Florence Louise Pettitt
Encyclopedia
Louise Pettitt born Florence Louise Staples, was one of the first American
female opera
conductors
. For over forty years, she simultaneously served as orchestral conductor, dramatic director, and vocal director for the Chaminade Opera Group, which she founded in 1959. She promoted the growth of opera, and the advancement of many performers ranging from amateur enthusiasts to internationally known professionals.
in 1918.
Her father—Charles Albert Staples—was a classical cellist who played in various New England
orchestras. He took Louise to countless rehearsals during her childhood. The two also performed in local theaters.
She was a high school valedictorian and mastered the cello, like her father.
She was lucky to come from a school with a very strong music program. Opera star Robert Rounseville
and BSO violinist Sheldon Rotenberg were taught by her music teacher. Rounseville came back to honor and commemorate this teacher years later, in 1953, after making the internationally renowned film version of the "Tales of Hoffman".
Even in high school, Louise Pettitt was promoting opera. She and her close friend, violinist Sheldon Rotenberg, tried to create an opera club at their school.
This enthusiasm for opera never left her.
As a young woman she shifted from cello to classical singing, and sought the best training available in Boston
, New York
, and Providence, Rhode Island
.
She trained with Gladys Childs Miller
in Boston, Massachusetts, at the New England Conservatory from 1939 to 1941. Several of Miller's students went on to sing for the Vienna
, Paris, and New York Metropolitan opera companies. One of them, Lillian Johnson, also came to sing for Louise in the Chaminade Opera Group. Louise also received instruction from Margaret Armstrong Gow of the Harvard Musical Association
, Gertrude Erhardt, and others. She gradually became a leading soprano
in the Boston area.
She sang professionally for many of Greater Boston's better known churches. One of her most prominent recurring performances was the regular weekly recital at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
. She later also sang at Tanglewood
in the summers. And eventually, she became a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing
.
Although she devoted more hours over her long life to the production of opera than to her own singing career, and though she was eventually better known as a teacher and director, she always considered herself to be a singer, and continued to give solo vocal performances into the 1970s. During her many years of opera work, she devoted time in every week to her voice students, and she continued to sing, generally in support of Chaminade.
She also gradually gained some stage and drama experience in small local theatrical productions, and Gilbert and Sullivan; but in Massachusetts in the thirties and forties, there were few opportunities for young performers to try their hand at serious, fully staged opera.
The only fully staged operas in Boston then were generally done by New York's Met on tour at the Huntington Avenue site. Opera "scenes" were done at NEC by Goldovsky and others in Jordan Hall. There were very few opera companies in existence then, compared to the 1970s.
When Louise was finishing her studies at New England Conservatory in 1941, "..opera was then in eclipse...".
Goldovsky, when he arrived in 1942, found the opera situation in Boston "dormant". At Tanglewood, "the war shut down opera and nearly everything else..," though Goldovsky predicted "a growth in operatic productions similar to the great recent
growth in symphonic performances and numbers of orchestras."
Louise performed in small theatre, opera scenes, and light opera nonetheless.
One of her earliest acting credits was a minor local production called Aunt Emma Sees It Through ( performed January 24, 1936 ).
When the faculty of Wheaton College
( Norton, Massachusetts ) formed its own Gilbert and Sullivan troupe in 1945, she became a perennial female lead for about 15 years, and never left the group.
Her later ability to conduct opera was most likely complemented and improved by her concurrent responsibility as conductor/director for that group, beginning in 1961.
She played soprano roles in other Gilbert and Sullivan
productions in eastern Massachusetts in the 40s and 50s. She and her husband performed a consistent repertoire of G & S scenes professionally for various civic women's clubs (Foxboro, Framingham, Boston, etc ) under contract to "Flora Frame" of Boston in the 1950s and early 1960s.
She gave regular solo performances of arias in Boston
and elsewhere. She performed in many area churches and other venues as a classical soloist in oratorios, light opera, and mixed programs. She sang at Old South Church, Trinity, St Paul's and many others.
