{"id":17098,"date":"2021-11-15T05:44:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T10:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/?p=10426"},"modified":"2025-11-24T11:19:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T16:19:31","slug":"nov15-nov21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/2021\/11\/nov15-nov21\/","title":{"rendered":"November 15th-21st: Rochester American Opera Co. debut & more"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1727888915608{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]Published on Nov 15th, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n

Back to This Week at Eastman<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1632153252687{background-color: #f4f4f4 !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1727888859903{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”1924: Public debut of the Rochester American Opera Company” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1636644841124{border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;border-left-color: #dddddd !important;border-left-style: solid !important;border-right-color: #dddddd !important;border-right-style: solid !important;border-top-color: #dddddd !important;border-top-style: solid !important;border-bottom-color: #dddddd !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;border-radius: 1px !important;}”][vc_row_inner content_placement=”top”][vc_column_inner width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1727889677404{padding-top: 20px !important;}”]A previous entry in \u201cThis Week at Eastman\u201d (week of November 1st\/7th) drew attention to the Rochester American Opera Company, a fledgling troupe that was founded within the walls of the Eastman School of Music. \u00a0Ninety-seven years ago this week, on November 20th, 1924, the Rochester American Opera Company made its public debut with a Mussorgsky\/Leoncavallo double bill in the Eastman Theater, specifically, two acts from Boris Godunov <\/em>and then I Pagliacci<\/em> (in its entirety). That initial public performance represented the culmination of one year\u2019s strenuous training on the part of the company\u2019s members. It also represented the realization of a dream of the company\u2019s founder-director, Vladimir Rosing, a Russian-born tenor and operatic director. \u00a0In chronological time, the endeavor would last six seasons, from 1924\/25 through 1929\/1930. \u00a0The story is an enthralling one, for while the sources are limited, they do give us to understand something of the spirit of innovation and experimentation that flourished in and around the Eastman School in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

It had been Rosing\u2019s dream when first meeting George Eastman to launch a native American opera company in the United States. To summarize, twelve singers would be awarded scholarships for 1923-24; those twelve would constitute a corps of artists in training who would eventually populate an opera repertory company. The class of twelve singers was soon expanded when in 1924 the Eastman School announced that four additional scholarships would be awarded. Plans for the 1924-25 season included production of three complete operas, together with the continuing presentation of scenes. Finally, in November, 1924 the Eastman School announced the formation of the Rochester American Opera Company, to be directed by Rosing, who maintained that the company\u2019s chief aim was that it should be a truly American<\/em> opera company, striving to bring opera to a wider segment of the U.S. public. To that end, the company would be comprised exclusively of American singers, and all performances would be sung in English.<\/p>\n

Rosing defended English-language operatic performance in a 1926 interview. \u201cAmerica will never develop a great operatic public until we have companies, both touring and resident, carrying opera in the native tongue to all sections of the country . . . It is proper and fitting that we have great international companies singing opera in the original tongue, but it is equally important if we are to develop a large public for this form of stage entertainment, that the people have an opportunity to hear the master works sung in their own language.\u201d Elaborating also on his ideas of production, he said: \u201cWe have developed a company in which we have tried to avoid the \u2018star system.\u2019 An artist may have a leading role one week and a minor part the next, as it is in the Moscow Art Theater. Principals are selected for their dramatic as well as their vocal fitness. I believe that the dramatic side should receive as much attention as the musical side in the performance of opera. The principals of the cast should make characters of their roles; the chorus should be as adequate in dramatic action as the principals, rhythmic action to music should constantly accompany the singing. Action and music should be synchronized to give both their greatest value.\u201d\u00a0 (Rosing was quoted in the article \u201cRosing staunch ally of operas sung in English,\u201d Rochester Democrat and Chronicle,<\/em> June 27, 1926.)<\/p>\n

