, at the restored Salle Pleyel in Paris. After making an impassioned plea to the audience to stop coughing, Jarrett walked out of the concert during the first half, refusing at first to continue, although he did subsequently return to the stage to finish the first half, and also the second. A further solo concert three days later went undisturbed, following an official announcement beforehand urging the audience to minimize extraneous noise. In 2008, during the first half of another Paris concert, Jarrett complained to the audience about the quality of the piano that he had been given, walking off between solos and remonstrating with staff at the venue. Following an extended interval, the piano was replaced. In 2007, in concert in Perugia during the Umbria Jazz Festival, angered by photographers Jarrett implored the audience: "I do not speak Italian, so someone who speaks English can tell all these assholes with cameras to turn them fucking off right now. Right now! No more photographs, including that red light right there. If we see any more lights, I reserve the right (and I think the privilege is yours to hear us), but I reserve the right and Jack and Gary reserve the right to stop playing and leave the goddamn city!" This caused the organizers of the Festival to declare that they will never invite him again.

Jarrett is also extremely protective of the quality of recordings of his concerts. In 1992, a trio concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London was temporarily stopped as he thought he had identified someone in the audience with a recording device. It turned out to be a light on the mixing desk and the concert resumed after an apology. Similarly, a 2010 concert in Lyon was interrupted after he confused the electric devices on an audience member's wheelchair with recording equipment. The concert resumed, although without apology.

Jarrett has been known for many years to be strongly opposed to electronic instruments and equipment. His liner notes for the 1973 album Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne states: "I am, and have been, carrying on an anti-electric-music crusade of which this is an exhibit for the prosecution. Electricity goes through all of us and is not to be relegated to wires." He has largely eschewed electric or electronic instruments since his time with Miles Davis.

For many years he has been a follower of the teachings of metaphysician and mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. In 1980 he recorded an album of Gurdjieff's compositions, called Sacred Hymns, for ECM.

Personal

Jarrett lives in an 18th-century farmhouse in Oxford Township, New Jersey, in rural Warren County. He uses a converted barn on his property as a recording studio and practice facility.

Jarrett's first marriage, to Margot Erney, ended in divorce. His second wife Rose Anne (née Colavito), of thirty years, divorced him in 2010. Jarrett has four brothers, all younger, two of whom are involved in music. Chris Jarrett is also a pianist, and Scott Jarrett is a producer and songwriter. Noah Jarrett, one of two sons from Jarrett's first marriage, is a bassist and composer.

Discography

References

Sources

Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music. 1992 ISBN 0586092196

Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley. 'The Rough Guide to Jazz'. 2003 ISBN 1-84353-256-5

External links

KeithJarrett.it The most complete fan site dedicated to Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett fansite.

Interview with Ethan Iverson for BBC (2009)

Art of the States: Keith Jarrett performing Lousadzak, op. 48 (1944) by Alan Hovhaness

Keith Jarrett at Yahoo!Groups.

Keith Jarrett on ECM Records.

Keith Jarrett by Otacílio Melgaço

Keith Jarrett: a short biography (fan site).

"Keith Jarrett Standards Trio Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary" by Ted Gioia Jazz.com.

Keith Jarrett on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz (NPR).

Recent Interview (2007)

1997 New York Times profile of Jarrett

Keith Jarrett Transcriptions Project – Transcriptions

Keith Jarrett on ECM Records

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Category:People from Allentown, Pennsylvania Category:Avant-garde jazz pianists

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (February 29, 1792 – November 13, 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart." Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.

Biography

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group.

Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French Revolution and welcomed Napoleon Bonaparte's troops when they arrived in northern Italy. When Austria restored the old regime in 1796, Rossini's father was sent to prison and his mother took him to Bologna, making a living as a leading singer at various theatres of the Romagna region. Her husband would ultimately join her in Bologna. During this time, Rossini was frequently left in the care of his aging grandmother, who had difficulty supervising the boy.

He remained at Bologna in the care of a pork butcher while his father played the horn in the orchestras of the theatres at which his wife sang. The boy had three years of instruction in the playing of the harpsichord from Giuseppe Prinetti, originally from Novara, who played the scale with two fingers only; Prinetti also owned a business selling beer and had a propensity to fall asleep while standing. These qualities made him a subject for ridicule in the eyes of the young Rossini.

Education

He was eventually taken from Prinetti and apprenticed to a blacksmith. In Angelo Tesei, he found a congenial music master, and learned to sight-read, play accompaniments on the piano and sing well enough to take solo parts in the church when he was ten years of age. Important from this period are six sonate a quattro, or string sonatas, composed in three days, unusually scored for two violins, cello and double bass. The original scores were found in the Library of Congress in Washington DC after World War II, dated from 1804 when the composer was twelve. Often transcribed for string orchestra, these sonatas reveal the young composer's affinity for Haydn and Mozart, already showing signs of operatic tendencies, punctuated by frequent rhythmic changes and dominated by clear, songlike melodies.

In 1805 he appeared at the theatre of the Commune in Ferdinando Paer's Camilla, his only public appearance as a singer. He was also a capable horn player, treading in the footsteps of his father. Around this time, he composed individual numbers to a libretto by Vincenza Mombelli called Demetrio e Polibio, which was handed to the boy in pieces. Though it was Rossini's first opera, written when he was thirteen or fourteen, the work was not staged until the composer was twenty years old, premiering as his sixth official opera.

In 1806 Rossini became a cello student under Cavedagni at the Conservatorio di Bologna. The following year he was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre Stanislao Mattei (1750–1825). He learned to play the cello with ease, but the pedantic severity of Mattei's views on counterpoint only served to drive the young composer's views toward a freer school of composition. His insight into orchestral resources is generally ascribed not to the strict compositional rules that he learned from Mattei, but to knowledge gained independently while scoring the quartets and symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. At Bologna, he was known as "il Tedeschino" ("the Little German") on account of his devotion to Mozart.

Early career

Through the friendly interposition of the Marquis Cavalli, his first opera, La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract), was produced at Venice when he was a youth of 18 years. But two years before this he had already received the prize at the Conservatorio of Bologna for his cantata Il pianto d'Armonia sulla morte d’Orfeo. Between 1810 and 1813 at Bologna, Rome, Venice and Milan, Rossini produced operas of varying success, most notably La pietra del paragone and Il Signor Bruschino, with its brilliant and unique overture. In 1813, Tancredi and L'italiana in Algeri were even bigger successes, and catapulted the 20-year-old composer to international fame.

The libretto for Tancredi was an arrangement by Gaetano Rossi of Voltaire's tragedy Tancrède. Traces of Ferdinando Paer and Giovanni Paisiello were undeniably present in fragments of the music. But any critical feeling on the part of the public was drowned by appreciation of such melodies as "Di tanti palpiti... Mi rivedrai, ti rivedrò", which became so popular that the Italians would sing it in crowds at the law courts until called upon by the judge to desist. By his 21st birthday Rossini had established himself as the idol of the Italian opera public. He continued to write operas for Venice and Milan during the next few years, but their reception was tame and in some cases unsatisfactory after the success of Tancredi. In 1815 he retired to his home in Bologna, where Domenico Barbaia, the impresario of the Naples theatre, contracted an agreement that made him musical director of the Teatro San Carlo and the Teatro del Fondo at Naples. He would compose one opera a year for each. His payment was to be 200 ducats per month; he was also to receive a share from the gambling tables set in the theatre's "ridotto", amounting to about 1000 ducats per annum. This was an extraordinarily lucrative arrangement for any professional musician at that time.

He visited the Naples conservatory, and, although less than four years senior to Mercadante, he said to the Director Niccolò Zingarelli, "My compliments Maestro - your young pupil Mercadante begins where we finish."

Some older composers in Naples, notably Zingarelli and Paisiello, were inclined to intrigue against the success of the youthful composer, but all hostility was rendered futile by the enthusiasm that greeted the court performance of his Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, in which Isabella Colbran, who subsequently became the composer's wife, took a leading part. The libretto of this opera by Giovanni Schmidt was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth. The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote out the ornaments of the airs instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the recitativo secco was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet.

The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Rossini's most famous opera was produced on February 20, 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The libretto, a version of Pierre Beaumarchais' stage play Le Barbier de Séville, was newly written by Cesare Sterbini and not the same as that already used by Giovanni Paisiello in his own Barbiere, an opera which had enjoyed European popularity for more than a quarter of a century. Much is made of how quickly Rossini's opera was written, scholarship generally agreeing upon two or three weeks. Later in life, Rossini claimed to have written the opera in only twelve days. It was a colossal failure when it premiered as Almaviva; Paisiello's admirers were extremely indignant, sabotaging the production by whistling and shouting during the entire first act. However, not long after the second performance, the opera became so successful that the fame of Paisiello's opera was transferred to Rossini's, to which the title The Barber of Seville passed as an inalienable heritage.

Later in 1822, a 30-year-old Rossini succeeded in meeting Ludwig van Beethoven, who was then aged 51, deaf, cantankerous and in failing health. Communicating in writing, Beethoven noted: “Ah, Rossini. So you’re the composer of The Barber of Seville. I congratulate you. It will be played as long as Italian opera exists. Never try to write anything else but opera buffa; any other style would do violence to your nature.”

Marriage and mid-career

Between 1815 and 1823 Rossini produced 20 operas. Of these Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi. In Rossini's time the tragic close was so distasteful to the public of Rome that it was necessary to invent a happy conclusion to Otello. Conditions of stage production in 1817 are illustrated by Rossini's acceptance of the subject of Cinderella for a libretto only on the condition that the supernatural element should be omitted. The opera La Cenerentola was as successful as Barbiere. The absence of a similar precaution in construction of his Mosè in Egitto led to disaster in the scene depicting the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, when the defects in stage contrivance always raised a laugh, so that the composer was at length compelled to introduce the chorus "Dal tuo stellato soglio" to divert attention from the dividing waves.

In 1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married the renowned opera singer Isabella Colbran. In the same year, he moved from Italy to Vienna where his operas were the rage of the audiences. He directed his Cenerentola in Vienna, where Zelmira was also performed. After this he returned to Bologna, but an invitation from Prince Metternich to come to Verona and "assist in the general re-establishment of harmony" was too tempting to refuse, and he arrived at the Congress in time for its opening on October 20, 1822. Here he made friends with Chateaubriand and Dorothea Lieven.

In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's Theatre, London, he came to England, being much fêted on his way through Paris. In England he was given a generous welcome, which included an introduction to King George IV and the receipt of £7000 after a residence of five months. The next year he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris at a salary of £800 per annum. Rossini’s popularity in Paris was so great that Charles X gave him a contract to write five new operas a year, and at the expiration of the contract he was to receive a generous pension for life.

End of career

, 1858]] During his Paris years, between 1824 and 1829, Rossini created the comic opera Le Comte Ory and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). The production of his Guillaume Tell in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. He was thirty-eight years old and had already composed thirty-eight operas. Guillaume Tell was a political epic adapted from Schiller’s play (1804) about the thirteenth century Swiss patriot who rallied his country against the Austrians. The libretto was by Étienne Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, but their version was revised by Armand Marrast. The music is remarkable for its freedom from the conventions discovered and utilized by Rossini in his earlier works, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera, the overture serving as a model for romantic overtures throughout the 19th century. Though an excellent opera, it is rarely heard uncut today, as the original score runs more than four hours in performance. The overture is one of the most famous and frequently recorded works in the classical repertoire.

In 1829 he returned to Bologna. His mother had died in 1827, and he was anxious to be with his father. Arrangements for his subsequent return to Paris on a new agreement were temporarily upset by the abdication of Charles X and the July Revolution of 1830. Rossini, who had been considering the subject of Faust for a new opera, did return, however, to Paris in November of that year.

Six movements of his Stabat Mater were written in 1832 by Rossini himself and the other six by Giovanni Tadolini, a good musician who was asked by Rossini to complete the work. However, Rossini composed the rest of the score in 1841. The success of the work bears comparison with his achievements in opera, but his comparative silence during the period from 1832 to his death in 1868 makes his biography appear almost like the narrative of two lives—the life of swift triumph and the long life of seclusion, of which biographers give us pictures in stories of the composer's cynical wit, his speculations in fish culture, his mask of humility and indifference.

Later years

His first wife died in 1845, and on August 16, 1846, he married Olympe Pélissier, who had sat for Vernet for his picture of Judith and Holofernes. Political disturbances compelled Rossini to leave Bologna in 1848. After living for a time in Florence, he settled in Paris in 1855, where his house was a centre of artistic society. Rossini had been a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life, but he indulged these two passions fully once he retired from composing, and today there are a number of dishes with the appendage "alla Rossini" to their names that were either created by him or specifically for him. Probably the most famous of these is Tournedos Rossini, still served by many restaurants today.

In the meantime, after years of various physical and mental illnesses, he had slowly returned to music, composing obscure little trifles intended for private performance. These Péchés de vieillesse ("Sins of Old Age") are grouped into 14 volumes, mostly for solo piano, occasionally for voice and various chamber ensembles. Often whimsical, these pieces display Rossini’s natural ease of composition and gift for melody, showing obvious influences of Beethoven and Chopin, with many flashes of the composer’s long buried desire for serious, academic composition. He died at his country house at Passy on Friday, November 13, 1868. He was 76 years old. He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France. In 1887, his remains were moved to the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze, in Florence, at the request of the Italian government.

in Paris]]

Honors and tributes

Rossini was a foreign associate of the institute, grand officer of the Legion of Honour and recipient of innumerable orders.

Immediately after Rossini's death, Giuseppe Verdi proposed to collaborate with twelve other Italian composers on a "Requiem for Rossini," to be performed on the first anniversary of his death, conducted by Angelo Mariani. The music was written, but the performance was abandoned shortly before its scheduled premiere. Verdi re-used the Libera me, Domine he had written for the Rossini Requiem in his 1872 Requiem for Manzoni. In 1989 the conductor Helmuth Rilling recorded the original "Requiem for Rossini" in its world premiere.

Notes

, 1870.Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan]] In his compositions, Rossini plagiarized freely from himself, a common practice among deadline-pressed opera composers of the time. Few of his operas are without such admixtures, frankly introduced in the form of arias or overtures. For example, in Il Barbiere there is an aria for the Count (often omitted) 'Cessa di più resistere', which Rossini used (with minor changes) in the cantata Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo and in La Cenerentola (the cabaletta for Angelina's Rondo is almost unchanged). Moreover, four of his best known overtures, (La cambiale di matrimonio, Tancredi, La Cenerentola and The Barber of Seville), share operas apart from those with which they are most famously associated.

A characteristic mannerism in Rossini's orchestral scoring is a long, steady building of sound over an ostinato figure, creating "tempests in teapots by beginning in a whisper and rising to a flashing, glittering storm," which earned him the nickname of "Signor Crescendo".

A few of Rossini's operas remained popular throughout his lifetime and continuously since his demise; others were resurrected from semi-obscurity in the last half of the 20th century, during the so-called "bel canto revival." According to Herbert Weinstock's 1968 biography (see below), the composer's estate was valued at 2.5 million francs upon his death in 1868, the equivalent of about 1.4 million US dollars.

Works

See List of operas by Rossini and List of compositions by Gioachino Rossini.

References

Burton D. Fisher, The Barber of Seville (Opera Classics Library Series). Grand Rapids: Opera Journeys, 2005.