This experience, along with her classical musicianship and vocal training prepared her for her eventual role as opera conductor.
When interest in opera grew in the late 1950s, her experience enabled her to make a vital, pioneering contribution.
The New England Conservatory had always been the backbone of local Boston opera companies in the twentieth century. But in the 1930s, the conservatory had great difficulty even maintaining a teaching schedule in opera. Wallace Goodrich tried in 1936 to create a school of opera there without success.
When Louise was in attendance at NEC ( 1939–1941 ), Goodrich was still trying to put together a program. Goodrich won approval to hire a conductor from London's famous Covent Garden in 1940, but this was a far cry from the robust opera department that he conceived. When Goldovsky was hired there in 1942 he was only paid $2,500 for the entire year and told to work part time. Fortunately for him, he was able to supplement his income as of 1946 by becoming "Mr. Opera," the voice that was broadcast every Saturday afternoon nationwide from New York by Texaco.
By hiring Goldovsky in 1942, upon the recommendation of Koussevitsky, Goodrich laid the foundations for the renaissance that bore fruit over the next 50 years. But the 40s and 50s were still lean years compared to the 60s and onward.
The gas rationing of 1943 reduced Tanglewood to a simple red cross benefit concert in the Lennox public library, but this wasn't the entire reason for the leanness of opera in those years.
Public demand for opera seems to have been historically low in Boston in this period. The Metropolitan Opera cancelled it's 1947 tour of Boston completely, and Goldovsky's company was the only local replacement available. During the war, NEC's "Popular Music Program" ( which focussed on the composition and arrangement of big band swing music ) garnered far more tuition revenue than opera instruction.
The Boston Opera House
that had been built by Parkman Haven and Eben Jordan (who also built nearby NEC
's Jordan Hall
, Symphony Hall
, and other great Boston buildings) on Boston's celebrated Culture Way was gradually lost to Boston's opera lovers over the years.
By the time Goldovsky and Koussevitsky were reinvigorating Boston high culture in the forties, the building had fallen into the hands of a theatre chain who saw no profit in its original purpose.
"The first spark of revival of interest in a potential resident company was kindled by the protean Boris Goldovsky with his New England Opera Company..."
He made an earnest effort at grand opera in the old hall with his Les Troyens, but he ultimately focussed on teaching and touring.
Goldovsky and the New England Conservatory's Opera aficionados were allowed some use of the hall, but it ultimately fell to the wrecking ball in 1958.
It stood at 343 Huntington Avenue, between Symphony Hall
and the Museum of Fine Arts
, near to New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory
, and the Handel and Haydn Society
from 1908 to 1958.
One of the Boston Globe critics claimed that "Operapathy" had taken hold of Boston's citizens.
"Since the 1957 demolition [sic] of the old opera house, there had been talk of a new performing arts complex....All this had come to nothing."
"With the demise of the opera house, Boston was left with fading vaudeville houses and movie palaces, all with shallow stages and small orchestra pits- none ideal for opera."
The loss of the Opera House was a great blow to the Boston Opera scene, and put the efforts of Goldovsky and the others at great disadvantage. For about forty years afterward, the perennial fulfillment of Boston's operatic aspirations was accomplished by under-financed, under-accommodated devotees in shifting and uncertain circumstances.
After the demolition, "Goldovsky struggled on at Harvard's Loeb Theatre. There he staged his last three Boston productions...". After those few performances, Goldovsky then "retired to the relative leisure of his NEC visiting lectureship. The Conservatory began to fret about opera and 'its need for improvement'."
Chicago also had an "opera drought" of about eight years beginning in 1946.
Women were very important in overcoming these setbacks, but they faced some challenges.
When Caldwell successfully created and staged a new production of La Finta Giardiniera in Goldovsky's shop, she believed she was left out of the tour because she was a woman. By 1955, she had decided that in some departments, she could do a better job than her mentor.
