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[Adrien ]

( b Bayonne, France, June 7, 1828; d Asnières-sur-Seine, France, Aug 13, 1898). French composer, pianist, and teacher . After studying with Leborne, he won the Prix de Rome in 1854. The music section of the Académie praised his envoi, the French opera Don Carlos (1857), for its craftsmanship, fine orchestration, and strong sense of the stage, and in 1858 they awarded him the Prix Édouard Rodrigues for his oratorio Judith, over the only other competitor, Bizet. That year Barthe married mezzo-soprano Anna Banderali.

The Théâtre-Lyrique opened a competition in 1864 on Jules Adenis’s libretto La fiancée d’Abydos, for Prix de Rome winners whose work had not yet reached the stage. Barthe was the unanimous choice of the jury, above Émile Paladilhe and three others. Extensive changes were made during rehearsal and the première took place on 30 December 1865. Critics were largely positive, though they noted resemblances to Meyerbeer, Félicien David, Gounod, and others, and found the libretto somewhat tedious. After a respectable 21 performances (in Paris and Bayonne) the work disappeared from the repertory....

(b Lancaster, pa, March 25, 1935). Canadian composer. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music with William Bergsma, Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin and at Harvard University with Leon Kirchner and Roger Sessions. In the 1960s he also studied with Milhaud, Wolpe and Cage. From 1976 to 1980 he taught theory and composition at the University of Western Ontario, then served as Dean of the Faculty of Music (1980–86). He has also had an active performing career as pianist and conductor. His comic opera The Lay of Thrym was written for the Canadian Centennial Commission for Festival Canada and celebrates the Scandinavian origins of a sizeable section of the Canadian population. The libretto, by C. Keith Cockburn, is based on a poem from the Icelandic Elder Edda; Behrens carried out research into Viking literature, art and music in Iceland and Scandinavia in 1965 before composing the opera, which received its première on ...

(Thomas )

(b Athol, ma , Jan 6, 1916; d Hadley, ma , March 11, 1975). American composer . He studied at Yale University and with Philip Clapp at the University of Iowa, where he joined the faculty in 1947 and succeeded Clapp as principal professor of composition in 1954. Ten years later he moved to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he served as professor and head of the music department. Bezanson’s honours include an award from the Fromm Foundation (1953) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1971). His works fall within the mainstream of 20th-century music in the generation after Stravinsky, Bartók and Hindemith. The style is rooted in diatonicism but has frequently changing scales and tonal centres; shifting major and minor 3rds are common. Standard metres, often irregularly accented, predominate. Besides choral, orchestral and chamber music he composed two operas: Western Child (3, P. Engle), first performed at the State University of Iowa (Iowa City) on ...

(b Oberlin, oh, Nov 2, 1883; d San Luis Obispo, ca, March 9, 1972). American composer. After completing basic studies in Oberlin and Denver, he received the bachelor’s degree in music at Pomona College, Claremont, California, in 1908. In 1916 he joined the music faculty at Chaffey College, Ontario, California, where he remained until his retirement in 1954. Blakeslee’s only opera, The Legend of Wiwaste [Wewahste], based on a Dakota Sioux legend dealing with tribal customs of betrothal and marriage before the coming of the white man, is cast in late 19th-century Romantic style and reflects in its large orchestral resources the influence of Puccini and Wagner. It also embodies many characteristics of American Indian music: Indian melodies, rhythmic figures inspired by Indian drumming patterns, choruses in parallel octaves, pentatonic scales and orchestral accompaniment in open 4ths and 5ths. First performed in Ontario, California, on 25 April 1924...