Philip Gossett, "Rossini, Gioachino" in Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online, November 17, 2009)

Richard Osborne, Rossini: His Life and Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Richard Osborne, "Rossini" in The Musical Times, Vol. 127, No. 1726 (December 1986), 691 (Musical Times Publications Ltd.) http://www.jstor.org/stable/964669

Michael Steen, The Lives and Times of the Great Composers (NY: Oxford University Press, 2004)

H. Weinstock, Rossini: A Biography (New York, 1968)

Notes

External links

Gioachino Rossini biography

Fondazione G. Rossini

List and text of the songs on the website of the German Rossini Society

Rossini Opera Festival

Rossini in Wildbad - Belcanto Opera Festival

The Center for Italian Opera Studies: Rossini critical edition

[] - Riccardo Caramella performs Quatre Mendiants, Quatre hors d'oeuvres

Texts, Books

Memoirs of Rossini by Marie Henri Beyle, Gioacchino Rossini, published in 1824

Books with "Rossini" as author (at Google Books)

Books with occurrences of "Rossini" (at Google Books)

Texts with occurrences of "Rossini" (at archive.org)

La vie de Rossini (fr) by Stendhal, tome I (at gutenberg.org)

La vie de Rossini (fr) by Stendhal, tome II (at gutenberg.org)

Scores (Sheetmusic)

Historical Recordings

Rossini cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

Films

Performance

Aureliano in Palmira on 23 October 2010 at the Royal Festival Hall, London

Images

1867 Caricature of Rossini by André Gill

Category:1792 births Category:1868 deaths Category:People from Pesaro Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Category:Italian composers Category:Légion d'honneur recipients Category:Opera composers Category:Romantic composers Category:Romanticism

Waltraud Meier (born 9 January 1956 in Würzburg) is a Grammy-award winning German dramatic soprano and mezzo-soprano singer. She is particularly known for her Wagnerian roles as Kundry, Isolde, Ortrud, Venus and Sieglinde, but has also had success in the French and Italian repertoire appearing as Eboli, Amneris, Carmen and Santuzza. She resides in Munich.

Meier has performed in the world's famed opera houses (including La Scala, Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Colón Theater). She has performed under the batons of conductors including Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, and Giuseppe Sinopoli. She has been named a "Kammersängerin" by both the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Vienna State Opera, and "Commandeur" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.

Education, vocal training and early career

Waltraud Meier was born in Würzburg, Germany. She sang in numerous choral groups during her younger years. Upon finishing her secondary education, she began graduate studies in English and Romance Languages while also taking voice lessons. She studied singing with Professor Dietger Jacob. (as Fricka, with James Levine conducting his first Das Rheingold at the Met).

She also had debuts at La Scala, the Opéra National in Paris, the Vienna State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. She continued to appear regularly at Bayreuth as Kundry between 1983 and 1993.

1990s

In addition to appearing as Kundry at Bayreuth, Meier continued to appear elsewhere in the role during the 1990s, including a 1991 production at La Scala under the baton of Riccardo Muti and at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, in a version staged by Klaus Michael Grüber and conducted by Semyon Bychkov. In 1992, she appeared for the first time as Kundry at the Metropolitan Opera, opposite Siegfried Jerusalem as Parsifal, with James Levine conducting. The New York Times reported: "Waltraud Meier, bringing her acclaimed performance as Kundry to the Met for the first time, was seductive and gentle in her first approach to Parsifal, holding in reserve a strength and determination that gave her singing an eerie calm." The following year, Meier returned to the Met as Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana. Of that performance, The New York Times wrote:

As Santuzza in "Cavalleria", Waltraud Meier was superb at the first performance on Friday evening, singing clearly and evenly throughout her range, carrying lines smoothly and coloring her tone richly. She gradually worked an incisive, telling edge into her voice without sacrificing its basic beauty; even her shrieks were musical. And she projected a riveting dramatic presence, convincingly fragile as well as ferocious.

During the 1990s, Meier also moved into roles within the dramatic soprano repertoire. Between 1993 and 1999, she appeared at Bayreuth as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde staged by Heiner Müller and conducted by Daniel Barenboim. In 1998 she added additional dramatic soprano roles, debuting as Leonore in Fidelio at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, again under the direction of Barenboim, and also appearing as Ortrud in a new Lohengrin production at the Bavarian State Opera.

2000s

In 2000, Meier appeared again at Bayreuth, performing the role of Sieglinde in Die Walküre in the "Millennium Ring" at the 2000 festival staged by Jürgen Flimm and conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli with Plácido Domingo. She also appeared that year as Isolde at the Salzburg Festival, with Lorin Maazel conducting. In 2001 at the opening of the Munich Opera Festival, the singer made her debut in the role of Didon in Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens with Zubin Mehta conducting.

In 2003 Meier shared a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for her contributions as Venus in Tannhäuser under the direction of Daniel Barenboim. She devoted her 2003-2004 season exclusively to recitals and concerts. She performed in Bach's St Matthew Passion and toured throughout Europe, Russia and the United States with a recital program featuring works by Brahms, Schubert and Hugo Wolf.

She returned to the opera stage in 2004-2005, including appearances as Carmen in a new production at the Semper Oper in Dresden directed by Katarina Lauterbach. In 2005, she appeared again as Isolde, this time in a new production at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, staged by Peter Sellars and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. She also returned to the Vienna State Opera as Kundry in Parsifal.

She returned as Kundry in the Met's Parsifal in 2006, appearing opposite Ben Heppner. The New York Times wrote:

The role of Kundry is that of a lone woman surrounded by men, but Waltraud Meier made it the star turn of the evening. Known as volatile both onstage and off, Ms. Meier is suited to the part, propelling herself into it like a wide-bore, high-explosive cannon shell. This was singing of fierceness and fearlessness, all of it pertinent to the persona she represented. Ms. Meier gives all and takes risks, and her audience went crazy for her.

Meier's 2007 performances include appearances as Isolde (Japan, Berlin, Munich, Milan), Leonore (Munich), Ortrud (Milan, Paris).

A CD featuring Meier and Breinl performing works by Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, with her song accompanist Joseph Breinl was released in late 2007. Meier and Breinl also Breinl are performing numerous recitals in 2007-08 in Japan, Germany, France, Austria, and Spain.

In July 2008, Meier appeared as Venus in a production of Tannhäuser in Baden-Baden, directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, conducted by Philippe Jordan, and also starring Robert Gambill (Tannhäuser), Stephen Milling (Herrmann), and Camilla Nylund (Elisabeth). The New York Times reported that "Ms. Meier, a musician with deep reserves of force and a gift for madness, was the perfect Venus."

On 22 August 2009 she appeared in a televised concert performance of Fidelio at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert in London's Albert Hall in which she also spoke a narration. This was reported as her 2,000th professional engagement. It was conducted by Daniel Barenboim with the West Eastern Divan Orchestra.

In the London Daily Telegraph Rubert Christiansen wrote:

She looked wonderfully elegant and was in good voice - some wild top notes seemed a small price to pay for her total musical and dramatic involvement in Leonore's fate. What a true star and a trouper she is.

References

External links

Waltraud Meier: photos, CDs, DVDs

Pensées wagnériennes: Confessions à Waltraud Meier

Category:1956 births Category:German opera singers Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People from Würzburg Category:Living people

Name	Roberto Bolle
Caption	Roberto Bolle as Solor in a Royal Ballet production of La Bayadere
Birthdate	March 26, 1975
Birthplace	Casale Monferrato Italy
Occupation	ballet dancer

Roberto Bolle is an Italian ballet dancer. He is currently a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and also holds guest artist status with The Royal Ballet and La Scala Theatre Ballet, making regular appearances with both companies.

Overview

Bolle was born in Casale Monferrato in the Piedmont Region of Italy. He began ballet studies at age seven at a local school, and was accepted at the La Scala theatre ballet school in Milan at the age of eleven. Rudolf Nureyev chose Roberto to interpret Tadzio in the ballet Death in Venice.

In 1996, following an appearance in Romeo and Juliet, twenty year old Bolle was promoted to Principal Dancer at La Scala. He left that position when he was 21 to pursue a freelance career. Since then he has starred in many ballets including Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Nutcracker, Giselle, Notre-Dame de Paris, and In the middle somewhat elevated.

Bolle has danced for the Royal Ballet, the Tokyo Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Finnish National Ballet, the Staatsoper in Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, the Staatsoper in Dresden, the Bavarian State Opera, the Wiesbaden Festival, the 8th and 9th International Ballet Festivals in Tokyo, the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, and the City Theatre in Florence.

Derek Deane, the English National Ballet director, created two productions for him: Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet, both of them performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London. On the 10th anniversary of the Opera Theatre in Cairo, he performed in Aida at the pyramids of Giza and afterwards at the Arena in Verona for a new version of the opera live worldwide.

In October 2000 he opened the season at Covent Garden Opera House in London performing Swan Lake, choreographed by Anthony Dowell, and in November he was invited by the Bolshoi Ballet to celebrate Maya Plisetskaya's 75th anniversary in the presence of President Putin.

In June 2002, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee, he danced at Buckingham Palace in the presence of the Queen. The event was broadcast live by BBC and transmitted to all the Commonwealth countries.

During the 2003-2004 season, he was promoted to Etoile of La Scala Theatre. On 1st April 2004 he danced in front of the Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square to celebrate young people's day. On December 7th, to celebrate the re-opening of La Scala Theatre after its restoration, he danced Europa riconosciuta with Alessandra Ferri and 3 weeks later in the New Year’s Eve Star Gala.

In December 2005 at Covent Garden Opera House in London he performed F. Ashton’s production of Sylvia, broadcast by the BBC on Christmas Day.

Bolle danced at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin where he performed a solo created for him by Enzo Cosimi. The ceremony was broadcast worldwide and seen by 2.5 billion people.

In 2007 he performed for the first time as a guest artist with ABT, on the occasion of Alessandra Ferri’s farewell performance.

For the 2009 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Bolle performed as a Principal Dancer with the American Ballet Theatre: the first time that a male Italian dancer joined the Company as a Principal. The "Dance Listings" in the New York Times on June 26, 2009 described Bolle as "utterly gorgeous (in both looks and dance)." Bolle’s Spring 2010 American Ballet Theater performances include The Lady of the Camellias, Swan Lake, La Bayadère, and Romeo and Juliet.

Bolle has appeared in numerous fashion and style magazines, and has been featured in advertising campaigns; Ferragamo featured Bolle in a 2008 promotion. Bolle also has an agreement with Giorgio Armani, who supplies him with clothes. He also was featured in Vogue US 2009 alongside supermodel Coco Rocha in an editorial spread.

Since 1999 he has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. In 2006 he visited Sudan, spending time at schools and hospitals. As of June 2007, he had raised over $655,000 for education and health projects in Sudan.

External links

Roberto Bolle Official Website Teatro alla Scala (La Scala) Official Website

Roberto Bolle as Romeo on YouTube

Category:1975 births Category:Living people Category:People from Casale Monferrato Category:Danseurs Category:Italian ballet dancers Category:Dancers of The Royal Ballet Category:American Ballet Theatre principal dancers

Ramón Vargas (born 11 September 1960) is an award-winning Mexican operatic tenor. Since his debut in the early '90s, he has developed to become one of the most acclaimed tenors of the 21st century. Known for his most expressive and agile lyric tenor voice, he is especially successful in the bel canto repertoire.

Biography

Born in Mexico City, the seventh of nine children. Ramón Vargas began singing at the age of 9, joining the boys' choir of the Basilica of Guadalupe in his home town. He then studied at the Cardenal Miranda Institute in México City, with Antonio Lopez and Ricardo Sanchez.

In 1982, after winning the Carlo Morelli National Vocal Competition, he made his debut in Haydn's Lo Speziale, in Monterrey, Mexico. His breakthrough came in 1983, when the Mexican conductor Eduardo Mata hired him to sing Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff, and then Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni. Upon winning the Enrico Caruso Tenor Competition in Milan, Italy, in 1986, he moved to Austria where he completed his vocal studies at the school of the Vienna State Opera, under the guidance of Leo Müller.

After deciding to become a freelancer in 1990, he met the renowned teacher, Rodolfo Celletti, in Milan, who since then remains his vocal coach.

Ramón Vargas' international debut took place in 1992, when the New York Metropolitan Opera asked him to sing Edgardo opposite June Anderson, substituting Luciano Pavarotti. This was soon followed by a debut on the stage of La Scala, in 1993, where he sung Fenton in Strehler's new production celebrating the centenary of Falstaff, conducted by Riccardo Muti. He now regularly performs at all the major opera houses all over the world to great acclaim:

Buenos Aires Teatro Colón (La Favorita), London Royal Opera House (Un ballo in maschera, La bohème, Rigoletto, La traviata), Milan La Scala (Falstaff, Rigoletto, La traviata), New York Metropolitan Opera (Attila, La bohème, Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, L'elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, Der Rosenkavalier), Madrid Teatro Real (Werther), Paris Opéra-Bastille (Rigoletto, La traviata), San Francisco Opera (Un ballo in maschera, L'elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor), Vienna State Opera (La bohème, L'elisir d'amore, La Favorita, Lucia di Lammermoor, Manon, Maria Stuarda, Rigoletto, Roberto Devereux, Werther), Verona Arena (Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rigoletto), and others.

In addition to his operatic career, he is also an accomplished concert singer, with an extensive repertoire ranging from Italian classical songs to romantic German Lieder and melodies by French, Mexican and Spanish composers from the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1998, he offered a memorable recital at La Scala and his renditions of popular Mexican songs have been met with enthusiasm at massive concerts across Europe and Mexico.

He was awarded the Lauri-Volpi Award for the Best Opera Singer of the 1993 Italian season, and in 1995 Italian critics were unanimous in awarding him the Gino Tani Award for the Arts. In 2000, British Opera Now declared Ramón Vargas Artist of the Year. Each year, since 1999, Austrian Festpiele magazine has given him the first place among the best tenors in the world. In 2001, he received the ECHO Klassik - Singer of the Year Award from the German Phono Academy.

He lives with his wife Amalia, and his son Fernando in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Charity work

In 1993, Eduardo, the first son of Ramón Vargas and his wife, was born in a hospital in Italy. Unfortunately, due to the negligence of the doctors attending the childbirth, the baby suffered a hypoxic encephalopathy, causing a nonreversible injury to his brain. During the following few months doctors in Europe and the United States confirmed a hopeless prognosis of brain paralysis, in the degree of quadriplegia. In the beginning of January 2000, Eduardo's life reached its end.

Nonetheless, his parents decided that they did not wish to isolate themselves from their experience, on the contrary, they chose to perpetuate the memory and the example of Eduardo to help other special children like him, by setting up the Eduardo Vargas Memorial Fund.

The creation and basic aims of the memorial fund were publicly announced by means of a gala concert with Ramón Vargas and the young American soprano Noëlle Richardson, accompanied on the piano by Mzia Bachtouridze, at the villa of the Rothschild Foundation in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, on the 1st of July, 2000.

The initial proceeds were channeled through Vamos, a foundation with large experience in social development activities amongst the most vulnerable population in Mexico, towards some programmes of support that cover the following aspects:

Training promoters and community therapists

Providing information and support to the parents of children with special needs

Giving direct attention to disabled children and young people.

In addition to contributions made by friends and generous anonymous donors, the Eduardo Vargas Memorial Fund is supported by the proceeds from concerts performed by Ramón Vargas.