The New York Times—long after Fritz Reiner helped Margaret Hillis
become a conductor in Chicago—remarked that Hillis "established herself as a choral conductor ... because there were virtually no orchestral conducting opportunities for women when she began her career in the 1950's" ( Margaret Hillis' New York Times obituary ).
Hillis was a choral conductor with the New York City Opera prior to becoming the founder and conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus in 1957.
Carol Fox
founded the new Chicago Lyric Opera in 1954.
At about this time (circa 1958), Sarah Caldwell started the Opera Company of Boston
. The first indoor performance of the company was in 1959. She claimed—in her memoir—that Goldovsky's "New England Opera Theatre" had been reduced to one sad production of Don Giovanni.
Louise Pettitt started the Chaminade Opera Group at the same time, and the first performance was in the fall of 1959. The Chaminade goals were similar to those of Santa Fe. They established a scholarship to promote young talent.
The Santa Fe opera was started in 1956/57 with the explicit goal of promoting the genre and developing a large pool of experienced performers.
For some of these women, Tanglewood was a common thread. This summer institution of the arts was created by wealthy women of the Berkshires who invited Koussevitsky in. The famous 'shed' was established when a woman leading the organization called for donations during an rain-drenched concert. The land was donated by women. People who supported the development of women as conductors found opportunities there to foster that development.
Caldwell had been a protege of Boris Goldovsky
for several years prior, and of course their efforts were under the shadow of BSO's great Serge Koussevitsky, the European impresario who created Tanglewood
, and who attracted so many great artists and performers to both Tanglewood
and Boston. Louise sang many times at Tanglewood over the years, and sent her daughter to study under Goldovsky in 1961.
Tanglewood allowed women who sought to become leaders in the field of music, and men who respected them, to work together in a non commercial setting where artistic development was the primary concern.
Margaret Hillis established a Tanglewood Alumni chorus in 1950, and her conducting career was furthered by Fritz Reiner in Chicago.
Aaron Copland
, who was a student of Nadia Boulanger
in the 1920s, helped Caldwell develop at Tanglewood in the 1950s. Copland chose Boulanger to be his composition instructor, and he became leader of the composition department at Tanglewood. Leonard Bernstein, who worked closely with Caldwell at Tanglewood in the 1950s, and became a close friend of Copland's in the 1930s, became a mentor to Joann Falletta
.
It was at Tanglewood that Goldovsky let Caldwell substitute conduct for him when he was hospitalized for an illness in the early postwar era. He ran the opera department at Tanglewood from the war years until Leinsdorf took over as BSO conductor in about 1961.
Pettitt's family was sympathetic to the idea of women directors. Her son in law studied under Boulanger in Boston in the early sixties, and her husband and brother in law ( a music professor at Boston's Emerson College ) were very supportive. Her brother in law was for many years a keyboardist at Tanglewood. He was also Caldwell's assistant in the opera department, 1950–52, and helped Alice Taylor create the Oakland Opera in the 1970s.
Pettitt's hometown friend, Robert Rounseville
, who also studied at Tanglewood, was a lifelong friend and supporter of Mrs Pettitt. He starred in the world premiere of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Europe, before Caldwell brought Stravinsky to BU to conduct the US premiere. Another male advocate in the Boston Symphony Orchestra / Tanglewood community was Pettitt's lifelong friend, violinist Sheldon Rotenberg, who was hired by Koussevitsky in 1948, and stayed with the BSO until 1991. He was brought to Tanglewood from the National Youth Orchestra.
One other factor to mention is the cold war. The launching of Sputnik epitomized a new cold war rivalry that extended to culture and even to classical music. Van Cliburn's 1958 victory in the first quadrennial Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow won him a ticker tape parade in Manhattan, among other things. The American impulse to excel in the arts was stimulated in the late 1950s in part by Soviet triumphalism. This was part of the backdrop to the founding of the Chaminade Opera Group, but the very few women who conducted opera in America in the 1950s faced other challenges that were more immediate, and more cumbersome.