(b Berdychiv [Yiddish: Berdichev], Ukraine, April 20, 1881; d Chicago, Nov 24, 1955). American composer born in present-day Ukraine. Bucharoff, who was born Simon Buchhalter, was the son of a Jewish cantor, and his brother, Isadore Buchhalter, also enjoyed a successful career as a pianist and educator in the Chicago area. Bucharoff’s personal papers indicate he was singing in choirs at the age of four or five, and that his family immigrated to the United States when he was 11, settling in New York. There, he studied piano with Paolo Gallico and Leopold Kramer. He later traveled to Europe and studied composition with Stephen Stocker and Robert Fuchs, and piano with Emil Sauer and Julius Epstein at the Vienna Conservatory. Bucharoff joined the faculty of the Wichita (Kansas) College of Music in 1907, and quickly became a respected artist in the area.

Bucharoff relocated to Chicago in the early to mid-1910s. Thereafter, his career focussed more closely on composition than piano performance. He secured the patronage of future Vice President of the United States Charles G. Dawes, and obtained a hearing of his first opera, ...

(b Rome; d ?London, after 1741). Italian teacher of languages and editor of librettos . He was in London by 1723, when he published A New Method for the Italian Tongue: or, a Short Way to Learn It. Its title-page identifies him as ‘a Roman, Master of the Latin, Spanish and Italian Languages; living at Mr. Wallis’s in Lisle-Street, near Leicester-Fields’, and its list of subscribers includes Ariosti, Bononcini, Geminiani, J. J. Heidegger and John Rich, the poet Paolo Antonio Rolli and many diplomats (including Riva of Modena). Rolli refers to Cori as Padre or Fra ‘Ciro’ in five extant epigrams and declares that he was defrocked and became a freemason. Rolli also describes him and the aged ‘Roscio’ (Giacomo Rossi) as teachers of Mongolese Italian who exercised their poetic ability where the ‘cembalo alemanno’ (‘German harpsichord’) had banished good sense. Cori as well as Rossi may thus have adapted texts for Handel in the 1730s....

(b Montpellier, Aug 19, 1742; d Tours, Feb 14, 1806). French dancer, teacher and choreographer . He danced in Lyons in 1757 under Noverre, who described his pupil as a joyful and dramatically expressive dancer. Within two years Dauberval was ballet-master for the Turin opera house. In 1761 he made a successful début at the Paris Opéra in Rameau’s Zaïs. He performed under Noverre in Stuttgart, 1762–4, appeared at the Haymarket, London, in 1764 and returned in 1766 to the Opéra, where he was appointed assistant ballet-master in 1770. He danced in many revivals of works by Lully and Rameau, and in the premières of Dauvergne’s Polyxène (1763), Louis Granier’s Théonis (1767), P.-M. Berton and J. B. de La Borde’s Adèle de Ponthieu (1772) and Gossec’s Sabinus (2nd version; 1774). From 1781 to 1783 he shared the title of ballet-master with Maximilien Gardel; he was ousted as a result of political intrigues....

(b Meridian, NC, Feb 14, 1894; d Washington, DC, March 19, 1962). American opera director and teacher. She studied at the New England Conservatory and the Chicago Musical College. In 1927 she founded the Cardwell School of Music in Pittsburgh. She later established the Cardwell Dawson Choir, which won prizes at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago (1933–4) and the New York World’s Fair (1939–40). In 1941 she produced Aïda for the meeting in Pittsburgh of the National Association of Negro Musicians (of which she was then president). Her production led to the establishment of the National Negro Opera Company. The group’s official debut (in another performance of Aïda) took place at the Syrian Mosque in Pittsburgh on 30 October 1941. In 1942 the company moved from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC. Over the next 21 years it performed a repertory that, in addition to ...

(b Vamberk, eastern Bohemia, June 8, 1928; d Prague, March 23, 2000). Czech composer and teacher . He studied at the Prague Conservatory (1943–7) and at the Prague Academy (1949–53), where his composition teachers were Jaroslav Řídký and Václav Dobiáš. From 1953 he worked at the academy, at first as secretary to the composition department and then as lecturer in composition theory. He has progressed from a romantic, folkloric style to a dodecaphony that is only exceptionally atonal. His opera Ostrov Afrodity (‘The Island of Aphrodite’, 1967), for which he wrote his own libretto (after A. Parnis), was performed in Dresden in 1971. This work, inspired by the struggle for independence and social justice in Cyprus in 1955, reveals a wide range of stylistic influences. Its fluid recitative gives the music a somewhat cinematic, sub-pictorial quality.