Repertoire

;Vincenzo Bellini

''I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Tebaldo)

''La sonnambula (Elvino)

''Zaira (Corasmino)

;Hector Berlioz

''La Damnation de Faust (Faust)

;Luigi Cherubini

''Médée (Jason)

;Gaetano Donizetti

''L'elisir d'amore (Nemorino)

''Lucia di Lammermoor (Edgardo)

''La Favorita (Fernando)

''Maria Stuarda (Leicester)

''Roberto Devereux (Roberto Devereux)

;Charles Gounod

''Faust (Faust)

;Joseph Haydn

''Lo Speziale (Sempronio)

;Jules Massenet

''Manon (Le Chevalier des Grieux)

''Werther (Werther)

;Simon Mayr

''Medea in Corinto (Giasone)

;Claudio Monteverdi

''L'incoronazione di Poppea (Nerone)

;Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

''La clemenza di Tito (Tito)

''Don Giovanni (Don Ottavio)

''Idomeneo (Idiamante, Idomeneo)

''Die Zauberflöte (Tamino)

;Jacques Offenbach

''Les contes d'Hoffmann (Hoffmann)

;Giacomo Puccini

''La bohème (Rodolfo)

;Gioachino Rossini

''Adina (Selimo)

''Il barbiere di Siviglia (Il Conte d'Almaviva)

''La Cenerentola (Don Ramiro)

''Maometto secondo (Paolo Eriso)

''Mosè in Egitto (Amènofi)

''Tancredi (Agirio)

''Il Turco in Italia (Don Narciso)

''Il viaggio a Reims (Belfiore)

;Antonio Salieri

''Axur, re d'Ormus (Atar)

;Richard Strauss

''Der Rosenkavalier (The Italian Singer)

;Igor Stravinsky

''The Rake's Progress (Tom Rakewell)

;Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

''Eugene Onegin (Lensky)

;Giuseppe Verdi

''Attila (Foresto)

''Don Carlos (Don Carlos)

''I due Foscari (Jacopo)

''Falstaff (Fenton)

''I Lombardi (Oronte)

''Messa da Requiem (Tenor)

''La traviata (Alfredo)

''Luisa Miller (Rodolfo)

''Rigoletto (Il Duca di Mantova)

''Simon Boccanegra (Gabriele Adorno)

''Un ballo in maschera (Riccardo)

Discography

;Opera

Manon Lescaut, Puccini. Decca, 1993 (Edmondo)

Zaira, Bellini. Nuova Era, 1993

Falstaff, Verdi. Sony, 1994

Il barbiere di Siviglia, Naxos, 1994

Otello, Verdi. Deutsche Grammophon, 1994 (Cassio)

Goyescas, Granados. Auvidis, 1996

La Scala di Seta, Rossini. Claves, 1996

Tancredi, Rossini. RCA, 1996

I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini. RCA Red Seal, 1998

Il Turco in Italia, Rossini. Decca, 1998

Maometto II, Rossini. BMG Ricordi, 1999

Werther, Massenet. RCA, 1999

La Favorite, Donizetti. RCA, 2000

Alzira, Verdi. Philips, 2001

;Oratario and Sacred Music

Christmas with Ramón Vargas. Claves Records, 1996

Messa da Requiem. Verdi, 2007

;Recital

Navidad desde México. Sony Music, 1996 (Popular Mexican songs)

Suite Española De Águstin Lara. PolyGram, 1996 (Popular Mexican songs)

Corazón Mexicano. Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, 1998 (Popular Mexican songs)

''L'amour, l'amour. RCA, 1999

Rossini & Donizetti Opera Arias. Claves Records, 2000

Canzoni. Delta, 2000 (Italian Art songs)

México Lindo. BMG Classics, 2000 (Popular Mexican songs)

Verdi Arias. RCA, 2001

Nel Mio Cuore. RCA, 2003 (Arie Antiche)

Between Friends. RCA, 2004

The Opera Gala Live from Baden-Baden. Deutsche Grammophon, 2008

(Novecento Segreto, Novecento Popolare)

;Various

Lesley Garrett - I Will Wait For You. RCA, 2000

Possession. RCA, 2002 (Soundtrack)

RCA Red Seal Century: The Vocalists. RCA, 2002

Catch a Shining Star. Narm Recordings, 2003

Inspirations. Trauma, 2004

Puccini Festival-die Grossen Opern Highlights. Decca, 2008

;DVD

Opera Stars Sing Broadway. St Clair Vision, 2004

Don Carlo, Verdi. TDK, 2007

Eugene Onegin Tchaikovsky. Decca, 2007

Idomeneo, Mozart. Decca, 2007

Messa da Requiem, Verdi. TDK, 2007

La Bohème, Puccini. EMI Classics, 2008

La Traviata, Verdi. Arthaus Musik, 2008 (Also on Blu-ray)

The Opera Gala: Live from Baden-Baden. Deutsche Grammophon, 2008 (Also on Blu-ray)

Don Giovanni, Mozart. Opus Arte, 2009 (Also on Blu-ray)

External links

Ramón Vargas' Official website

Schedule on Operabase

Interview with BBC NEWS

Interview with Bruce Duffie

Interview with Dominic McHugh (MusicalCriticism.com)

YouTube clips

Wigmore Hall Recital (Video)

References

Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:Mexican opera singers Category:Mexican male singers Category:Operatic tenors

Nicolai Ghiaurov (or Nikolai Gjaurov, Nikolay Gyaurov, ) (September 13, 1929 – June 2, 2004) was a Bulgarian opera singer and one of the most famous bass singers of the postwar period. He was admired for his powerful, sumptuous voice, and was particularly associated with roles of Verdi. Ghiaurov married the Italian soprano Mirella Freni in 1978. The two singers frequently performed together. They lived in Modena up until Ghiaurov's death in 2004 of a heart attack.

Biography

Ghiaurov was born in the small mountain town of Velingrad in southern Bulgaria. As a child, he learned to play the violin, piano and clarinet. He began his musical studies at the Bulgarian State Conservatory in 1949 under Prof. Hristo Brambarov. From 1950 until 1955, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory.

Ghiaurov's career was launched in 1955, when he won the Grand Prix at the International Vocal Competition in Paris and the First Prize and a gold medal at the Fifth World Youth Festival in Prague. Ghiaurov made his operatic debut in 1955 as Don Basilio in Rossini's The Barber of Seville in Sofia. He made his Italian operatic debut in 1957 in Teatro Comunale Bologna, before starting an international career with his rendition of Varlaam in the opera Boris Godunov at La Scala in 1959. 1962 marked Ghiaurov's Covent Garden debut as Padre Guardiano in Verdi's "Forza del Destino" as well as his first appearance in Salzburg in Verdi's "Requiem," conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Ghiaurov first shared a stage with Mirella Freni in 1961 in Genoa. She was Marguerite, he was the devil in "Faust." Married in 1978, they lived in her hometown, Modena. They sang together frequently.

He made his US debut in Gounod's Faust in 1963 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and he went on to sing twelve roles with the company, including the title roles in Boris Godunov, Don Quichotte, and Mefistofele.

Ghiaurov made his Metropolitan Opera debut on 8 November 1965 as Mephistopheles. He sang a total of eighty-one performances in ten roles there, last appearing there on October 26, 1996, as Sparafucile in Rigoletto. During the course of his career, he also performed at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, and Paris Opéra.

In the late 1970s Ghiaurov sang the title role in the first complete stereo recording of Jules Massenet's opera Don Quichotte (Don Quixote). He was recorded frequently, and his discography includes complete recording of many of his great stage roles, including Don Giovanni, Don Basilio, Ramfis, Colline, Banco, Gounod and Boito's Mephistos and Boris Godunov among many others.

"He commanded a remarkable vocal instrument, strikingly generous in size, warm in timbre, dark in color. He rolled out the resonant tone at his command with generosity, and with special ease at the burnished top." remarks Martin Bernheimer in Ghiaurov's obituary in Opera News.

Honour

Ghiaurov Peak on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Nicolai Ghiaurov.

References

Bernheimer, Martin. "Obituaries: Nicolai Ghiaurov" Opera News 69:2 (August 2004) p. 74.

External links

Russian Opera from Bulgaria: Nicolai Ghiaurov

Profile

Interview with Ghiaurov from 1995 (in Bulgarian)

Category:1929 births Category:2004 deaths Category:Bulgarian opera singers Category:Operatic basses Category:Bulgarian male singers Category:Moscow Conservatory alumni

Leo Nucci (born April 16, 1942) is an Italian operatic baritone, particularly suited to Verdi roles.

Born at Castiglione dei Pepoli, near Bologna, he studied with Giuseppe Marchese and made his stage debut in Spoleto, as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, in 1967, he then joined the chorus of La Scala in Milan, and made his solo debut there in 1975, again as Figaro.

His career quickly took an international turn with debut at the Royal Opera House in London, as Miller in Luisa Miller, in 1978, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Renato/Ancharstrom in Un ballo in maschera, in 1980. Renato was also his debut role at the Paris Opéra in 1981, and the Salzburg Festival in 1989, under Herbert Von Karajan.His career is remembered for famous performances in the opera world, including works with Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo and others.

His repertoire encompasses the entire Italian repertory from bel canto to verismo, but his sonorous voice, secure technique and dramatic abilities are best displayed in Verdi - notably as Macbeth, Rigoletto, Luna, Germont, Posa, Amonasro, Iago, Falstaff, Rodridue. He has sung the role of Rigoletto alone more than 400 times.

Nucci has enjoyed a long and successul career and is still active. He is married to soprano Adriana Anelli, with whom he has a daughter.

Notes

Sources

Grove Music Online, Elizabeth Forbes, May 2008

External links

Official website

Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:People from the Province of Bologna Category:Italian opera singers Category:Operatic baritones Category:Italian baritones

Name	Giusy Ferreri
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Giuseppa Gaetana Ferreri
Alias	Gaetana
Born	April 17, 1979
Origin	Palermo, Italy
Genre	Pop, Blues, Rock
Occupation(s)	Singer
Voice type	Contralto
Years active	2005–Present
Label	Sony Music Italy
Url	giusyferreriofficial.it

Giusy Ferreri (born Giuseppa Gaetana Ferreri on 17 April 1979 in Palermo, Italy) is an Italian singer-songwriter. In 2008 Giusy took part at the first Italian edition of the talent show X Factor, in which she came second. Her vocal qualities have been compared to Nina Simone, Bessie Smith and Amy Winehouse.

Between 2008 and 2009, Ferreri sold 900,000 copies of her first EP and debut album.

Career

In June 2008 Sony BMG Italy released the debut EP by Ferreri, which includes her first single Non Ti Scordar Mai Di Me written by Italian pop singer Tiziano Ferro, and five covers of classic songs from the 60s-70s. The single held the number one position of the Italian singles chart for an impressive fifteen consecutive weeks, becoming one of the most successful tracks ever on that chart. The album debuted at the top spot of the Italian album chart and stayed there for eleven consecutive weeks. It went on to be certified 4x platinum denoting over 300,000 copies shipped.

Debut album: Gaetana

In October 2008 the song Novembre, the first single from Ferreri's official debut album Gaetana, was released. The tune debuted at number one in Italy and held the top for eight weeks so far. The album was released on 14 November 2008. It debuted at number one on the iTunes Italy chart and subsequently peaked at #2 on the Italian FIMI albums chart, selling over 80,000 copies in its first week of release. The album sold so far over 390,000 copies in Italy and Greece. The second single from the album, "Stai Fermo Lì", was announced on 8 January 2009 and was released in Italy on 16 January 2009. The third single off the album was "La Scala (The Ladder)", originally written by Linda Perry and translated in Italian by singer Tiziano Ferro. The song peaking at #27 on the FIMI singles chart and at #49 on the Greece Singles Chart.

Cover album: Fotografie

On 20 November 2009 her second studio album was released across Europe, while debuting at #10 on the Italian FIMI albums chart. The first single is a cover of Ma il Cielo è Sempre Più Blu by Rino Gaetano.

In her second studio album, Ferreri records cover versions of some of her favourite (Italian and international) artitsts: La Magia è la mia Amante (I Was Made To Love Magic) by Nick Drake, Con una rosa by Vinicio Capossela and Paolo Benvegnù, Il Mare Verticale (Portrait the Sea) by Jerome Kern, Yesterdays (song played in the past by Billie Holiday), Ciao amore ciao by Luigi Tenco and Estate by Bruno Martino.

Discography

Albums

EPs

Singles

Awards and nominations

Music videos

{|class="wikitable" ! Year ! Song ! Director |- |rowspan=1|2005 |"Il Party" |rowspan=3|Cosimo Alemà |- |rowspan=2|2008 |"Non Ti Scordar Mai Di Me" |- |"Novembre" |- |rowspan=3|2009 |"Stai Fermo Lì" |rowspan=3|Gaetano Morbioli |- |"Nunca Te Olvides De Mi" |- |"La Scala (The Ladder)" |- |}

Notes

External links

Official Site

Category:1979 births Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Italian singers Category:Italian female singers Category:Italian-language singers Category:Italian pop singers Category:Living people Category:The X Factor contestants Category:Sony BMG artists Category:Torch singers Category:People from Palermo (city)

Daniel Barenboim (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born Israeli pianist and conductor. He is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Jewish musicians.

Biography

Daniel Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His grandparents were Russian Ashkenazi Jews. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father Enrique, who remained his only teacher. In August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert in Buenos Aires. Symphonic orchestra and conductor Moshe Lustig, 1953]] In 1952, the Barenboim family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents brought him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father told the maestro that it was too soon after the Holocaust for a child of Jewish parents to be performing in Berlin.

In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Barenboim made his debut as a pianist in Vienna and Rome in 1952, Paris in 1955, London in 1956, and New York in 1957 under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter.

In 1967 Daniel Barenboim married the renowned British cellist Jacqueline du Pré at the Western Wall, Jerusalem. The marriage lasted until her death from multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1987. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the famous film by Christopher Nupen of their Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Collectively, the five referred to themselves as The Kosher Nostra.

After suffering symptoms for more than a year, du Pré was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and retired from music in 1973. In the early 1980s, during his marriage to du Pré, Barenboim began a relationship with the Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova, with whom he had two sons born in Paris: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael Barenboim, born 1985. Both were born prior to du Pré's death in 1987. Barenboim tried to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré and believes he succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael is a classical violinist. Barenboim first came to prominence as a pianist but is now perhaps better known as a conductor.

Music career

Barenboim made his first recording in 1954 and went on to record several complete cycles:

the piano sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

the piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven

the piano concertos by Mozart, as both conductor and pianist

the piano concertos of Beethoven, first with Otto Klemperer and later as conductor and pianist with the Berlin Philharmonic

the piano concertos of Johannes Brahms, with John Barbirolli and Zubin Mehta

the piano concertos of Béla Bartók, with Pierre Boulez

Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989 he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music.

Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999.

Barenboim served as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1991 up to 17 June 2006. Barenboim expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra.

Barenboim, whose home is in Berlin, has been music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera) and the Berlin Staatskapelle since 1992. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional East-Germanic sound and style. He has constantly worked to maintain the independent status of the Staatsoper. He now is conductor for life at the Berlin State Opera. On 15 May 2006 Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of the La Scala opera house, in Milan, Italy.

In 2006, Barenboim was the BBC Reith Lecturer, giving five lectures called 'In the Beginning was Sound' from London, Chicago, Berlin, and twice from Jerusalem in which he meditated on music, how it is created, one's experience of it, and its place in life. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University entitled 'Sound and Thought'.

In November 2006, Lorin Maazel caused some controversy by submitting to the board of directors of the New York Philharmonic (NYP) Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the NYP's music director. Barenboim, in turn, responded that while he was flattered, "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position." In January 2007, Barenboim further demurred on this question by generally stating his lack of interest in any United States music directorship, "at the moment." In April 2007, it was reported that Barenboim expressed no interest in either the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or their newly created principal conductor position.

In 2008 he was given the honour to conduct the world famous New Year Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on the first of January 2009.

Barenboim made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde on 28 November 2008.

In the beginning of his career, Barenboim gained widespread acceptance mainly as a pianist. He concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart's and Beethoven's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Notable Romantic recordings include: Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta).

Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Schumann, many operas by Wagner, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Gustav Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth Symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo and Heitor Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist.

In his later years, Barenboim widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played.

Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement (see quotation at the end of this paragraph). A notable example is his preference for some traditional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar) of Beethoven's symphonies, in his recording of those works. Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as composer metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. The general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, reflecting this belief, usually adhere to early twentieth-century tradition, and are not influenced by faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as Roger Norrington and David Zinman. In Barenboim's recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier he makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favored by the influential (and highly individual) pianist Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, one voice is often played considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord, which according to some scholarship, began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book The Iconic Bach). Indeed, when justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach, that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance that existed in Bach's time:

The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time...

Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during his tenure there, and the Clarinet Trio of Mozart with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle.

Daniel Barenboim conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's New Year's Day Concert 2009 in Der Musikverein, (http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/) He had a short message to the audience in which he stated: "Let's pray for human justice in the Middle East".

Conducting Wagner in Israel

On 7 July 2001, Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in part of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. The concert sparked controversy. Wagner's music had been unofficially taboo in Israel's concert halls (although recordings of it were widely purchased and listened to) because of revulsion with the racial anti-Semitism that Wagner had espoused in print - which presaged and quite likely influenced Hitler. Previously the Palestine Philharmonic had performed Wagner's music. Barenboim had long opposed the ban, regarding it as reflecting what he calls a "diaspora" mentality that is no longer appropriate to Israel. In a conversation with Edward Said (published in the book Parallels and Paradoxes) he says that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He calls Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, and argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."

Barenboim originally had been scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.)

Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Robert Schumann and Igor Stravinsky for the offending piece, but expressed regret at the decision. At the end of the concert he announced that he would play Wagner as an encore and invited those who objected to hearing the music to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued in Hebrew in the hall, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist." In the end, according to reports in the Israeli press, about 50 attendees walked out, and about 1000 remained, applauding loudly after the performance. (According to Israeli newspaper interviews, at least one who remained in attendance was a Holocaust survivor, again undermining the simple assertion that all survivors opposed the performance of Wagner in Israel.)

Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner as a political statement, and said he had decided to defy the taboo on Wagner when a news conference he held the previous week was interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said.

In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, on the theme Wagner, Israel and Palestine.

Political views

Barenboim has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli settlements and of Israel's government since Rabin. He is also a supporter of Palestinian rights.

With respect to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Barenboim has spoken about the need for both sides to begin to understand each other:

"There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people ... [N]ow fifty years after that we have to accept co-responsibility for Palestinian suffering. Until an Israeli leader is able to utter those words there will be no peace."

In an interview with British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, he accused the Israeli government of behaving in a manner which was, "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong", and, "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel."

As a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, Barenboim has performed in Ramallah although Israeli authorities warned him that it was dangerous.

In 1999, Barenboim jointly founded the West-Eastern Divan orchestra with Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, who was a close friend. It is an initiative to bring together, every summer, a group of talented young classical musicians from Israel and Arab countries. Barenboim and Said were among the recipients of the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations".

Barenboim wrote a book with Said, Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall.

In September 2005, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive to the Palestinians present. Then Israeli Minister of Education, Limor Livnat (Likud), was quoted as describing Barenboim as "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-semite."

In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from England, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel-Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The leader of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship.

In January 2008, the UFO religion Raëlian Movement nominated Barenboim an "Honorary Guide" for his actions towards peace in the Middle East and for championing Palestinians' rights while being a citizen of Israel.

In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians’ safety", according to the BBC.

Awards and recognition

Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009 Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008

International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008

Goethe Medal, Praemium Imperiale, 2007

Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, 2007

Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004

Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth)

Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin)

Tolerance Prize, Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, 2002

Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said)

Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz, 2002

Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischen Friedenspreis in German), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East

;Honorary degrees

Doctor of Philosophy - Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003

Doctor of Music - D.Mus., University of Oxford, 2007

Doctor of Music - D.Mus., SOAS, University of London, 2008

Doctor of Music - D.Mus., Royal Academy of Music, 2010

Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording:

Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003)

Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance:

Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995)

Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991)

Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance:

Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992)

Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra):

Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002)

Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra):

Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983)

Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album)

Wolf Prize

In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat originally held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his earlier performance of Wagner in Israel. He took the opportunity to express his opinions on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948:

"I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice?"

Education Minister Livnat and Israeli President Moshe Katsav criticized Barenboim for his speech.

Later, in March 2007, the New York Times quoted Barenboim as saying, "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society, a malaise that is also a result of being an occupying power for 40 years. I don’t believe that this is something that one can do and not feel an effect upon oneself. I think that the occupation is morally abhorrent. I don’t think any country has a right to occupy another, and certainly not we, the Jewish people, with our history."

References

External links

Daniel Barenboim official website

Daniel Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com

Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002

In harmony, [Guardian] newspaper feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003

In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures.

BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991

Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks

A BBC Report describing the incident in which Dafna Arad, an Israeli Army reporter was refused an interview by Barenboim while wearing uniform.

Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube

Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Westphalian Peace Prize

Category:Argentine classical pianists Category:Argentine conductors (music) Category:Argentine Jews Category:Israeli classical pianists Category:Israeli conductors (music) Category:Jewish classical pianists Category:Child classical musicians Category:Israeli–Palestinian peace efforts Category:Palestinian Jews Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:People from Buenos Aires Category:Living people Category:1942 births Category:Alumni of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Category:United Nations Messengers of Peace Category:Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires Category:Music directors of the Berlin State Opera

Carlos Kleiber (3 July 1930 – 13 July 2004) was an Austrian classical conductor who spent most of his professional career in Germany.

Early career

Kleiber was born as Karl Ludwig Kleiber in Berlin, the son of the Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber and Ruth Goodrich, an American. In 1935, the Kleiber family emigrated to Buenos Aires. Karl's name became Carlos. As a youth, he had an English governess, grew up in English boarding schools in Argentina and later studied in New York and Zurich. He also composed, sang, and played piano and timpani. While his father noticed his son's musical talents, Erich Kleiber nevertheless dissuaded Carlos from pursuing a musical career: "What a pity the boy is musically talented", wrote his father to a friend.

Carlos Kleiber initially studied chemistry in Zürich, but soon decided to dedicate himself to music. He was repetiteur at the Gartnerplatz Theatre in Munich in 1952, and made his conducting debut with the operetta Gasparone at Potsdam theatre in 1954. From 1958 to 1964 he was Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, and then at the Opera in Zürich from 1964 to 1966. Between 1966 and 1973 he was first Kapellmeister in Stuttgart, his last permanent post. During the following years, he often conducted at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.

Mature career

During his freelance career, Kleiber restricted his conducting appearances to a select number of occasions. He made his British debut in 1966 with a performance at the Edinburgh Festival of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, a work his father had conducted at its premiere in 1925. He made his Bayreuth debut in 1974 with a performance of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

His American debut came in 1978 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he again conducted in 1983, his only US orchestra appearances.. His New York Metropolitan Opera debut was in 1988, conducting Giacomo Puccini's La bohème with Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni. In 1989, following Herbert von Karajan's resignation from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Kleiber was offered, and declined, the post of the orchestra's next music director. Kleiber returned to the Met in 1989 to conduct La traviata, and in 1990 for Otello and Der Rosenkavalier.

Kleiber kept out of the public eye and reportedly never gave an official interview. After he resigned from the Bavarian State Opera, his appearances became less frequent, and he made only a few recordings. Most of these are regarded as very fine; his versions of Ludwig van Beethoven's fifth and seventh symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and of the Symphony No. 4 and No. 7 (Beethoven) with the Bavarian State Orchestra are particularly notable. Other notable recordings include Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 4 and Franz Schubert's third and eighth ("Unfinished") symphonies, also with the Vienna Philharmonic, recordings of Dvořák's Concerto for piano and orchestra with Sviatoslav Richter, Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus, Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata and Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

Preserved performances

Kleiber's unique conducting style is preserved on video in a number of performances: Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 7 from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus from Munich, Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier from both Munich and Vienna, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 36th symphony and Brahms' second symphony from the Musikverein in Vienna ; Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Mozart's 33rd and Brahms' fourth symphonies from Munich and Bizet's Carmen again from Vienna. He led the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in 1989 and 1992, and these are both preserved on video.

Impact

He effectively retired from concert life in the early 1990s, occasionally appearing to give private concerts or benefit concerts. For one such event in Ingolstadt, instead of the usual fee, Kleiber received a new Audi made to his specifications. In the opinion of many of his colleagues and audiences who have experienced his meticulously rehearsed but ever spontaneous and inspired performances, this eccentric genius is the greatest conductor of all time, first among equals, despite the paucity of his appearances.

He is buried in the Slovenian village of Konjšica near Litija in 2004, together with his wife Stanislava Brezovar, a ballet dancer, who died seven months earlier. He and his wife had two children, a son, Marko, and a daughter, Lillian.

In 2008 Rai Radio 3 (Italian National Radio channel 3), inside its evening program Radio3Suite, broadcast a 10-episode program dedicated to Kleiber's legacy: Il Sorriso Della Musica: Un Ritratto Di Carlos Kleiber ("The Smile Of Music: A Portrait Of Carlos Kleiber"), by Andrea Ottonello, based on great contributions and attestations like the one by Claudio Abbado, Mirella Freni, Maurizio Pollini, and above all Carlos Kleiber's sister, Veronica. In the interview, Abbado says Kleiber has been "the most important conductor of the 20th century".

On 26 September 2009, BBC Radio 3 transmitted a unique documentary, Who Was Carlos Kleiber? Produced by Paul Frankl, and presented by Ivan Hewett with research by Ruth Thomson, this feature was based on interviews with four who knew Kleiber well: tenor and conductor Plácido Domingo, music administrator and Intendant Sir Peter Jonas, music journalist and critic Christine Lemke-Matvey, and conductor–pianist Charles Barber. It may be downloaded at: http://www.mediafire.com/?wn4lnykyqkk You can read transcription of BBC Radio Program at: http://www.carlos-kleiber.com/resources

On 21 June 2010, Ljubljana celebrated Carlos Kleiber's 80th Birthday with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Riccardo Muti.

Official discography (complete)

1973: Carl Maria von Weber: Der Freischütz, Staatskapelle Dresden, DG. Soloists: Gundula Janowitz, Edith Mathis, Peter Schreier, Theo Adam, Bernd Weikl, Siegfried Vogel, Franz Crass.

1973: R.Strauss : Der Rosenkavalier - complete, Orfeo D'or

1974: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon.

1975: Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus, Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Deutsche Grammophon. Soloists: Hermann Prey, Julia Varady, Lucia Popp, René Kollo, Ivan Rebroff, Bernd Weikl.

1975-1976: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Vienna Philharmonic, Deutsche Grammophon.

1976: Antonín Dvořák: Concerto for piano and orchestra, Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, EMI. Piano: Sviatoslav Richter.

1976-1977: Giuseppe Verdi: La traviata, Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Grammophon. Soloists: Ileana Cotrubaş, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes.

1978: Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 3, Vienna Philharmonic, Deutsche Grammophon.

1978: Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 8 "Unfinished", Vienna Philharmonic, Deutsche Grammophon.

1980: Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 4, Vienna Philharmonic, Deutsche Grammophon.

1980-1982: Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Staatskapelle Dresden, Deutsche Grammophon. Soloists: René Kollo, Margaret Price, Brigitte Fassbaender, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kurt Moll.

1982-1983: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, Symphony No. 6, Symphony No. 7, Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, Orfeo.

1989: Vienna New Year's Concert, Vienna Philharmonic, Sony.

1992: Vienna New Year's Concert, Vienna Philharmonic, Sony.

2010: Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon - 12 CDs.

Official DVD releases

1970: "The Great conductors", TDK and Arthaus. Overtures: Der Freischütz & Die Fledermaus Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (rehearsals)

1978: Georges Bizet: Carmen, Vienna Philharmonic, TDK and Arthaus. Soloists: Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo, Yuri Mazurok, Isobel Buchanan.

1979: Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier, Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Grammophon. Soloists: Gwyneth Jones, Brigitte Fassbaender, Lucia Popp, Francisco Araiza.

1983: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, Symphony No. 7, Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Philips.

1986: Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus, Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Grammophon. Soloists: Pamela Coburn, Brigitte Fassbaender, Janet Perry, Eberhard Wächter.

1989: Vienna New Year's Concert, Vienna Philharmonic, Deutsche Grammophon.

1991: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 36, Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2, Vienna Philharmonic, Philips.

1992: Vienna New Year's Concert, Vienna Philharmonic, Philips.

1994: Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier, Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Grammophon. Soloists: Felicity Lott, Kurt Moll, Anne Sofie von Otter, Gottfried Hornik, Barbara Bonney, Heinz Zednik.

1996: Ludwig van Beethoven: "Coriolan" Overture, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 33, Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 4, Bavarian State Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon.

2010: Complete Opera and Concert DVDs on Deutsche Grammophon - 10 DVDs.

TV documentary Spuren ins Nichts - Der Dirigent Carlos Kleiber / Engl.: Traces to Nowhere - The Conductor Carlos Kleiber, Director: Eric Schulz, Production: Servus TV 2010 , Distributor: EuroArts Music International.

TV documentary Carlos Kleiber - A Deeply Private Man, Director: Georg Wübbolt, Distributor: C Major Entertainment, 2010, a BFMI production in coproduction with ZDF / 3sat

References

Sources

Balestrazzi, Mauro: Carlos Kleiber - Angelo o demone?, 2006, ISBN 88-8302-325-0 (in Italian).

Fischer, Jens Malte: Carlos Kleiber - Der skrupulöse Exzentriker, 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0138-1 (in German).

Werner, Alexander: Carlos Kleiber - Eine Biografie, 2007, 2nd, revised Edition, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7957-0598-5, 3rd Edition, paperback, July 2010 (in German)

Vichev, Tomislav: Kleiber's Era, 2003 (in Bulgarian).

Drexel, Christina: Carlos Kleiber - ... einfach was dasteht!, 2010, Verlag Dohr Köln, ISBN 978-3-936655-89-6 (in German).

Zignani, Alessandro: Il tramonto dell'Occidente, 2010, ISBN 978-88-87203-95-0, Zecchini Editore (in Italian).

External links

Biographer Werner`s site

Erich and Carlos Kleiber site

Kleiber's era

Biography of Carlos Kleiber

http://www.carlos-kleiber.com

September 2009 BBC Radio program: “Who Was Carlos Kleiber?”

TV documentary Spuren ins Nichts - Der Dirigent Carlos Kleiber, Servus TV, 2010

Category:1930 births Category:2004 deaths Category:20th-century Austrian people Category:20th-century German people Category:20th-century conductors Category:Austrian conductors (music) Category:German conductors (music) Category:ETH Zurich alumni Category:German people of American descent Category:Austrian people of American descent Category:German people of Austrian descent Category:Austrian expatriates in Germany Category:German expatriates in Argentina Category:Austrian expatriates in Argentina Category:German immigrants to Argentina Category:Austrian immigrants to Argentina Category:Austrian expatriates in Slovenia Category:People from Berlin

Name	Bobby McFerrin
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Robert McFerrin, Jr.
Born	March 11, 1950 Manhattan, New York
Instrument	Vocals, piano, bass guitar, clarinet
Genre	Jazz, Reggae, World Music, Classical Music
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, conductor, producer
Years active	1977–present
Label	Manhattan RecordsBlue Note RecordsElektra RecordsSony Classical
Associated acts	Chick CoreaHerbie Hancock
Url	http://www.bobbymcferrin.com

Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.

Life

Bobby McFerrin was born in Manhattan, New York, the son of the late operatic baritone Robert McFerrin, and singer Sara Copper. Robert, Sr. was the first African American to be a regular with New York's Metropolitan Opera. Sara is a former soloist with regional opera companies, and in Broadway shows, and is a professor emeritus of music at Fullerton College in Fullerton, California.

Bobby McFerrin was married to Debbie Green in 1975. They have three children.

McFerrin's song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was a No. 1 U.S. pop hit in 1988 and won Song of the Year and Record of the Year honors. McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumental performers including pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, drummer Tony Williams, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Vocal technique

As a vocalist, McFerrin often switches rapidly between modal and falsetto registers to create polyphonic effects, performing both the main melody and the accompanying parts of songs. He makes use of percussive effects created both with his mouth and by tapping on his chest. McFerrin is also capable of multiphonic singing; as observed in his song "Drive" from the 2005 DVD Live in Montreal.

A notable document of McFerrin's approach to singing is his 1984 album The Voice, the first solo vocal jazz album recorded with no accompaniment or overdubbing.

Career

In the late 1970s, while working as a piano accompanist for the University of Utah Modern Dance Department, McFerrin auditioned to play in a local piano bar -- Room at the Top in the Salt Lake Hilton. Hired after auditioning with his entire repertoire of five songs, he learned a song a day for a month before starting.

In 1986, McFerrin was the voice of Santa Bear in "Santa Bear's First Christmas," and in 1987 he was the voice of Santa Bear/Bully Bear in the sequel "Santa Bear's High Flying Adventure." That same year, he performed the theme song for the opening credits of Season 4 of The Cosby Show, as well as the music for a Cadburys chocolate commercial.

In 1988, McFerrin recorded the hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy," which brought him widespread recognition across the world. However, the song's success "ended McFerrin's musical life as he had known it," and he began to pursue other musical possibilities -- on stage and in recording studios. The song was used in George H. W. Bush's 1988 U.S. presidential election as Bush's 1988 official presidential campaign song, without Bobby McFerrin's permission or endorsement. In reaction, Bobby McFerrin publicly protested that particular use of his song, including stating that he was going to vote against Bush, and completely dropped the song from his own performance repertoire, to make the point even clearer.

In 1989, he composed and performed the music for the Pixar short film Knick Knack. The rough cut to which McFerrin recorded his vocals had the words "blah blah blah" in place of the end credits (meant to indicate that he should improvise). McFerrin spontaneously decided to sing "blah blah blah" as lyrics, and the final version of the short film includes these lyrics during the end credits. Also in 1989, he formed a ten-person 'Voicestra' which he featured on both his 1990 album Medicine Music and in the score to the 1989 Oscar-winning documentary . The song 'Common Threads' has frequently reappeared in some public service advertisements for AIDS. McFerrin also performed with the Vocal Summit.