During her long tenure Mrs Pettitt served in three roles: orchestra conductor, vocal director and dramatic director. She probably did so for a longer, unbroken period than any other American woman. The difficulty of this challenge was illustrated by Boris Goldovsky, who pursued a career as a conductor before becoming an opera lover. In his first conducting class with Fritz Reiner, he
was confronted with the notion that an art form he despised ( Goldovsky as a student loathed opera )
comprised the most difficult and demanding form of conducting.
Reiner reportedly said to Goldovsky in his conducting class at the Curtis Institute:
"Anybody can beat time evenly and it's nothing to be
proud of...I'm not going to waste your time and mine teaching you easy things. What I'm going to do
first is teach you how to conduct operatic recitatives. Because until you've conducted opera,
you don't know what conducting really is"( see page 155 "My Road to Opera" by Goldovsky ).
Reiner forced Goldovsky to coach the opera singers at Curtis in operatic repertoire,
the better to prepare him to be a great conductor. And Goldovsky dedicated his book to three men:
Fritz Reiner, Ernst Lert, and Serge Koussevitzky.
So for Mrs Pettitt to have discharged all three responsibilities ( orchestra director, dramatic director,
singing director ) for such a long period of time is a singular and extraordinary achievement.
Thirty two years after the founding of Chaminade, the Taunton Daily Gazette
wrote that "Long before Sarah Caldwell in Boston or New York's Beverly Sills
directed opera companies, there was Louise Pettitt in Attleboro" (Taunton Daily Gazette, Sat Feb 23, 1991, by Nancy C Doyle ). This praise was half right.
Louise Pettitt preceded Beverly Sills
by many years.
Sills took over as General Director of the NYCO in 1980.
But Louise was a contemporary of Caldwell.
In Chicago
, beginning in 1954, Fox was running the Lyric Opera
and engaging artists like Maria Callas
. But few women in the US were running opera companies when Mrs Pettitt took the helm of Chaminade, and the consistency of her multiple responsibility is notable. Caldwell herself often did not conduct the orchestra in her independent productions. Perhaps no other woman in America so consistently and enduringly performed both as conductor and director as did Mrs Pettitt.
There were few opera companies at all in the United States in 1958. Of those, there were few founded by women, and of those, there were fewer still with a woman serving as both conductor and dramatic director. She was certainly a leader, and a pioneer.
The New England Conservatory's alumni notes claim that Caldwell was "the second woman ever to conduct the New York Philharmonic
(1974), and the third woman ever to lead an American opera company" (see Caldwell alumni profile). Certainly the foundation of a successful opera company in the 1950s by an American woman would have been highly unusual.
The works chosen by Mrs Pettitt for her first four seasons did not stray from the standard canon of favorites. After Hänsel und Gretel, a well-known piece then—with which she and her audience were familiar—the next three seasons were devoted to Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, Magic Flute, and Marriage of Figaro.
Her choices later become more daring and ambitious.
company into her production of Song Of Norway, an opera about the famous European composer, Edvard Grieg
(Providence Journal, November 8, 1964). Her daughter sang that same year with Joan Sutherland in Caldwell's production of "I Puritani" in Boston. At this point, international stars started coming to Boston, including Renata Tebaldi, Placido Domingo, and Sutherland.
Her later productions still included works by Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti, Johann Strauss
, in addition to Offenbach
, Bizet, Lehár
, and Britten. But as her confidence and appetite grew, and emboldened by applause, she gradually opened the repertoire to less familiar composers, like Boito, Smetana
, Massenet, Gounod and others. And this opening of the repertoire mirrored groundbreaking work happening across the world of opera in those years.
And her ability to draw bright young talent grew.