A further hallmark of the company would be the promotion of Rosing\u2019s concept of op\u00e9ra intime,<\/em> a style of operatic production characterized by simplification: opera staged in smaller theaters with reduced orchestra, simplified scenery, and without the operatic chorus, but with the dramatic aspect of the roles given equal attention with the vocal performance. Rosing had developed the concept during his years in London, England, where he had directed an opera troupe formally known as Op\u00e9ra Intime. Finally, some lines that could very well serve as the company\u2019s mission statement were published in Musical America,<\/em> in the issue of March 19th, 1927: \u201cIt is Mr. Rosing\u2019s contention that the dramatic side of opera should be stressed as well as the lyrical, and effort has been made to create a group of \u2018singing actors\u2019 who could present standard operas in English, well sung and well acted, and produced with economies that bring the admission prices within the grasp of the average theater-goer. It is no part of the Rochester Company\u2019s plan to attempt competition or to invite comparison with established organizations and their artists of international fame, but to try to reach a new public which has hitherto found opera too expensive a form of stage entertainment and which is indifferent to it when sung in a foreign tongue.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was more or less a definite shape to the company\u2019s crest and turns of fortune. Following its public debut in November, 1924, the company scored several local successes over the next two seasons. Rosing then gave up his executive work running the school\u2019s opera department so as to concentrate full-time on direction and production. The company launched out on tour in both the U.S. and Canada, and in 1927 turned fully professional with the financial assistance of several backers, severing its administrative connections with the Eastman School and re-forming itself under the name the American Opera Company in its aspiration to become a truly national organization. The company\u2019s headquarters were re-located to Chicago. Over the next three seasons, the company scored yet new milestones; funding was sought for independent status; there were inter-company marriages; and most notably, the company performed before the President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge during a Washington, D.C. engagement.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1727889702201{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_images_carousel images=”10628,10634,10635,10629,10631″ img_size=”350×500″ css=”.vc_custom_1727889796693{margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=””]\u25baPrinted program and ticket stub. Local History Reference file.[\/vc_column_text][vc_media_grid style=”pagination” items_per_page=”1″ element_width=”12″ arrows_design=”vc_arrow-icon-arrow_12_left” arrows_color=”white” loop=”yes” item=”masonryMedia_SlideWithTitleAndCaption” css=”.vc_custom_1727889811577{margin-top: 10px !important;}” grid_id=”vc_gid:1764001119638-baec4b36-52b8-8″ include=”10640,10642,10645,10648,10637″][vc_column_text css=””]\u25ba Press articles. Rochester Scrapbooks.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner content_placement=”top”][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text css=””]However, as history has recorded, the decade of the Roaring Twenties came to a crashing end (no pun intended) with the Great Crash on October 29, 1929 (known ever since as Black Thursday). The ensuing Great Depression left no aspect of American life untouched, and the Depression was to account for the beginning of the company\u2019s end. As was reported in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle<\/em> (\u201cAmerica Opera to skip year\u201d) on June 26, 1930, \u201cUncertain conditions in the musical field have persuaded the management of the American Opera Company to abandon plans for a tour next season, and the company will mark time until the season of 1931-32.\u201d Citing a decline in subscriptions in a number of cities, the producers believed that a year\u2019s lay-off would save money and would permit the company to begin the following season on a stronger financial footing. \u201cIf the ensemble can be held together, if its influential friends can be kept interested and, most of all, if public demand returns to former levels, the company should have its best years ahead of it.\u201d As things would turn out, those confident words were not borne out by reality, for a return to the stage did not materialize. The company was finished.<\/p>\n

What to make of this opera company and its six seasons? What to make of Vladimir Rosing and his vision or his ambitions? The Rochester American Opera Company \u00a0was perhaps a natural product of the ethos of the time: the confidence, exuberance, and innovation of the Roaring Twenties and the jazz age, at a time when the USA had only recently been tested at war and had seen its industrial might increase exponentially in going to the aid of war-torn Europe. It was a time when risks could be taken. Paul Horgan, one of the company\u2019s original members and later a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, summed up some of that ethos in a piece in Harper\u2019s Magazine:<\/em> \u201cThe American time was very happy for a renaissance. It was in the early half of the twenties. We were getting over the War and were still sensitive enough to use our imaginations. The arts seemed to be a happy outlet for that future civilization we were going to have, in which there would be no more killing and exhausting of a whole race. The first step towards the new Golden Age was culture, and instant <\/em>culture. It was the time of Babbitt, and everyone remembers Babbitt\u2019s most charming trait, which was his receptivity to proposals that involved doing some new and honorable and hopeful with money.\u201d \u00a0All in all, it was an interesting time and an interesting endeavor.\u00a0 Perhaps the most fitting way to remember the Rochester American Opera Company is in the words of Quaintance Eaton in a feature article in Opera News <\/em>(1971):\u00a0 \u201cRosing and his American Opera Company were, it seems way ahead of their time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A word about the sources <\/em><\/p>\n