As early as 1992, widespread rumors circulated that falsely claimed McFerrin committed suicide. The rumors intentionally made light of the distinctly positive nature of his popular song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by claiming McFerrin ironically took his own life.

In 1993 McFerrin sang Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme for the movie Son of the Pink Panther.

In addition to his vocal performing career, in 1994, Mr. McFerrin was appointed as creative chair of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He makes regular tours as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, including the San Francisco Symphony (on his 40th birthday), the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic and many others. In McFerrin's concert appearances, he combines serious conducting of classical pieces with his own unique vocal improvisations, often with participation from the audience and the orchestra. For example, the concerts often end with McFerrin conducting the orchestra in an a cappella rendition of the "William Tell Overture," in which the orchestra members sing their musical parts in McFerrin's vocal style instead of playing their parts on their instruments.

For a few years in the late 1990s, he toured a concert version of Porgy and Bess, partly in honor of his father, who sang the role for Sidney Poitier in the 1959 film version, and partly "to preserve the score's jazziness" in the face of "largely white orchestras" who tend not "to play around the bar lines, to stretch and bend". McFerrin says that because of his father's work in the movie, "This music has been in my body for 40 years, probably longer than any other music".

McFerrin also participates in various music education programs, and makes volunteer appearances as a guest music teacher and lecturer at public schools throughout the U.S. McFerrin has a son, Taylor, and father and son have collaborated on various musical ventures. Taylor has recently been singing, rapping, and playing minimal keyboard accompaniment with Vernon Reid (leader-guitarist of Living Colour) in the eclectic metal-fusion-funk-etc. group Yohimbe Brothers.

In 2009, McFerrin and musician-scientist Daniel Levitin served as co-hosts of "The Music Instinct", a 2 hour award-winning documentary produced by PBS and based on Levitin's best-selling book This Is Your Brain On Music. Later that year, the two appeared together on a panel at the World Science Festival where McFerrin demonstrated audience participation with the ubiquitous nature of human understanding of the pentatonic scale by singing and dancing, and having the audience sing while following his movements.

In October 2010, Bobby McFerrin appeared on NPR's news quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me.

Discography

As leader

Bobby McFerrin (1982)

The Voice (1984)

Spontaneous Inventions (1987)

Elephant's Child (1987)

Simple Pleasures (1988)

Don't Worry, Be Happy (1988)

How the Rhino Got His Skin/How the Camel Got His Hump (1990)

Medicine Music (1990)

Play, with Chick Corea, 1992

Hush, with Yo-Yo Ma, 1992

Many Faces of Bird (1991)

Sorrow Is Not Forever (1994)

Paper Music (1995, with the St. Paul Chamber orchestra)

Bang! Zoom (1996)

The Mozart Sessions, with Chick Corea, 1996

Circlesongs (1997)

Mouth Music (2001)

Beyond Words (2002) - featuring Chick Corea, Cyro Baptista and Richard Bona

VOCAbuLarieS (2010)

As sideman

Pharoah Sanders, Journey to the One, 1980

Grover Washington, Jr., The Best Is Yet to Come, 1982

Various Artists, The Young Lions, 1983

Charles Lloyd Quartet, A Night in Copenhagen, 1984

Various Artists, A Tribute to Thelonius Monk, 1984

Chico Freeman, Tangents, 1984

Michael Hedges, Watching My Life Go By, 1985

The Manhattan Transfer, Vocalese, 1985

Joe Zawinul, Di•a•lects, 1986

Weather Report, Sportin' Life, 1985

Al Jarreau, Heart’s Horizon, 1988

Quincy Jones, Back on the Block, 1989

Laurie Anderson, Strange Angels, 1989

Gal Costa, The Laziest Gal in Town, 1991

Dizzy Gillespie, "To Bird With Love", 1992

Jack DeJohnette, Extra Special Edition, 1994

Yellowjackets, Dreamland, 1995

George Martin, In My Life, 1998 - on Come Together with Robin Williams

En Vogue, Masterpiece Theatre, 2000

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Little Worlds, 2003

Chick Corea, Rendezvous in New York, 2003

Wynton Marsalis, The Magic Hour, 2004

size2shoes, 2006 (free track)

Grammys

1985, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Another Night In Tunisia" with Jon Hendricks

1985, Best Vocal Arrangement for two or more voices, "Another Night In Tunisia" with Cheryl Bentyne

1986, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Round Midnight"

1987, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "What Is This Thing Called Love"

1987, Best Recording for Children, "The Elephant's Child" with Jack Nicholson

1988, Song of the year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, male, Record of the year, "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

1988, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Brothers"

1992, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, "Round Midnight"

References

External links

Official website

Snopes.com on the suicide rumour

Demonstration of the pentatonic scale, World Science Festival 2009

Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:African American musicians Category:American conductors (music) Category:American jazz singers Category:California State University, Sacramento alumni Category:Musicians from New York City Category:Grammy Award winners

Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.

Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet, Wagner, and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata.

After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.

Biography

Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine (then part of Russia) and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as "Bubbles" Silverman. As a child, she spoke Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French and English. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, as well as Manhattan's Professional Children's School.

At the age of three, Sills won a "Miss Beautiful Baby" contest, in which she sang "The Wedding of Jack and Jill". Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, "Rainbow House", as "Bubbles" Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven and a year later sang in the short film Uncle Sol Solves It (filmed August 1937, released June 1938 by Educational Pictures), by which time she had adopted her stage name, Beverly Sills. Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radio's Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and on October 26, 1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that week's program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capitol Family Hour, a weekly variety show. Her first appearance was on November 19, 1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter.

In 1945, Sills made her professional stage debut with a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company produced by Jacob J. Shubert, playing twelve cities in the US and Canada, offering seven different Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In her 1987 autobiography, she credits that tour with helping to develop the comic timing she soon became famous for: "I played the title role in Patience, and I absolutely loved the character, because Patience is a very funny, flaky girl.... I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and really had fun with the role.... My Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her.... I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage." Sills sang in light operas for several more years.

On July 9, 1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (radio). She sang under the pseudonym of "Vicki Lynn", as she was under contract to Shubert. Shubert did not want Godfrey to be able to say he had discovered "Beverly Sills" if she won the contest (although she did not ultimately win). Sills sang "Romany Life" from Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller.

In 1947, she made her operatic stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company. She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951 singing Violetta in La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in Carmen. On September 15, 1953, she made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in Boito's Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni the same season. In a step outside of the repertoire she is commonly associated with, Sills gave four performances of the title role of Aida in July of 1954 in Salt Lake City. On October 29, 1955, she first appeared with the New York City Opera as Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, which received critical praise. As early as 1956 she performed before an audience of over 13,000 guests at the landmark Lewisohn Stadium with the noted operatic conductor Alfredo Antonini in an aria from Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani. Her reputation expanded with her performance of the title role in the New York premiere of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1958.

On November 17, 1956, Sills married journalist Peter Greenough, of the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper The Plain Dealer and moved to Cleveland. She had two children with Greenough, Meredith ("Muffy") in 1959 and Peter, Jr. ("Bucky") in 1961. Muffy is profoundly deaf and has multiple sclerosis and Peter is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.

In 1960, Sills and her family moved to Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston. In 1962, Sills sang the title role in Massenet's Manon with the Opera Company of Boston, the first of many roles for opera director Sarah Caldwell. Manon continued to be one of Sills' signature roles throughout most of her career. In January 1964, she sang her first Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute for Caldwell. Although Sills drew critical praise for her coloratura technique and for her performance, she was not fond of the latter role; she observed that she often passed the time between the two arias and the finale addressing holiday cards.

Peak singing years

In 1966, the New York City Opera revived Handel's then virtually unknown opera seria Giulio Cesare (with Norman Treigle as Cæsar), and Sills' performance as Cleopatra made her an international opera star. Sills also made her "unofficial" Met debut in its "Opera in the Parks" program as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, though nothing further came of this other than offers from Rudolf Bing for roles such as Flotow's Martha. In subsequent seasons at the NYCO, Sills had great successes in the roles of the Queen of Shemakha in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, the title role in Manon, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and the three female leads Suor Angelica, Giorgetta, and Lauretta in Puccini's trilogy Il trittico.

In 1969, Sills sang Zerbinetta in the American premiere (in a concert version) of the 1912 version of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos with the Boston Symphony. Her performance of the role, especially Zerbinetta's aria, "Grossmächtige Prinzessin", which she sang in the original higher key, won her acclaim. Home video-taped copies circulated among collectors for years afterwards, often commanding large sums on Internet auction sites (the performance was released commercially in 2006, garnering high praise). The second major event of the year was her debut as Pamira in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth at La Scala, a success that put her on the cover of Newsweek.

Sills's now high-profile career landed her on the cover of Time in 1971, where she was described as "America's Queen of Opera". The title was appropriate because Sills had purposely limited her overseas engagements because of her family. Her major overseas appearances include London's Covent Garden, Milan's La Scala, La Fenice in Venice, the Vienna State Opera, the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland, and concerts in Paris. In South America, she sang in the opera houses of Buenos Aires and Santiago, a concert in Lima, Peru, and appeared in several productions in Mexico City, including Lucia di Lammermoor with Luciano Pavarotti. On November 9, 1971, her performance in the New York City Opera's production of The Golden Cockerel was telecast live to cable TV subscribers.

During this period, she made her first television appearance as a talk-show personality on Virginia Graham's Girl Talk, a weekday series syndicated by ABC Films. An opera fan who was Talent Coordinator for the series persuaded the producer to put her on the air and she was a huge hit. Throughout the rest of her career she shone as a talk show guest, sometimes also functioning as a guest host. Sills underwent successful surgery for ovarian cancer in late October 1974 (sometimes misreported as breast cancer). Her recovery was so rapid and complete that she opened in Daughter of the Regiment at the San Francisco Opera a month later.

Following Sir Rudolf Bing's departure as director, Sills finally made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on April 7, 1975 in The Siege of Corinth, receiving an eighteen-minute ovation. Other operas she sang at the Met include La traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Thaïs, and Don Pasquale (directed by John Dexter). In an interview after his retirement, Bing stated that his refusal to use Sills, as well as his preference for engaging, almost exclusively, Italian stars such as Renata Tebaldi - due to his notion that American audiences expected to see Italian stars - was the single biggest mistake of his career. Sills attempted to downplay her animosity towards Bing while she was still singing, and even in her two autobiographies. But in a 1997 interview, Sills spoke her mind plainly, "Oh, Mr. Bing is an ass. [W]hile everybody said what a great administrator he was and a great this, Mr. Bing was just an improbable, impossible General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.... The arrogance of that man."

Sills was a recitalist, especially in the final decade of her career. She sang in mid-size cities and on college concert series, bringing her art to many who might never see her on stage in a fully staged opera. She also sang concerts with a number of symphony orchestras. Sills continued to perform for New York City Opera, her home opera house, essaying new roles right up to her retirement, including the leading roles in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe and Gian Carlo Menotti's La loca, a role written especially for her.

Although Sills' voice type was characterized as a "lyric coloratura", she took a number of heavier spinto and dramatic coloratura roles more associated with heavier voices as she grew older, including Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (with Susanne Marsee as Orsini) and the same composer's Tudor Queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (opposite Plácido Domingo in the title part). She was admired in those roles for transcending the lightness of her voice with dramatic interpretation, although it may have come at a cost: Sills later commented that Roberto Devereux shortened her career by at least four years.

Sills popularized opera through her talk show appearances, including Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore. Sills hosted her own talk show, Lifestyles with Beverly Sills, which ran on Sunday mornings on NBC for two years in the late 1970s; it won an Emmy Award. In 1979 she even . Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.

Later years and death

In 1978, Sills announced she would retire on October 27, 1980, in a farewell gala at the New York City Opera. In the spring of 1979, she began acting as co-director of NYCO, and became its sole general director as of the fall season of that year, a post she held until 1989, although she remained on the NYCO board until 1991. During her time as general director, Sills helped turn what was then a financially struggling opera company into a viable enterprise. She also devoted herself to various arts causes and such charities as the March of Dimes and was sought after for speaking engagements on college campuses and for fund raisers.

From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairman in January 2005, citing family as the main reason (she had to place her husband, whom she had cared for over eight years, in a nursing home). She stayed long enough to supervise the appointment of Peter Gelb, formerly head of Sony Classical Records, as the Met's General Manager, to succeed Joseph Volpe in August 2006.

Peter Greenough, Sills's husband, died on September 6, 2006, at the age of 89. They would have had their 50th wedding anniversary on November 17, 2006.

She co-hosted The View for Best Friends Week on November 9, 2006, as Barbara Walters' best friend. She said that she didn't sing anymore, even in the shower, to preserve the memory of her voice.

She appeared on screen in movie theaters during HD transmissions live from the Met, interviewed during intermissions by the host Margaret Juntwait on January 6, 2007 (I puritani simulcast), as a backstage interviewer on February 24, 2007 (Eugene Onegin simulcast) and then, briefly, on April 28, 2007 (Il trittico simulcast).

On June 28, 2007, the Associated Press and CNN reported that Sills was hospitalized as "gravely ill", from lung cancer. With her daughter at her bedside, Beverly Sills succumbed to cancer on July 2, 2007, at the age of 78.

Operatic repertoire

These are the roles that Sills has performed on stage or for television or radio.