After more than a dozen years of experience, the Chaminade Opera Group was reaching new heights in the 1970s, recruiting well established professionals and receiving praise in the press. Turnout was often standing room only, and the group was forced to add extra performances to accommodate the rising interest (Attleboro Sun Chronicle, December 7, 1973). The frequent participation of a photogenic young Miss Massachusetts
named Deborah O'Brien may have also drawn some of the additional interest.
In 1977, Greater Boston's Patriot Ledger
newspaper compared Mrs Pettitt's production of Mephistopheles favorably to those of Sarah Caldwell (The Patriot Ledger, Wednesday December 14, 1977 ). Critic Sue Cromwell wrote that "Sarah Caldwell fans, presumably waiting patiently for the Opera Company of Boston's new season to begin, missed the kind of performance that is their meat and drink", adding that "Sarah's seasoned fans would have torn the house down." John Bates, of Caldwell's "Opera Company of Boston" served as Pettitt's young "Wagner" in the Chaminade effort. Cromwell noted that "...the same kinds of strengths and weaknesses appear to prevail with both the professional Caldwell company and the semi-pro Chaminade."
Over the years, several people who sang for her company also sang for the Caldwell company.
Interestingly, Mrs Pettitt's own daughter Pamela sang with both the Caldwell Company and Chaminade Opera Group.
Peter Feldman, who had toured six times with the Goldovsky Institute (see Boris Goldovsky
), played the title role in Chaminade's Mephistopheles, and personally translated his entire role from the original Italian libretto for the Chaminade production. Mr Bates served in several Caldwell and Pettitt productions.
In 1985 and 1987, Louise directed baritone Donald Wilkinson, who now teaches at Harvard and MIT. His experience clearly shows the value of her company regionally as a promoter of opera.
These achievements were valuable to the opera community at large, but many of the early promoters of opera, like Goldovsky and Pettitt, gradually found themselves surrounded by well financed competitors.
By the late 1970s, the number of opera companies in the country had vastly increased, to the point that the Metropolitan Opera Guild tried to conduct a sort of census. The opera 'drought' of the 40s was clearly long gone. The Chaminade Opera Group was now one of many companies.
"Sarah's 1989 production of Leonard Bernstein's Mass was her last effort that could
be ranked as a piece of innovative theater,...".
"Although buoyed by the success of Mass, by the time 1990 rolled around, Sarah was on the
cusp of her last Boston season, her company tottering on the edge of financial ruin with
little hope of rescue."
See an explanation of her difficulties in "Sarah Caldwell, Indomitable Director of the Opera Company of Boston, Dies at 82" article by Anthony Tommasini, New York Times March 25, 2006.
The last performance of her company in its own theater was June 17, 1990.
Her theatre was shuttered for building code violations in December 1990.
By this point Mrs Pettitt's company—a more enduring institution—found itself thriving in Boston. In January of that year, the Boston Opera Company (not Caldwell's "Opera Company of Boston") featured Mrs Pettitt's production of Bizet's Pearl Fishers in the Strand Theater in Boston.
With the support of the City of Boston, the federal Economic Development Administration, and Community Development Block Grant money,
the Strand was saved and renovated in the late '70s. While Boston City Hall backed revitalization of the Strand, with help from community groups, it has not been primarily used as an opera house since the re-opening. But when the Caldwell organization faltered, it provided shelter to the Chaminade group.
Richard Dyer, the eminent Globe columnist who presided at New England Conservatory's 2008 centennial of Boris Goldovsky ( recounting tales of Boston Opera from the '40s, '50s and '60s along with international stars Phyllis Curtin, George Shirley, Sherrill Milnes, Rosalind Elias, Justino Diaz and local luminaries such as John Moriarty and many others ) lionized Mrs Pettitt and her company for their efforts in the 1990 production.
Among the professional performers onstage in the 1990 Pettitt production was Deborah Sasson (ibid). Deborah was born in Boston, and having worked with Mrs Pettitt and Seiji Ozawa
, she has moved on to become a celebrated European performer.