(b Vera de Bidasoa, Navarre, April 4, 1895; d San Sebastian, May 1976). Spanish.tenor . He studied at the Parma Conservatory and in 1920 made his début at Madrid in Samson et Dalila, subsequently creating a strong impression in the world première of Guridi’s Amaya at Bilbao. His first Wagnerian role was Siegmund in ...

( fl Florence, 1661–96). Italian bass and singing teacher . His first role was Charon in Jacopo Melani’s Ercole in Tebe, the wedding opera performed at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence, for Marguerite d’Orléans and Cosimo de’ Medici (1661). He is listed among the musici ordinari of the grand–ducal court in the second half of the 17th century. He sang in the operas mounted by the Grand Prince Ferdinando de’Medici at Pratolino, taking the role of Coridone Bifolco in B. Cerri’s Con la forza d’amore (1679) and Graticcio in Alessandro Melani’s Il finto chimico (1686). He also sang in Ferdinando’s wedding opera, Pagliardi’s Il greco in Troia (1689). As a bass, he specialized in comic roles. His fame as a teacher prompted Johann Wilhelm of Bavaria to send his chamber singer, Andrea Fischer, to Florence to study in the ‘Scuola del rinomato Fusai’, and it may be presumed that his school contributed to the training of the flourishing school of singers patronized by Ferdinando de’ Medici....

(b Haddonfield, nj, March 22, 1927). American composer. She studied the piano privately and taught it at the Philadelphia Musical Academy from 1953. She was married to the composer Romeo Cascarino, from whom she learnt orchestration, and began composing about 1962. Her first opera was commissioned by a suburban Philadelphia ensemble in 1965. The modest success of The Trojan Women spurred further commissions and Garwood gradually became known as an opera composer.

At this stage she studied composition formally with Miriam Gideon, taking the master’s degree at the Philadelphia Musical Academy in 1975; by then she had produced two operas and begun work on a third. Garwood was appointed to the piano faculty of Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania) in 1978, and there wrote Rappaccini’s Daughter, her best-known composition, completing it in 1983 after nearly a decade of work. In 1984 she left Muhlenberg College to devote all her time to composition....

[Hollier ]

(b Berkeley, ca , Aug 27, 1924; d Rocklin, ca , Oct 29, 2003). American composer . He studied with Milhaud at Mills College and with Menotti at the Curtis Institute, where he taught composition and assisted Menotti. He was a musical director for the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in 1960. After teaching at San Jose College (1961–3), he joined the faculty of Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, where he became professor of music and composer-in-residence. His first opera, The Mother (1954), commissioned by the Curtis Institute and first performed there is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale about a mother who makes an arduous journey to rescue her child from Death. Hollingsworth was the youngest composer of his time to write an opera for American national television, La grande Bretèche (NBC, 1957). A popular trilogy was formed when his children’s operas The Selfish Giant...

(Welsh )

(b New York, April 6, 1921; d Berkeley, CA, Dec 5, 2007). American composer . He studied composition with Roger Sessions (1937–47), and received the BA at Princeton University (1942). After serving in the US Army (1942–6), he continued his studies with Sessions at the University of California at Berkeley (MA 1947). He joined the faculty of Berkeley two years later, and taught there for over 40 years. He was also appointed chairman of the composition department at the San Francisco Conservatory and visiting professor of composition at Brandeis. As a composer, he received numerous honours and awards, including two Guggenheim fellowships, the Brandeis University Creative Arts Medal, and election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He wrote influential analytical and theoretical articles, especially on the music of Sessions and on meter and accent in Beethoven.