{|class="wikitable sortable" !Composer!!Opera!!Role!!In repertoire!!Performed with!!Recorded |- |Bellini||I Capuleti e i Montecchi||Guilietta||1975||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Bellini||I puritani||Elvira||1972–1978||Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Tulsa Opera||Yes |- |Bellini||Norma||Norma||1972–1978||Opera Company of Boston, Opera Theatre of New Jersey, Connecticut Opera, Ravinia Festival, San Diego Opera, San Antonio Opera||Yes |- |Bizet||Carmen||Frasquita||1951||Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Micaela||1952–1958||Charles Wagner Opera Company, Robin Hood Dell West, Cosmopolitan Opera||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Carmen||1956||Musicarnival||No |- |Bizet||Les pêcheurs de perles||Leila||1956||DuMont Television Network||Yes |- |Boito||Mefistofele||Helen of Troy||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Charpentier||Louise||Louise||1962–1977||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Anna Bolena||Anna ||1973–1975||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Don Pasquale||Norina||1978–1980||Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||La fille du régiment||Marie||1970–1977||Opera Company of Boston, Carnegie Hall, San Antonio Opera, Philadelphia Lyric Opera, San Diego Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Memphis, Palm Beach Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||L'elisir d'amore||Adina||1964||Opera Company of Boston||No |- |Donizetti||Lucia di Lammermoor||Lucia||1968–1977||Fort Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Opera Company of Boston, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, La Scala, San Antonio Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, Covent Garden, Tulsa Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Mississippi Opera Association, Zoo Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, New Orleans Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Seattle Opera, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Memphis, San Antonio Symphony, Florentine Opera, Opera Omaha, Metropolitan Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Lucrezia Borgia||Lucrezia Borgia||1975–1976||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Maria Stuarda||Maria Stuarda||1972–1974||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Roberto Devereux||Elizabeth I||1970–1975||New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Wolf Trap Opera ||Yes |- |Gounod||Faust||Marguerite||1963–1970||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Orlando Opera, San Antonio Grand Opera Festival, Duluth Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Handel||Ariodante||Ginevra||1971||Kennedy Center||Yes |- |Handel||Giulio Cesare||Cleopatra||1966–1971||New York City Opera, Teatro Colón, Cincinnati May Festival ||Yes |- |Handel||Semele||Semele||1967–1969||Cleveland Orchestra, Caramoor Festival ||Yes |- |Hanson||Merry Mount||Lady Marigold Sandys||1964||San Antonio Symphony||No |- |Hindemith||Hin und zurück||Helene||1965||WGBH-TV||Yes |- |Kálmán||Gräfin Mariza||Countess Mariza||1946||Hartman Theatre in Columbus, Ohio||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Sonia||1956–1965||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Casa Mañana, Robin Hood Dell||No |- |Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Nedda||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Hanna Glawari||1977–1979||San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Massenet||Manon||Manon||1953–1978||Baltimore Opera Company, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia||Yes |- |Massenet||Thaïs||Thaïs||1954–1978||DuMont Television Network, San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Menotti||La Loca||Juana La Loca||1979||San Diego Opera, New York City Opera||Yes |- |Meyerbeer||Les Huguenots||Marguerite||1969||Carnegie Hall||Yes |- |Montemezzi||L'amore dei tre re||Fiora||1956||Philadelphia Grand Opera Company||No |- |Moore||The Ballad of Baby Doe||Baby Doe||1958–1969||New York City Opera, Musicarnival||Yes |- |Moore||The Wings of the Dove||Milly Theale||1962||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Der Schauspieldirektor||Madame Goldentrill||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Die Entführung aus dem Serail||Konstanze||1965–1975||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Grant Park, Tanglewood Music Festival, Frederic R. Mann Auditorium, Ravinia Festival||Yes |- |Mozart||Die Zauberflöte||Queen of the Night ||1964–1967||Boston Opera Group, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Tanglewood Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Vienna State Opera, New York City Opera, CBC Radio||Yes |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Elvira||1953–1955||San Francisco Opera, Chattanooga Opera Association||No |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Anna||1963–1967||New York City Opera, Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Baltimore Opera Company ||Yes |- |Mozart||Le nozze di Figaro||Countess||1965||Miami Opera||No |- |Offenbach||Les contes d'Hoffmann||Three Heroines||1964–1973||New Orleans Opera, Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Baltimore Opera Company, Palacio de Bellas Artes, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Shreveport Opera, Municipal Theater of Santiago, San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Florida Symphony ||Yes |- |Puccini||La bohème||Musetta||1958–1963||Cosmopolitan Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Puccini||La bohème||Mimi||1965||Seattle Opera||No |- |Puccini||Gianni Schicchi||Lauretta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Suor Angelica||Suor Angelica||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Il tabarro||Giorgetta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Tosca||Tosca||1957–1960||Murrah High School Auditorium for the Jackson Opera Guild, Musicarnival|| No |- |Rameau||Hippolyte et Aricie||Aricie||1966||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Rimsky-Korsakov||Le Coq d'Or||Queen Shemakha||1967–1971||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Romberg||The Student Prince||Kathie||1954||Chicago Theater of the Air||Yes |- |Rossini||The Barber of Seville||Rosina||1974–1980||Opera Company of Boston, San Antonio Symphony, New York City Opera, Kennedy Center, Fort Worth Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Festival Internacional Cervantino, Robin Hood Dell ||Yes |- |Rossini||Il turco in Italia||Fiorilla||1978–1979||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Rossini||The Siege of Corinth||Pamira||1969–1976|| La Scala, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Rosalinda||1955–1980||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Adele||1977–1980||New York City Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Ariadne auf Naxos||Zerbinetta||1969||Boston Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Elektra||Fifth Maidservant||1953||San Francisco Opera ||No |- |Sullivan||H.M.S. Pinafore||Josephine||1945||Providence, Rhode Island at the Metropolitan Theater and Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Sullivan||The Pirates of Penzance||Mabel||1945||Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Suppé||Die schöne Galathee||Galatea||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Tchaikovsky||Cherevichki (performed under the title The Golden Slipper)||Oxana||1955||New York City Opera||No |- |Thomas||Mignon||Philine||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Verdi||Aida||Aida||1954–1960||University of Utah football stadium, Paterson, New Jersey, Central City Opera|| Yes |- |Verdi||La traviata||Violetta||1951–1977||Kingston High School (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), Charleston Municipal Auditorium, Orlando Municipal Auditorium, Saenger Theatre, Duke University, Academy of Music, Erie Philharmonic Orchestra, Portland Civic Opera Association, DuMont Television Network, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Tulsa Opera, Cincinnati Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Grant Park, Teatro di San Carlo, Connecticut Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera Company of Boston, La Fenice, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Palm Beach Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, San Diego Opera || Yes |- |Verdi||Rigoletto||Gilda||1957–1977|| Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston || Yes |- |Wagner||Die Walküre||Gerhilde||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Weisgall||Six Characters in Search of an Author||Coloratura||1959–1960||New York City Opera||Yes |- |-class="sortbottom" |}

Honors and awards

Sills received many honors and awards from the 1970s through her final years. Here are a list of her major awards, divided by category:

Grammy Award Nominations:

*1969 - Scenes and Arias from French Opera;

*1970 - Mozart and Strauss Arias;

*1976 - Music of Victor Herbert (WINNER)

Emmy Award Nominations:

*1975 - Profile in Music: Beverly Sills, Festival '75 (WINNER);

*1977 - Sills and Burnett at the Met;

*1978 - Lifestyles with Beverly Sills (WINNER);

*1980 - Beverly Sills in Concert;

*1981 - Great Performances: Beverly! Her Farewell Performance

Honorary Doctorates in Music:

*1972 - Temple University;

*1973 - New York University & New England Conservatory of Music;

*1974 - Harvard University

*1975 - California Institute of the Arts

Other Music-related awards:

*1970 - Musical America - Musician of the Year;

1971 - Inducted as a National Patroness of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity on May 1

*1972 - Edison Award - Manon recording;

*1973 - Handel Medallion from New York City for artistic achievement;

*1979 - Recording Industry of America Cultural Award;

*1980 - Golden Baton, American Symphony Orchestra League;

*1985 - Kennedy Center Honors;

*1990 - National Medal of Arts from National Endowment for the Arts;

1996 - The 2nd Annual Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities

*2005 - Beverly Sills Artist Award established by the Metropolitan Opera ($50,000 annual award);

*2007 - Inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame

Charitable and Humanitarian Awards:

*1979 - Pearl S. Buck Women's Award;

*1980 - Presidential Medal of Freedom;

*1981 - Barnard College Medal of Distinction;

*1984 - Charles S. Hughes Gold Medal Award - Nat. Conf. of Christians and Jews;

*1985 - Gold Medal from National Institute of Social Sciences

Recordings and broadcasts

During her operatic career, Sills recorded eighteen full-length operas:

The Ballad of Baby Doe (Bible, Cassel; Buckley, 1959)

Giulio Cesare (Wolff, Forrester, Treigle; Rudel, 1967)

Roberto Devereux (Wolff, Ilosfalvy, Glossop; Mackerras, 1969)

Lucia di Lammermoor (Bergonzi, Cappuccilli, Díaz; Schippers, 1970)

Manon (Gedda, Souzay, Bacquier; Rudel, 1970)

La traviata (Gedda, Panerai; Ceccato, 1971)

Maria Stuarda (Farrell, Burrows, L.Quilico; Ceccato, 1971)

The Tales of Hoffmann (Marsee, Burrows, Treigle; Rudel, 1972)

Anna Bolena (Verrett, Burrows, Plishka; Rudel, 1972)

I puritani (Gedda, L.Quilico, Plishka; Rudel, 1973)

Norma (Verrett, di Giuseppe, Plishka; Levine, 1973)

The Siege of Corinth (Verrett, Theyard, Díaz; Schippers, 1974)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (Barbieri, Gedda, Milnes, Raimondi; Levine, 1974–75)

I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Baker, Gedda, Herincx, Lloyd; G.Patanè, 1975)

Thaïs (Gedda, Milnes; Maazel, 1976)

Louise (Gedda, van Dam; Rudel, 1977)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Titus, Gramm; Caldwell, 1978)

Rigoletto (M.Dunn, Kraus, Milnes, Ramey; Rudel, 1978)

Sills also recorded nine solo recital albums of arias and songs, and was soprano soloist on a 1967 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

She starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and several more on other public TV systems. She participated in such TV specials as A Look-in at the Met with Danny Kaye in 1975, Sills and Burnett at the Met, with Carol Burnett in 1976, and Profile in Music, which won an Emmy Award for its showing in the US in 1975, although it had been recorded in England in 1971.

Some of those televised performances have been commercially distributed on videotape and DVD:

Ariadne auf Naxos (Watson, Nagy; Leinsdorf, 1969) [Concert Version]

La fille du régiment (Costa-Greenspon, McDonald, Malas; Wendelken-Wilson, Mansouri, 1974)

Roberto Devereux (Marsee, Alexander, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1975)

La traviata (H.Price, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1976)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (H.Price, Titus, Gramm, Ramey; Caldwell, Caldwell, 1976)

Manon (H.Price, Fredricks, Ramey; Rudel, Capobianco, 1977)

Others not available commercially include:

The Magic Flute (Pracht, Shirley, Reardon; NN, NN, 1966)

Le coq d'or (Costa-Greenspon, di Giuseppe, Treigle; Rudel, Capobianco, 1971)

Die lustige Witwe (H.Price, Titus; Alcántara, Capobianco, 1977)

Il Turco in Italia (Marsee, H.Price, Gramm; Rudel, Capobianco, 1978)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Hagegård, Bacquier; Rescigno, Dexter, 1979)

After her retirement from singing in 1980 up through 2006, Sills was the host for many of the PBS Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.

Further reading/listening/viewing

Sills, Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. ISBN 0-446-81520-9. A revised edition was issued in 1981 as Bubbles: An Encore.

Sills, Beverly (with Lawrence Linderman) (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books.ISBN

0-553-05173-3.

Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly Sills: On My Own. ISBN 0-553-45743-8. An audio book designated as a companion to Beverly: An Autobiography, with Sills speaking in interview about her life, interspersed with narration and live musical excerpts. There is no direct text from the printed autobiography.

Paolucci, Bridget (1990). Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 1-55546-677-X.

Sargeant, Withrop (1973). Divas. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 0-698-10489-7.

Beverly Sills: Made in America (2006). Deutsche Grammophon B0007999-09. A 90-minute documentary on Sills's singing career with many rare video performance and interview clips.

References

External links

Beverly Sills Online: tribute site with discography, bibliography, photo gallery, sound and video clips, timeline, press articles and other resources.

Beverly Sills:Special mother to the special children: summarizes Sills' charitable work for disabled children.

: Filmography

Beverly Sills: National Women's Hall of Fame profile

Beverly Sills at BrainyQuote: quotations

Beverly Sills: Made in America (PBS Great Performances)

Beverly Sills at OperaMom.com

NY Times five-page obituary, dated July 3, 2007

Category:1929 births Category:2007 deaths Category:American female singers Category:American Jews Category:American opera singers Category:American singers Category:American sopranos Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Erasmus Hall High School alumni Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jewish classical musicians Category:Jewish opera singers Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Opera managers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Brooklyn Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients

Arturo Toscanini (; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his brilliant intensity, his restless perfectionism, his phenomenal ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. As music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra he became a household name (especially in the USA) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. Although subjective opinions differ on the relative greatness of different conductors, during his lifetime Toscanini was the preeminent classical musician of the day.

Biography

Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia–Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, Leopoldo Miguez, the locally hired conductor, reached the summit of a two-month escalating conflict with the performers due to his rather poor command of the work, to the point that the singers went on strike and forced the company's impresario to seek a substitute conductor. But on the evening of June 30, 1886 maestro Carlo Superti found himself booed by the audience, now prompted by the disgruntled Miguez. Yet another last-minute substitute conductor, Aristide Venturi, could not overcome a hostile, hollering public, and was forced to leave the podium. In desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera by heart. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was forcibly persuaded by the musicians to take up the baton at 9:15 P.M., discarded the score, and led a sensational performance of the two-and-a-half hour opera completely from memory. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth and sheer aplomb of this unknown conductor, then by his solid mastery. The result was astounding acclaim. For the rest of that season Toscanini conducted eighteen operas, all with absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19.

Upon returning to Italy, Toscanini set out on a dual path for some time. He continued to conduct, his first appearance in Italy being at the Teatro Carignano in Turin, on November 4, 1886, in the world premiere of the revised version of Alfredo Catalani's Edmea (it had had its premiere in its original form at La Scala, Milan, on 27 February of that year). This was the beginning of Toscanini's life-long friendship and championing of Catalani; he even named his first daughter Wally after the heroine of Catalani's opera La Wally. However, he also returned to his chair in the cello section, and participated as cellist in the world premiere of Verdi's Otello (La Scala, Milan, 1887) under the composer's supervision. Verdi, who habitually complained that conductors never seemed interested in directing his scores the way he had written them, was impressed by reports from Arrigo Boito about Toscanini's ability to interpret his scores. The composer was also impressed when Toscanini consulted him personally about the Te Deum, suggesting an allargando where it was not set out in the score. Verdi said that he had left it out for fear that "certain interpreters would have exaggerated the marking".

Gradually the young musician's reputation as an operatic conductor of unusual authority and skill supplanted his cello career. In the following decade he consolidated his career in Italy, entrusted with the world premieres of Puccini's La bohème and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. In 1896, Toscanini conducted his first symphonic concert (in Turin, with works by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner). He exhibited a considerable capacity for hard work: in 1898 he conducted 43 concerts in Turin. By 1898 he was principal conductor at La Scala, where he remained until 1908, returning as Music Director, 1921-1929. He took the Scala Orchestra to the United States on a concert tour in 1920/21; it was during that tour that Toscanini made his first recordings (for the Victor Talking Machine Company).

International recognition

Outside of Europe, he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1908–1915) as well as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (1926–1936). He toured Europe with the New York Philharmonic in 1930; he and the musicians were acclaimed by critics and audiences wherever they went. Toscanini was the first non-German conductor to appear at Bayreuth (1930–1931), and the New York Philharmonic was the first non-German orchestra to play there. In the 1930s he conducted at the Salzburg Festival (1934–1937) and the inaugural concert in 1936 of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) in what later became Tel Aviv, and later performed with them in Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria.

Opposition to Italian fascist government

In 1919, Toscanini ran unsuccessfully as a Fascist parliamentary candidate in Milan. He had been called "the greatest conductor in the world" by Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. However, he became disillusioned with fascism and repeatedly defied the Italian dictator after the latter's ascent to power in 1922. He refused to display Mussolini's photograph or conduct the Fascist anthem Giovinezza at La Scala. He raged to a friend, "If I were capable of killing a man, I would kill Mussolini."

At a memorial concert for Italian composer Giuseppe Martucci on May 14, 1931 at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, he was ordered to begin by playing Giovinezza but he refused even though the fascist foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano was present in the audience. Afterwards he was, in his own words, "attacked, injured and repeatedly hit in the face" by a group of blackshirts. Mussolini, incensed by the conductor's refusal, had his phone tapped, placed him under constant surveillance and took away his passport. The passport was returned only after world outcry over Toscanini's treatment.

The NBC Symphony Orchestra

Fleeing Italy, he returned to the United States where the NBC Symphony Orchestra was created for him in 1937. He conducted his first NBC broadcast concert on December 25, 1937, in NBC Studio 8-H in New York City's Rockefeller Center. The acoustics of the specially built studio were very dry; some remodeling in 1939 added a bit more reverberation. (In 1950, the studio was further remodeled for television productions; today it is used by NBC for Saturday Night Live. In 1980, it was used by Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a series of special televised NBC concerts called "Live From Studio 8H", the first one being a tribute to Toscanini, punctuated by clips from his television concerts.)

The NBC broadcasts were preserved on large transcription discs, recorded at both 78-rpm and 33-1/3 rpm, until NBC began using magnetic tape in 1947. NBC used special RCA high fidelity microphones both for the broadcasts and for recording them; these microphones can be seen in some photographs of Toscanini and the orchestra. Some of Toscanini's recording sessions for RCA Victor were mastered on sound film in a process developed about 1941, as detailed by RCA producer Charles O'Connell in his memoirs, On and Off The Record. In addition, hundreds of hours of Toscanini's rehearsals with the NBC were preserved and are now housed in the Toscanini Legacy archive at The New York Public Library.

Toscanini was often criticized for neglecting American music; however, on November 5, 1938, he conducted the world premieres of two orchestral works by Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings and Essay for Orchestra. In 1945, he led the orchestra in recording sessions of the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé in Carnegie Hall (supervised by Grofé) and An American in Paris by George Gershwin in NBC's Studio 8-H. He also conducted broadcast performances of Copland's El Salon Mexico; Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with soloists Earl Wild and Benny Goodman and Piano Concerto in F with pianist Oscar Levant; and music by other American composers, including marches of John Philip Sousa. He even wrote his own orchestral arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner, which was incorporated into the NBC Symphony's performances of Verdi's Hymn of the Nations. (Earlier, while music director of the New York Philharmonic, he conducted music by Abram Chasins, Bernard Wagenaar, and Howard Hanson.)