Pettitt's collaborators that year included Randall J. Kulunis, who at the time saw the failure of the Caldwell efforts and the loss of Caldwell's venue an as an opportunity to resurrect the original plans of the original Huntington Street Boston Opera House (1909)
and put fully staged opera once again in a proper Boston hall. Pettitt's company cooperated in this noble venture, although no resurrection occurred. Dyer hailed the effort.
In the narrative of Boston Opera history, this may have been the highwater mark for Mrs Pettitt and her Chaminade group. But she continued using Boston singers in her productions for many more years, and continued to draw on the Boston Opera community for talent, ticket sales, inspiration, and collaboration.
Not only did she and her Chaminade Opera Group continue staging operas long after the folding of Caldwell's company, but they also established a broad repertoire of oratorio works, including Mendelssohn's
Elijah
, Carl Orff
's Carmina Burana
, and many famous and lesser known requiems and masses. Her favorite requiem was Brahms'
German Requiem
and Chaminade Opera Group singers performed it several times as an oratorio piece under the direction of Mrs Pettitt. They also founded an opera scholarship.
Perhaps it was her longevity or reputation—or successes—that finally brought a representative of the New York Times to review a night of her work, toward the twilight of her sixty years in musical performance. But the Times was really unprepared to measure her pioneering efforts and her service to the popular propagation of high culture in America. Nor were they even prepared to review the creative and artistic innovations of her career. Anthony Tommasini
, the great New York Times expert—who literally wrote the (best-selling) book on opera—reviewed a belabored production of hers in the 1990s and found it charming, and warm, but riddled with weakness. The semi-professional tenor
had a weak high range. The woodwinds seemed "under-rehearsed." Mr Tommasini could not recommend that particular show to his readers, and evinced incognizance of both her early role as a pioneering woman and her long regional importance in fostering generations of experienced singers.
Mrs Pettitt was by then in her late seventies, and American opera was no longer the desolate wilderness of so many years before. The catalogues of companies, stars, venues and repertoires had become lengthy, surfeited. She had always provided probative opportunity on evidence of good faith where she witnessed promising talent in league with high enthusiasm. In the case of Sasson and others, the opportunity was well requited. On a budget of almost zero, working long hours for no pay, in a nonprofit, in the interest of promoting unproven ability, it would be inappropriate to judge her efforts by the performance standards of the Metropolitan Opera
, or La Scala
. And yet, having pioneered the introduction of fully staged opera into the mainstream of civic life in America, and having done so without supportive academic incubation (like by Boston University for Caldwell) or prolonged mentoring (like Goldovsky for Caldwell) during a time when American women were effectively barred from leadership in all fields, Mrs Pettitt found herself finally surrounded by the field of well supported competitors she had always sought to engender (the same is true for Goldovsky, who made such a case in his memoir: see Boris Goldovsky
), and still refused to deny opportunity to the unproven, and the unfinished. Mr Tommasini sought to judge her narrowly, within the facile intellectual confines of mere technical pedantry. He was truly unqualified to take her measure.
Although age and illness (particularly that of her lifelong love George Arthur Pettitt) gradually began to affect her productiveness in the new millennium, she maintained an incontrovertible optimism and resolve. Her teaching and rehearsal schedules exhibited the same relentless diligence as previously. On the day she died, she was awaiting several voice students, and was three weeks into a six week schedule for an upcoming choral concert (supporting Chaminade).
She died on March 25, 2006 at her home in Massachusetts, about ten weeks after her partner of 65 years. She outlived Sarah Caldwell
—a very similar woman—by exactly two days. An archive of her work and that of the Chaminade Opera Group is being assembled under the auspices of Wheaton College, Norton Massachusetts.