The challenge in recounting the story is the dearth of sources. All of the principals are deceased, and few of them published accounts of their own, nor left any personal papers that can be studied. The Eastman School retained basically none of its administrative papers of the 1920s, thereby accounting for a large gap in the archival record. No recordings nor films of the company\u2019s activity are known to be extant.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the many contemporaneous press accounts that are preserved in the Sibley Music Library\u2019s sequence of Rochester Scrapbooks, as well as the more comprehensive microfilm holdings at Rochester Public Library, constitute a rich source of reporting. The journal Musical America <\/em>carried news of Rosing\u2019s company from its earliest days, occasionally publishing photographs to supplement its reporting. In 2016, the Sibley Music Library received the gift of the Maria Silveira Reep Collection, which for the first time brought photographic documentation of the company into RTWSC; previously, press reportage and a 1925 cast photo of Carmen <\/em>had been the only photographic holdings.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”top” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1727889851594{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_media_grid style=”pagination” items_per_page=”1″ element_width=”12″ arrows_design=”vc_arrow-icon-arrow_12_left” arrows_color=”white” loop=”yes” item=”masonryMedia_SlideWithTitleAndCaption” css=”” grid_id=”vc_gid:1764001119639-1da5c1d3-c838-2″ include=”10657,10658,10660″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1727889862242{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_media_grid style=”pagination” items_per_page=”1″ element_width=”12″ arrows_design=”vc_arrow-icon-arrow_12_left” arrows_color=”white” loop=”yes” item=”masonryMedia_SlideWithTitleAndCaption” css=”.vc_custom_1727889313469{margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}” grid_id=”vc_gid:1764001119639-129dda15-4285-1″ include=”10649,10650,10653,10654″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1636983807207{margin-top: -20px !important;margin-left: 5px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;}”]<\/p>\n

\u25baPhotos. The Maria Silveira Reep Collection.<\/p>\n

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Sixty years ago this week, on November 17th<\/sup>, 1961, \u00a0the Eastman Wind Ensemble gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, its very first engagement in that august venue.\u00a0 Since then the Wind Ensemble had performed on numerous occasions in New York City.\u00a0 In the fall of 1961 the Wind Ensemble had just begun its tenth season and had been particularly active making commercial recordings on the Mercury Records label.\u00a0 Altogether, there would be nearly two dozen separate recordings by the time Frederick Fennell completed his ten years as director of the EWE.<\/p>\n

The Carnegie Hall program represented tried and test repertory, for all of the works on the program with the sole exception of the Pineapple Poll <\/em>music by Arthur Sullivan had been recorded by the EWE for Mercury.\u00a0 (While not yet having recorded the Sullivan, the Wind Ensemble had previously performed it twice.)\u00a0 The concert was favorably reviewed in the pages of The New York Times. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The programming of Lincolnshire Posy <\/em>was especially significant, given that it was one of Frederick Fennell\u2019s heartfelt favorite works to conduct, and also given that he had met the composer personally and whom he held in very high esteem.\u00a0 Maestro Fennell\u2019s conducting score of Lincolnshire Posy <\/em>is copiously marked up and annotated in the typical Fennell manner; the score\u2019s first page of music is displayed here.<\/p>\n

1961-62 would be Maestro Fennell\u2019s last season as EWE conductor, and building on its first decade of success, the Wind Ensemble would go on to many more milestones both at home and around the world.\u00a0 The story of EWE achievement will be tracked in \u201cThis Week at Eastman\u201d as the Eastman Centennial year marches forward.<\/p>\n

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Printed program. Rochester Scrapbooks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Page one of Frederick Fennell Lincolnshire Posy Score .<\/span><\/p>\n

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Two reviews of Eastman Wind Ensemble concert at Carnegie Hall<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fifty-nine years ago this week, on November 16th, 1962, the Eastman Philharmonia gave a concert in Carnegie Hall, following exactly one year after the Eastman Wind Ensemble\u2019s first Carnegie Hall performance.\u00a0 The Eastman Philharmonia was just then in its fifth season, having been founded by Hanson in 1958, and was scoring one success after another. Already in the first season Hanson had taken the orchestra on run-outs to Atlantic City and to Buffalo. In the spring of 1961 the orchestra had performed in Washington, D.C., and in the winter of 1961-62, the orchestra had undertaken its landmark European tour. Before Hanson\u2019s retirement, he would take the Eastman Philharmonia out of town once more, to an engagement at the 1964 New York World\u2019s Fair.<\/p>\n

For the Carnegie Hall concert Hanson had chosen a program of music almost entirely by Eastman School alumni composers. Two of the composers\u2014Robert Ward and John La Montaine\u2014were represented by works which had been recognized with the Pulitzer Prize. The most substantive work on the program, from the standpoint of duration, was Mr. La Montaine\u2019s \u00a0Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, opus 9. The work had been commissioned by the American Music Center for the National Symphony Orchestra under a grant from the Ford Foundation. \u00a0This Concerto ultimately proved to be the composer\u2019s first of four concertos for piano and orchestra. Mr. La Montaine was a gifted pianist in his own right; in 1965 he would return to Eastman as soloist in the Concerto at the Eastman School\u2019s annual Festival of American Music.\u00a0 When Mr. La Montaine had won the Pulitzer Prize for the Concerto in 1959, he had been the Eastman School\u2019s second composer-graduate to have been so honored.\u00a0 For the record, the Eastman School\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning composer-graduates have been the following:<\/p>\n