In 1940, Toscanini took the orchestra on a "goodwill" tour of South America. Later that year, Toscanini had a disagreement with NBC management over their use of his musicians in other NBC broadcasts. This, among other reasons, resulted in a letter which Toscanini wrote on 10 March 1941 to RCA's David Sarnoff. He stated that he now wished "to withdraw from the militant scene of Art" and thus declined to sign a new contract for the up-coming winter season, but left the door open for an eventual return "if my state of mind, health and rest will be improved enough". So Leopold Stokowski was engaged on a three-year contract instead and served as the NBC Symphony's music director from 1941 until 1944. Toscanini's state of mind soon underwent a change and he returned as Stokowski's co-conductor for the latter's second and third seasons resuming full control in 1944.

One of the more remarkable broadcasts was in July 1942, when Toscanini conducted the American premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7. Due to World War II, the score was microfilmed in the Soviet Union and brought by courier to the United States. Stokowski had previously given the US premieres of Shostakovich's 1st, 3rd and 6th Symphonies in Philadelphia, and in December 1941 urged NBC to obtain the score of the 7th as he wanted to conduct its premiere as well. But Toscanini coveted this for himself and there were a number of remarkable letters between the two conductors (reproduced by Harvey Sachs in his biography) before Stokowski agreed to let Toscanini have the privilege of conducting the first performance. Unfortunately for New York listeners, a major thunderstorm virtually obliterated the NBC radio signals there, but the performance was heard elsewhere and preserved on transcription discs. It was later issued by RCA Victor in the 1967 centennial boxed set tribute to Toscanini, which included a number of NBC broadcasts never released on discs. In Testimony Shostakovich himself expressed a dislike for the performance, after he heard a recording of the broadcast. In Toscanini's later years he expressed dislike for the work and amazement that he had actually conducted it.

In the summer of 1950, Toscanini led the orchestra on an extensive transcontinental tour. It was during that tour that the well-known photograph of Toscanini riding the ski lift at Sun Valley, Idaho was taken. Toscanini and the musicians traveled on a special train chartered by NBC.

The NBC concerts continued in Studio 8-H until the fall of 1950. They were then held in Carnegie Hall, where many of the orchestra's recording sessions had been held, due to the dry acoustics of Studio 8-H. The final broadcast performance, an all-Wagner program, took place on April 4, 1954, in Carnegie Hall. During this concert Toscanini suffered a memory lapse reportedly caused by a transient ischemic attack, although some have attributed the lapse to having been secretly informed that NBC intended to end the broadcasts and disband the NBC orchestra. He never conducted live in public again. That June, he participated in his final recording sessions, remaking portions of two Verdi operas so they could be commercially released. Toscanini was 87 years old when he retired. After his retirement, the NBC Symphony was reorganized as the Symphony of the Air, making regular performances and recordings, until it was disbanded in 1963.

On radio, he conducted seven complete operas, including La bohème and Otello, all of which were eventually released on records and CD, thus enabling the modern listening public to have at least some idea of what an opera conducted by Toscanini sounded like.

Final years

With the help of his son Walter, Toscanini spent his remaining years editing tapes and transcriptions of his performances with the NBC Symphony. The "approved" recordings were issued by RCA Victor, which also has issued his recordings with the La Scala Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–39) and the Philharmonia Orchestra (1952) were issued by EMI. Various companies have issued recordings on compact discs of a number of broadcasts and concerts that he did not officially approve. Among these are stereophonic recordings of his last two NBC broadcast concerts.

Sachs and other biographers have documented the numerous conductors, singers, and musicians who visited Toscanini during his retirement. He was a big fan of early television, especially boxing and wrestling telecasts, as well as comedy programs.

Toscanini died at age 89 of a stroke at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City on January 16, 1957. His body was returned to Italy and was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan. His epitaph is taken from one account of his remarks concluding the 1926 premiere of Puccini's unfinished Turandot: "Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto" ("Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died [lit. 'is dead']"). During his funeral service, Leyla Gencer sang a part from Verdi's requiem.

In his will, he left his baton to his protégée Herva Nelli.

Toscanini was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.

Family

Toscanini married Carla De Martini on June 21, 1897, when she was not yet 20 years old. Their first child, Walter, was born on March 19, 1898. A daughter, Wally, was born on January 16, 1900. Carla gave birth to another boy, Giorgio, in September 1901, but he died of diphtheria on June 10, 1906. Then, that same year, Carla gave birth to their second daughter, Wanda.

Toscanini worked with many great singers and musicians throughout his career, but few impressed him as much as the Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz. They worked together a number of times and even recorded Brahms' second piano concerto and Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto with the NBC Symphony for RCA. Horowitz also became close to Toscanini and his family. In 1933, Wanda Toscanini married Horowitz, with the conductor's blessings and warnings. It was Wanda's daughter, Sonia, who was once photographed by Life playing with the conductor.

During World War II, Toscanini lived in Wave Hill, a historic home in Riverdale.

Despite the reported infidelities revealed in Toscanini's letters documented by Harvey Sachs, he remained married to Carla until she died on June 23, 1951.

Innovations

At La Scala, which had what was then the most modern stage lighting system installed in 1901 and an orchestral pit installed in 1907, Toscanini pushed through reforms in the performance of opera. He insisted on dimming the house-lights during performances. As his biographer Harvey Sachs wrote: "He believed that a performance could not be artistically successful unless unity of intention was first established among all the components: singers, orchestra, chorus, staging, sets, and costumes."

Toscanini favored the traditional orchestral seating plan with the first violins and cellos on the left, the violas on the near right, and the second violins on the far right.

Premieres

Toscanini conducted the world premieres of many operas, four of which have become part of the standard operatic repertoire: Pagliacci, La bohème, La fanciulla del West and Turandot; he took an active role in Alfano's completion of Puccini's Turandot. He also conducted the first Italian performances of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Salome, Pelléas et Mélisande, Euryanthe as well as the South American premieres of Tristan und Isolde and Madama Butterfly and the North American premiere of Boris Godunov.

Edmea (revised version) by Alfredo Catalani – Turin, November 4, 1886

Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo – Milan, May 21, 1892

Guglielmo Swarten by Gnaga – Rome, November 15, 1892

Savitri by Natale Canti – Bologna, December 1, 1894

Emma Liona by Antonio Lozzi – Venice, May 24, 1895

La bohème by Giacomo Puccini – Turin, February 1, 1896

Forza d'Amore by Arturo Buzzi-Peccia – Turin, March 6, 1897

La Camargo by Enrico De Leva – Turin, March 2, 1898

Anton by Cesare Galeotii – Milan, December 17, 1900

Zaza by Leoncavallo – Milan, November 10, 1900

Le Maschere by Pietro Mascagni – Milan, January 17, 1901

Mosè by Don Lorenzo Perosi – Milan, November 16, 1901

Germania by Alberto Franchetti – Milan, March 11, 1902

Oceana by Antonio Smareglia – Milan, January 22, 1903

Cassandra by Vittorio Gnecchi – Bologna, December 5, 1905

Gloria by Francesco Cilea – Milan, April 15, 1907

La fanciulla del West by Puccini – New York, December 10, 1910

Madame Sans-Gène by Umberto Giordano – New York, January 25, 1915

Debora e Jaele by Ildebrando Pizzetti – Milan, December 16, 1922

Nerone by Arrigo Boito (completed by Toscanini and Vincenzo Tommasini) – Milan, May 1, 1924

La Cena delle Beffe by Giordano – Milan, December 20, 1924

I Cavalieri di Ekebu by Riccardo Zandonai – Milan, March 7, 1925

Turandot by Puccini – Milan, April 25, 1926

Fra Gherado by Pizzetti – Milan, May 16, 1928

Il Re by Giordano – Milan, January 12, 1929

Adagio for Strings and First Essay for Orchestra by Samuel Barber – NBC Symphony Orchestra, New York, November 5, 1938

Western Suite by Elie Siegmeister – NBC Symphony Orchestra, New York, November 1945.

Recorded legacy

Overview

Toscanini made his first recordings in December, 1920 with the La Scala Orchestra in the Trinity Church studio of the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey and his last with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in June, 1954 in Carnegie Hall. His entire catalog of commercial recordings was issued by RCA Victor, save for two single-sided recordings for Brunswick in 1926 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and a series of excellent recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1939 for EMI's HMV label (some issued in the USA by RCA, others released only recently by EMI and Testament). Besides the 1926 recordings with the New York Philharmonic (his first with the electrical process), Toscanini made a series of recordings with them for Victor, in Carnegie Hall, in 1929 and 1936. He also recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra for Victor in Philadelphia's Academy of Music in 1941 and 1942. All of the RCA Victor recordings have been digitally re-mastered and released on CD. There are also recorded concerts with various European orchestras, especially with La Scala Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Hearing Toscanini

In some of his recordings, Toscanini can be heard singing or humming. This is especially true in RCA's recording of La bohème, recorded during broadcast concerts in NBC Studio 8-H in 1946. Tenor Jan Peerce later said that Toscanini's deep involvement in the performances helped him to achieve the necessary emotions, especially in the final moments of the opera when the beloved Mimi (played by Licia Albanese) is dying. During the "Tuba mirum" section of the January 1951 live recording of Verdi's Requiem, Toscanini can be heard on the disc shouting as the brass blares. In his recording of Richard Strauss' Death and Transfiguration, Toscanini sighed loudly near the end of the music; RCA Victor left this in the released recording.

Specialties

He was especially famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Debussy and his own compatriots Rossini, Verdi, Boito and Puccini. He made many recordings, especially towards the end of his career, which are still in print. In addition, there are many recordings available of his broadcast performances, as well as his remarkable rehearsals with the NBC Symphony.

Charles O'Connell on Toscanini

Charles O'Connell, who produced many of Toscanini's RCA Victor recordings in the 1930s and 1940s, said that RCA quickly decided to record the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, whenever possible, after being disappointed with the dull-sounding early recordings in Studio 8-H in 1938 and 1939. (Nevertheless, there were a few recording sessions in Studio 8-H as late as June 1950, probably because of improvements to the acoustics in 1939.) O'Connell, and others, often complained that Toscanini was little interested in recording and, as Harvey Sachs wrote, Toscanini was frequently disappointed that the microphones failed to pick up everything he heard during the recording sessions. O'Connell even complained of Toscanini's failure to cooperate with RCA during the sessions. Toscanini himself was often disappointed that the 78-rpm discs failed to fully capture all of the instruments in the orchestra; those fortunate to attend Toscanini's concerts later said the NBC string section was especially outstanding.

Philadelphia Orchestra recordings

O'Connell also extensively documented RCA's technical problems with the Philadelphia Orchestra recordings of 1941/42, which required extensive electronic editing before they could be released (well after Toscanini's death, beginning in 1963, with the rest following in the 1970s). Harvey Sachs also recounts that the masters were damaged, possibly due to somewhat inferior materials imposed by wartime restrictions. Unfortunately, a Musicians Union recording ban from 1942 to 1944 prevented immediate retakes; by the time the ban ended, the Philadelphia Orchestra had left RCA Victor for Columbia Records and RCA apparently was hesitant to promote the orchestra any further. Eventually, Toscanini recorded all of the same music with the NBC Symphony. In 1968, the Philadelphia Orchestra returned to RCA and the company was more favorable toward issuing all of the discs. As for the historic recordings, even on the CD versions, first released in 1991, some of the sides have considerable surface noise and some distortion, especially during the louder passages. The best sound of the recordings is the Schubert Symphony No. 9 (The "Great"), which had been restored by RCA first (in 1963) and released on LP. The rest of the recordings were not issued until 1977 and, as Sachs noted, by that time some of the masters may have deteriorated further. Nevertheless, despite the occasional problems, the entire set is an impressive document of Toscanini's collaboration with the Philadelphia musicians and can be best heard in the 2006 RCA reissue, which benefit from recent advances in digital restoration. The listener can hear the rich sound of the orchestra, developed by Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, enhanced by the more dynamic and aggressive conducting of the Italian maestro. Ormandy especially expressed his appreciation for what Toscanini achieved with the orchestra.

High fidelity and stereo

In the late 1940s when magnetic tape replaced direct wax disc recording and high fidelity long playing records were introduced, the conductor said he was much happier making recordings. Sachs wrote that an Italian journalist, Raffaele Calzini, said Toscanini told him, "My son Walter sent me the test pressing of the [Beethoven] Ninth from America; I want to hear and check how it came out, and possibly to correct it. These long-playing records often make me happy."

NBC had recorded all of Toscanini's broadcast performances on transcription discs from the start of the broadcasts in 1937. The use of high fidelity sound film was common for recording sessions, as early as 1941. By 1948, when RCA began using magnetic tape on a regular basis, high fidelity became the norm for Toscanini's, and all other commercial recordings. With RCA's experiments in stereo in early 1954, stereo tapes were made of Toscanini's final two broadcast concerts, as well as the rehearsals, as documented by Samuel Antek in This Was Toscanini. The microphones were placed relatively close to the orchestra and with limited separation, so the stereo effects were not as dramatic as the commercial "Living Stereo" recordings which RCA Victor began to make about the same time with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The two Toscanini concerts recorded in stereo have been issued on LP and CD and have also been offered for download in digitally enhanced sound by Pristine Classical, a company which produces digitally enhanced versions of older classical recordings.

One more example of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony in stereo now also exists. It is of the January 27, 1951 concert devoted to the Verdi Requiem, previously recorded and released in high-fidelity monophonic sound by RCA Victor. Recently a separate recording of the same performance, using a different microphone in a different location, was acquired by Pristine Audio. Using modern digital technology the company constructed a stereophonic version of the performance from the two recordings which it made available in 2009. The company calls this an example of "accidental stereo".

Notable recordings

Among his most critically acclaimed recordings are the following (with the NBC Symphony unless otherwise shown):

(Many of these were never released officially during Toscanini's lifetime)

Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" (1953; also 1939 and 1949 recordings)

Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" (1952)

Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 (1936, Philharmonic-Symphony of New York)

Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (1952 and 1938) (only the 1952 recording was released officially)

Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, (1940 NBC broadcast)

Berlioz, Roméo et Juliette (1947 NBC broadcast)

Brahms, Symphony No. 1 (1940)

Brahms, Symphony No. 2 (1952 and February, 1948 broadcast)

Brahms, Symphony No. 4 (1951 and 1948 broadcast)

Brahms, Four Symphonies, Tragic Overture and Haydn Variations, 1952, Philharmonia Orchestra, London (his only appearances with that orchestra, produced by Walter Legge).

Debussy, La mer (1950 and 1940 broadcast)

Dvořák, Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" (1953)

Mendelssohn, Incidental Music from A Midsummer Night's Dream, (NBC 1947, studio and broadcast versions; Philadelphia 1941); Scherzo, New York Philharmonic, (1929)

Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 4 "Italian", (1954, exists in two versions: one as approved by Toscanini with excerpts from the rehearsals, and the unedited broadcast)

Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 5 "Reformation", (1953)

Puccini, La bohème (1946 broadcast)

Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (1937, Salzburg Festival; poor sound)

Schubert, Symphony No. 9 (Philadelphia, 1941; NBC 1947 and 1953)

Tchaikovsky, Piano concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, Vladimir Horowitz and NBC Symphony, (live recording of April 25, 1943 War Bonds benefit concert at Carnegie Hall, first issued in 1959 on LP by RCA Victor)

Verdi, Requiem (1940 NBC broadcast; and 1951 studio recording)

Verdi, Un ballo in maschera (1954 NBC broadcast)

Verdi, Falstaff (1937, Salzburg Festival with restored sound on the Andante label; 1950 NBC broadcast)

Verdi, Rigoletto (Act IV only, 1944; from World War II Red Cross benefit concert held in Madison Square Garden, with the combined forces of the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony; the entire concert, complete with an auctioning of one of Toscanini's batons, was released on an unofficial recording in 1995)

Verdi, Otello (1947 NBC broadcast)

Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1937, Salzburg Festival; original Selenophone sound-on-film recording restored on Andante.)

Rarities

There are many pieces which Toscanini never recorded in the studio; among these, some of the most interesting surviving recordings (off-the-air) include: Meyerbeer Overture to Dinorah (1938, on Testament)

Stravinsky, Suite from Petrushka (1940, on RCA Victor)

Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 "Scottish" (1941, on Testament)

Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 2 (1940, on Testament)

Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad" (1942, on RCA Victor)

Vasily Kalinnikov, Symphony No. 1 (1943, on Testament)

Schumann, Symphony No. 2 (1946, on Testament)

Boito, scenes from Mefistofele and Nerone, La Scala, Milan, 1948 – Boito Memorial Concert.