Deborah was born in Boston and studied at Oberlin Conservatory. She sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera early in her career. She had her Broadway
debut in Showboat
. She was introduced to the Hamburg
Staatsoper
by Leonard Bernstein
, and as her website says: "Das war der Beginn ihrer deutsche Karriere." She has sung at Vienna, in Rio de Janeiro
, Los Angeles and Venice
, inter alia; She sang with the London Symphony Orchestra
.
She has appeared in numerous European television specials, alongside José Carreras
and others. Among the highlights of her career, she mentions performing in Japan with Seiji Ozawa
, and performing Mahler's 8th Symphony
under his direction with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
in New York.
Donald Wilkinson performed for the Chaminade Opera Group in 1985 and 1987, early in his opera career. He has performed under the direction of Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was awarded a Tanglewood fellowship. He teaches voice at Harvard and MIT. He has sung across Europe.
Benjamin Cox, Jeanine Kelley, and Jack Bates were all from Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston
;
William "Bill" Cashman performed professionally in Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston ( January 1973 – May 1979 ) and in Pettitt's Chaminade Opera Group. He also performed at the Louise Pettitt memorial concert.
Jon Berberian trained with the New York City Opera
.
Peter Feldman. Peter toured six seasons with Boris Goldovsky
of Goldovsky Institute; He studied at Boston University's opera program 1957–1961. He performed under stage direction by Sarah Caldwell
and Boris Goldovsky. He performed at the New York City Opera
, among others.
James Van Der Post, who has sung opera in companies across the United States and in Europe;
Randall Kulunis. Randall studied at the Boston Conservatory
Opera Department under legendary mentor John Moriarty
, and at New England Conservatory under Boris Goldovsky. He and his brother at one point recovered the plans of the old Boston Opera House (1909)
, intending to rebuild it.
Deborah O'Brien ( the 1971 Miss Massachusetts, and an associate of the Opera Company of Boston );
Michael Popowich of the Santa Fe Opera
.
Michael Duarte, a longtime friend and collaborator of Mrs Pettitt's, and a lead in several of her productions, is expected to take her place within Chaminade Opera as director.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
female opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
conductors
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
. For over forty years, she simultaneously served as orchestral conductor, dramatic director, and vocal director for the Chaminade Opera Group, which she founded in 1959. She promoted the growth of opera, and the advancement of many performers ranging from amateur enthusiasts to internationally known professionals.
Biography
Florence Louise Staples Pettitt was born in MassachusettsMassachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
in 1918.
Her father—Charles Albert Staples—was a classical cellist who played in various New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
orchestras. He took Louise to countless rehearsals during her childhood. The two also performed in local theaters.
She was a high school valedictorian and mastered the cello, like her father.
She was lucky to come from a school with a very strong music program. Opera star Robert Rounseville
Robert Rounseville
Robert Rounseville was an American tenor, who appeared in opera, operetta, and Broadway musicals.-Career:Rounseville was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts. He made his Broadway debut in a small role in the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical Babes in Arms, then appeared in other musicals in...
and BSO violinist Sheldon Rotenberg were taught by her music teacher. Rounseville came back to honor and commemorate this teacher years later, in 1953, after making the internationally renowned film version of the "Tales of Hoffman".
Even in high school, Louise Pettitt was promoting opera. She and her close friend, violinist Sheldon Rotenberg, tried to create an opera club at their school.
This enthusiasm for opera never left her.
As a young woman she shifted from cello to classical singing, and sought the best training available in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
.
She trained with Gladys Childs Miller
Gladys Childs Miller
Gladys Childs Miller was a highly influential voice teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston for over fifty years....
in Boston, Massachusetts, at the New England Conservatory from 1939 to 1941. Several of Miller's students went on to sing for the Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Paris, and New York Metropolitan opera companies. One of them, Lillian Johnson, also came to sing for Louise in the Chaminade Opera Group. Louise also received instruction from Margaret Armstrong Gow of the Harvard Musical Association
Harvard Musical Association
The Harvard Musical Association is a private charitable organization founded by Harvard University graduates in 1837 for the purposes of advancing musical culture and literacy, both at the University and in the city of Boston. Though initially a spin-off of the Pierian Sodality, the Association...