Imbrie’s work embodies a sophisticated post-tonal idiom, a preoccupation with contrapuntal textures and an abiding fascination with subtle phrasing details and coherent large forms. He wrote two operas: the first, ...

(b Vienna, Aug 28, 1901; d Toronto, Jan 10, 1994). Canadian soprano . She studied at the Neues Konservatorium in Vienna with Victor Fuchs. Her début was in Teplice in 1930 as Elsa in Lohengrin, after which she appeared in Brno, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Munich, Philadelphia, Prague and San Francisco. In ...

(b Harrisburg, PA, March 2, 1921; d Westport, CT, Sept 16, 2017). American singing actress, producer, stage director, and teacher. Possessing a wide range of performing skills, she was known for undertaking challenging operatic roles such as Birdie and Regina in Mark Blitzstein’s Regina (1949, 1953, and 1958) and Lizzie in Jack Beeson’s Lizzie Borden (1965). She worked on Broadway, in light opera, on radio and television, and at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Lewis attended Penn State University and was encouraged by its Glee Club director to audition for a scholarship at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she went on to study with Emilio de Gogorza. After her teacher suddenly left the Institute, Lewis auditioned and made her debut with the Philadelphia Opera Company at the age of 19 in the role of the Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. A remarkably quick study, Lewis absorbed music and words in any language almost on the spot, a gift to which she attributed most of her early success. In ...

(b New York, April 21, 1880; d New York, Sept 25, 1970). American soprano and teacher. Trained in Paris by Mathilde Marchesi and in Berlin by Selma Nicklass-Kempner, she made her début at the Dresden Hofoper in the title role of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the age of 18. She then sang with the Stuttgart Opera and at the Opéra-Comique, and appeared three times at the Metropolitan Opera (...

(b Sioux City, sd, Dec 13, 1889; d Aptos, ca, July 3, 1965). American composer. As a child he studied the piano and music theory with T. C. Tjaden. At the American Conservatory in Chicago he studied the piano with Heniot Levy and composition with Adolph Weidig. In 1914 he joined the theory and composition faculty of the conservatory, remaining there until 1929. While on leave in Vienna in 1918–19 he studied the piano with Leopold Godowsky and composition with Franz Schreker. Loomis subsequently taught in the USA from 1929 to 1956. A prolific composer, he wrote exclusively in a tonal, chromatic idiom. Chiefly interested in opera, he sought consciously to subordinate the music to the text, which led him to eschew virtuosity in both vocal and instrumental writing. His operas make use of American material, notably poems of Edgar Allan Poe and melodies by Stephen Foster. Yolanda of Cyprus...

(b West Hartlepool, Sept 11, 1908; d Bath, Sept 20, 1981). English writer on music . He studied at the RCM, London, and lectured at Morley College (1934–9) before being appointed head of the music department of Goldsmiths’ College, London in 1945; he retired in 1969. He wrote a sympathetic study of Bellini in the Master Musicians series (London, ...

(b Brno, May 27, 1884; d Vienna, Dec 20, 1957). German stage designer and teacher. The son of a well-known painter, he studied art and architecture in Vienna, then taught drawing in a secondary school. He opened an architect’s studio in Munich (1908) and a school of stage and graphic design (1913). In 1918 he designed Pfitzner’s Das Christ-Elflein and Christian Grabbe’s play Hannibal for the Munich Staatstheater and in 1919 Schiller’s Maria Stuart, the first of many productions for the Berlin Staatstheater. With the leading expressionist director Leopold Jessner (1878–1945), director of the Staatstheater from 1919 to 1930, he began one of the theatre’s most famous artistic collaborations. Influenced by Adolphe Appia’s concept of ‘rhythmic space’, he constructed for each of his productions ‘an architecture that adapted to the rhythm of the action’. He conceived the idea of the ‘Jessnertreppe’ that ‘make the stage breathe and render it expressive’....