Mussorgsky, Prelude to Khovanshchina (1953)

Rehearsals and broadcasts

Many hundreds of hours of Toscanini's rehearsals were recorded. Some of these have circulated in limited edition recordings. Many broadcast recordings with orchestras other than the NBC have also survived, including: The New York Philharmonic from 1933–36, 1942, and 1945; The BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1935–1939; The Lucerne Festival Orchestra; and broadcasts from the Salzburg Festival in the late 1930s. Documents of Toscanini's guest appearances with the La Scala Orchestra from 1946 until 1952 include a live recording of Verdi's Requiem with the young Renata Tebaldi. Toscanini's ten NBC Symphony telecasts from 1948 until 1952 were preserved in kinescope films of the live broadcasts. These films, issued by RCA on VHS tape and laser disc and on DVD by Testament, provide unique video documentation of the passionate yet restrained podium technique for which he was well known.

Recording guide

A guide to Toscanini's recording career can be found in Mortimer H. Frank's "From the Pit to the Podium: Toscanini in America" in International Classical Record Collector (1998, 15 8-21) and Christopher Dyment's "Toscanini's European Inheritance" in International Classical Record Collector (1998, 15 22-8). Frank and Dyment also discuss Maestro Toscanini's performance history in the 50th anniversary issue of Classic Record Collector (2006, 47) Frank with 'Toscanini – Myth and Reality' (10–14) and Dyment 'A Whirlwind in London' (15–21) This issue also contains interviews with people who performed with Toscanini – Jon Tolansky 'Licia Albanese – Maestro and Me' (22-6) and 'A Mesmerising Beat: John Tolansky talks to some of those who worked with Arturo Toscanini, to discover some of the secrets of his hold over singers, orchestras and audiences.' (34-7). There is also a feature article on Toscanini's interpretation of Brahms's First Symphony – Norman C. Nelson, 'First Among Equals [...] Toscanini's interpretation of Brahms's First Symphony in the context of others' (28–33)

The Arturo Toscanini Society

In 1969, Clyde J. Key acted on a dream he had of meeting Toscanini by starting the Arturo Toscanini Society to release a number of "unapproved" live performances by Toscanini. As Time Magazine reported, Key scoured the U.S. and Europe for off-the-air transcriptions of Toscanini broadcasts, acquiring almost 5,000 transcriptions (all transferred to tape) of previously unreleased material—a complete catalogue of broadcasts by the Maestro between 1933 and 1954. It included about 50 concerts that were never broadcast, but which were recorded surreptitiously by engineers supposedly testing their equipment.

A private, nonprofit club based in Dumas, Texas, it offered members five or six LPs annually for a $25-a-year membership fee. Key's first package offering included Brahms' German Requiem, Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 88 and 104, and Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, all NBC Symphony broadcasts dating from the late 1930s or early 1940s. In 1970, the Society releases included Sibelius' Symphony No. 4, Mendelssohn's "Scotish" Symphony, dating from the same NBC period; and a Rossini-Verdi-Puccini LP emanating from the post-War reopening of La Scala on May 11, 1946 with the Maestro conducting. That same year it released a Beethoven bicentennial set that included the 1935 Missa Solemnis with the Philharmonic and LPs of the 1948 televised concert of the ninth symphony taken from an FM radio transcription, complete with Ben Grauer's comments. (In the early 1990s, the kinescopes of these and the other televised concerts were released by RCA with soundtracks dubbed in from the NBC radio transcriptions; in 2006, they were re-released by Testament on DVD.)

Additional releases included a number of Beethoven symphonies recorded with the New York Philharmonic during the 1930s, a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 on Feb. 20, 1936, at which Rudolf Serkin made his New York debut, and one of the most celebrated underground Toscanini recordings of all, the legendary 1940 version of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which has better soloists (Zinka Milanov, Jussi Bjoerling, both in their prime) and a more powerful style than the 1953 recording now available on RCA/BMG, although the microphone placement was kinder to the soloists in 1953.

Because the Arturo Toscanini Society was nonprofit, Key said he believed he had successfully bypassed both copyright restrictions and the maze of contractual ties between RCA and the Maestro's family. However, RCA's attorneys were soon looking into the matter to see if they agreed. As long as it stayed small, the Society appeared to offer little real competition to RCA. But classical-LP profits were low enough even in 1970, and piracy by fly-by-night firms so prevalent within the industry (an estimated $100 million in tape sales for 1969 alone), that even a benevolent buccaneer outfit like the Arturo Toscanini Society had to be looked at twice before it could be tolerated.

Magazine and newspaper reports subsequently detailed legal action taken against Key and the Society, presumably after some of the LPs began to appear in retail stores. Toscanini fans and record collectors were dismayed because, although Toscanini had not approved the release of these performances in every case, many of them were found to be further proof of the greatness of the Maestro's musical talents. One outstanding example of a remarkable performance not approved by the Maestro was his December 1948 NBC broadcast of Dvořák's Symphonic Variations, released on an LP by the Society. (A kinescope of the same performance, from the television simulcast, has been released on VHS and laser disc by RCA/BMG and on DVD by Testament.) There was speculation that, the Toscanini family itself, prodded by his daughter Wanda, sought to defend the Maestro's original decisions, made mostly during his last years, on what should be released. Walter Toscanini later admitted that his father probably rejected performances that were okay. Whatever the real reasons, the Arturo Toscanini Society was forced to disband and cease releasing any further recordings.

Television

Arturo Toscanini was one of the first conductors to make extended appearances on live television. Between 1948 and 1952, he conducted ten concerts telecast on NBC, including a two-part concert performance of Verdi's complete opera Aida starring Herva Nelli and Richard Tucker, and the first complete telecast of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. All of these were simulcast on radio. These concerts were all shown only once during that four-year span, but they were preserved on kinescopes.

The telecasts began on March 20, 1948, with an all-Wagner program, including the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin; the overture and bacchanale from Tannhäuser; "Forest Murmurs" from Siegfried; "Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Götterdämmerung; and "The Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walküre. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was telecast on April 3, 1948. On November 13, 1948, there was an all-Brahms program, including the Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra in A minor (Mischa Mischakoff, violin; Frank Miller, cello); Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op. 52 (with two pianists and a small chorus); and Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor. On December 3, 1948, Toscanini conducted Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor; Dvořák's Symphonic Variations; and Wagner's original overture to Tannhäuser.

There were two telecasts in 1949, both devoted to the performance of Verdi's Aida from studio 8H. Acts I and II were telecast on March 26 and III and IV on April 2. Portions of the audio were rerecorded in June 1954 for the commercial release on LP records. As the video shows, the soloists were placed close to Toscanini, in front of the orchestra, while the robed members of the Robert Shaw Chorale were on risers behind the orchestra.

There were no telecasts in 1950, but they resumed from Carnegie Hall on November 3, 1951, with Weber's overture to Euryanthe and Brahms' Symphony No. 1. On December 29, 1951, there was another all-Wagner program that included the two excerpts from Siegfried and Die Walküre featured on the March 1948 telecast, plus the Prelude to Act II of Lohengrin; the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde; and "Siegfried's Death and Funeral Music" from Götterdämmerung.

On March 15, 1952, Toscanini conducted the Symphonic Interlude from Franck's Rédemption; Sibelius's En Saga; Debussy's "Nuages" and "Fetes" from Nocturnes; and the overture of Rossini's William Tell. The final telecast, on March 22, 1952, included Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and Respighi's The Pines of Rome.

The NBC cameras were often left on Toscanini for extended periods, documenting not only his baton techniques but his deep involvement in the music. At the end of a piece, Toscanini generally nodded rather than bowed and exited the stage quickly. Although NBC continued to broadcast the orchestra on radio until April 1954, telecasts were abandoned after March 1952.

As part of a restoration project initiated by the Toscanini family in the late 1980s, the kinescopes were fully restored and issued by RCA on VHS and laser disc beginning in 1989. The audio portion of the sound was taken, not from the noisy kinescopes, but from 33-1/3 rpm 16-inch transcription disc and high fidelity audio tape recordings made simultaneously by RCA technicians during the televised concerts. The hi-fi audio was synchronized with the kinescope video for the home video release. Original introductions by NBC's longtime announcer Ben Grauer were replaced with new commentary by Martin Bookspan. The entire group of Toscanini videos has since been reissued by Testament on DVD, with further improvements to the sound.

Film

In 1943, Toscanini made a 31-minute film for the United States Office of War Information called Hymn of the Nations, directed by Alexander Hammid. It was mostly filmed in NBC's Studio 8-H and consists of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in a performance of Verdi's Overture to La Forza del Destino and Verdi's "Hymn of the Nations" (Inno delle nazioni), which contains national anthems of England, France, and Italy (the World War I allied nations), to which Toscanini added the Soviet "Internationale" and "The Star Spangled Banner". Tenor Jan Peerce and the Westminster Choir performed in the latter work and the film was narrated by Burgess Meredith.

The film was released by RCA/BMG on DVD in 2004. By this time the "Internationale" had been cut from the 1943 film, but the complete "Hymn of the Nations" can still be heard in the audio recording which accompanied the DVD on a CD. Hymn of the Nations was nominated for a 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

is a 1985 documentary made for cable television. The film features archival footage of the conductor and interviews with musicians who worked with him. This film was released on VHS and in 2004 on the same DVD with Hymn of the Nations.

Toscanini is the subject of the 1988 fictionalized biography Il giovane Toscanini (Young Toscanini), starring C. Thomas Howell and Elizabeth Taylor, and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It received scathing reviews and was never officially released in the United States. The film is a fictional recounting of the events that led up to Toscanini making his conducting debut in Rio de Janeiro in 1886. Although nearly all of the plot is embellished, the events surrounding the sudden and unexpected conducting debut are based on fact.

Acclaim and criticism

Throughout his career, Toscanini was virtually idolized by the critics (a notable exception being Virgil Thomson), as well as by most fellow musicians and the public alike. He enjoyed the kind of consistent critical acclaim during his life that few other musicians have had. Toscanini was featured three times on the cover of Time magazine, in 1926, 1934, and again in 1948. In the magazine's history, he is the only conductor to have been so honored. On March 25, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a 25 cent postage stamp in his honor.

Over the past thirty years or so, however, as a new generation has appeared, there has been an increasing amount of revisionist criticism directed at him. These critics contend that Toscanini was ultimately a detriment to American music rather than an asset because of the tremendous marketing of him by RCA as the greatest conductor of all time and his preference to perform mostly older European music. According to Harvey Sachs, Mortimer Frank, and B. H. Haggin, this criticism can be traced to the lack of focus on Toscanini as a conductor rather than his legacy. Frank, in his recent book Toscanini: The NBC Years, rejects this revisionism quite strongly, and cites the author Joseph Horowitz (author of Understanding Toscanini) as perhaps the most extreme of these critics. Frank writes that this revisionism has unfairly influenced younger listeners and critics, who may have not heard as many of Toscanini's performances as older listeners, and as a result, Toscanini's reputation, extraordinarily high in the years that he was active, has suffered a decline. Conversely, Joseph Horowitz contends that those who keep the Toscanini legend alive are members of a "Toscanini cult", an idea not altogether refuted by Frank, but not embraced by him, either.

Some contemporary critics, particularly Virgil Thomson, also took Toscanini to task for not paying enough attention to the "modern repertoire" (i.e., twentieth-century composers). During Toscanini's middle years, however, such now widely accepted composers as Claude Debussy, whose music the conductor held in very high regard, were considered to be radical and modern.

Another criticism leveled at Toscanini stems from the constricted sound quality that comes from many of his recordings, notably those made in NBC's Studio 8-H. Studio 8-H was foremost a radio and later a television studio, not a true concert hall. Its dry acoustics lacking in much reverberation, while ideal for broadcasting, were unsuited for symphonic concerts and opera. However, it is widely believed that Toscanini favored it because its close miking enabled listeners to hear every instrumental strand in the orchestra clearly, something that the conductor strongly believed in.

Toscanini has also been criticized for lack of nuance and metronomic (rhythmically too rigid) performances:

Others state (and there is some evidence from the recordings) that Toscanini's tempos, quite flowing in his earlier recordings, became stricter as he got older, although this is not to be taken as a literally true statement. His 1953 recording of Pictures at an Exhibition, for instance, and his 1950 La Mer, are considered masterpieces by many.

The Toscanini Legacy

In 1986, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts purchased the bulk of Toscanini's papers, scores and sound recordings from his heirs. Named The Toscanini Legacy, this vast collection contains thousands of letters, programs and various documents, over 1,800 scores and more than 400 hours of sound recordings. A finding aids for the scores and sound recordings is available on the library's website. In house finding aids are available for other parts of the collection.

The Library also has many other collections that have Toscanini materials in them, such as the Bruno Walter papers, the Fiorello H. La Guardia papers, and a collection of material from Rose Bampton.

Quotations

Of German composer Richard Strauss, whose political behavior during World War II was arguably very questionable: "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again."

"The conduct of my life has been, is, and will always be the echo and reflection of my conscience."

"Gentlemen, be democrats in life but aristocrats in art."

Referring to the first movement of the Eroica: "To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle. To me it is allegro con brio."

At the point where Puccini left off writing the finale of his unfinished opera, Turandot: "Here Death triumphed over art". (Toscanini then left the opera pit, the lights went up and the audience left in silence.).

Toscanini was invited in the year 1940 to visit a movie set at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios. There he said with tears in his eyes, "I will remember three things in my life: the sunset, the Grand Canyon and Eleanor Powell's dancing."

See also

List of people on the cover of Time magazine (1920s) (see 25 January 1926)

References

;Notes

Seraphim recordings/liner notes

Arturo Toscanini Society recordings

RCA home videos

Further reading

Antek, Samuel (author) and Hupka, Robert (photographs), This Was Toscanini, New York: Vanguard Press, 1963 (consists of a series of essays by one of the NBC Symphony musicians who played under Toscanini, combined with remarkable rehearsal photographs from the latter part of Toscanini's career).

Frank, Mortimer H., Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years, New York: Amadeus Press, 2002. (Re-evaluates favorably several of Toscanini's most strongly criticized performances. Complete list and analysis of NBC symphony performances under Toscanini as well as other conductors.)

Haggin, B. H., Arturo Toscanini: Contemporary Recollections of the Maestro, New York: Da Capo Press, 1989 (reprint of Conversations with Toscanini and The Toscanini Musicians Knew).

Horowitz, Joseph, Understanding Toscanini, New York: Knopf, 1987 (a revisionist treatment, attacking Toscanini's legacy; contains factual errors corrected by Sachs in Reflections on Toscanini).

Marek, George R., Toscanini, New York: Atheneum, 1975. ISBN 0-689-10655-6 (Contains some factual errors corrected by Sachs.)

Marsh, R. C. Toscanini on Records – Part I: High Fidelity Magazine vol 4,1954, pp. 55–58

Marsh Part II: vol 4,1955, pp. 75–81

Marsh Part III: vol 4,1955, pp. 83–91

Matthews, Denis, Arturo Toscanini. New York: Hippocrene, 1982. ISBN 0-88254-657-0 (includes discography)

Meyer, Donald Carl, The NBC Symphony Orchestra. UMI Dissertation Services, 1994.

O'Connell, Charles, The Other Side of the Record. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1947. (Inside view of Toscanini's recordings)

Sachs, Harvey, Toscanini, New York: Prima Publishing, 1995. (Reprint of standard and best biography originally published 1978.)

Harvey Sachs, Reflections on Toscanini, New York: Prima Publishing, 1993. (Series of essays on various aspects of Toscanini's life and impact.)

Harvey Sachs|, ed., The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, New York: Knopf, 2003.

Howard Taubman, The Maestro: The Life of Arturo Toscanini, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951 (contains factual errors corrected by Haggin and Sachs).

Teachout, Terry, Toscanini Lives, Commentary Magazine, July/August 2002

External links

Arturo Toscanini official website

Toscanini's reforms at La Scala

Toscanini and the History of the NBC Symphony plus Live WWII broadcast

NPR special on the selection of the 1938 radio broadcast of Toscanini conducting the NBC Orchestra to the 2005 National Recording Registry

Category:1867 births Category:1957 deaths Category:People from Parma Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Italian classical cellists Category:Italian conductors (music) Category:Music directors (opera) Category:Italian Life Senators Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society