, Gertrude Erhardt, and others. She gradually became a leading soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
in the Boston area.
She sang professionally for many of Greater Boston's better known churches. One of her most prominent recurring performances was the regular weekly recital at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Court, as the museum was known during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime, is a museum in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts and near the Back Bay Fens...
. She later also sang at Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...
in the summers. And eventually, she became a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing
National Association of Teachers of Singing
The National Association of Teachers of Singing is a professional organization for singing teachers, and is the largest association of its kind in the world. There are more than 6,500 members mostly from the United States...
.
Although she devoted more hours over her long life to the production of opera than to her own singing career, and though she was eventually better known as a teacher and director, she always considered herself to be a singer, and continued to give solo vocal performances into the 1970s. During her many years of opera work, she devoted time in every week to her voice students, and she continued to sing, generally in support of Chaminade.
She also gradually gained some stage and drama experience in small local theatrical productions, and Gilbert and Sullivan; but in Massachusetts in the thirties and forties, there were few opportunities for young performers to try their hand at serious, fully staged opera.
The only fully staged operas in Boston then were generally done by New York's Met on tour at the Huntington Avenue site. Opera "scenes" were done at NEC by Goldovsky and others in Jordan Hall. There were very few opera companies in existence then, compared to the 1970s.
When Louise was finishing her studies at New England Conservatory in 1941, "..opera was then in eclipse...".
Goldovsky, when he arrived in 1942, found the opera situation in Boston "dormant". At Tanglewood, "the war shut down opera and nearly everything else..," though Goldovsky predicted "a growth in operatic productions similar to the great recent
growth in symphonic performances and numbers of orchestras."
Louise performed in small theatre, opera scenes, and light opera nonetheless.
One of her earliest acting credits was a minor local production called Aunt Emma Sees It Through ( performed January 24, 1936 ).
When the faculty of Wheaton College
Wheaton College (Massachusetts)
Wheaton College is a four-year, private liberal arts college with an approximate student body of 1,550. Wheaton's residential campus is located in Norton, Massachusetts, between Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1834 as a female seminary, it is one of the oldest...
( Norton, Massachusetts ) formed its own Gilbert and Sullivan troupe in 1945, she became a perennial female lead for about 15 years, and never left the group.
Her later ability to conduct opera was most likely complemented and improved by her concurrent responsibility as conductor/director for that group, beginning in 1961.
She played soprano roles in other Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
productions in eastern Massachusetts in the 40s and 50s. She and her husband performed a consistent repertoire of G & S scenes professionally for various civic women's clubs (Foxboro, Framingham, Boston, etc ) under contract to "Flora Frame" of Boston in the 1950s and early 1960s.
She gave regular solo performances of arias in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and elsewhere. She performed in many area churches and other venues as a classical soloist in oratorios, light opera, and mixed programs. She sang at Old South Church, Trinity, St Paul's and many others.
This experience, along with her classical musicianship and vocal training prepared her for her eventual role as opera conductor.
When interest in opera grew in the late 1950s, her experience enabled her to make a vital, pioneering contribution.
Boston Opera at a low point: 1933–1958
In the depths of the great depression, the Chicago opera company stopped touring in Boston. This cancellation and the creation of new companies in the late 1950s form the bookends of a difficult period for opera in Boston.The New England Conservatory had always been the backbone of local Boston opera companies in the twentieth century. But in the 1930s, the conservatory had great difficulty even maintaining a teaching schedule in opera. Wallace Goodrich tried in 1936 to create a school of opera there without success.
When Louise was in attendance at NEC ( 1939–1941 ), Goodrich was still trying to put together a program. Goodrich won approval to hire a conductor from London's famous Covent Garden in 1940, but this was a far cry from the robust opera department that he conceived. When Goldovsky was hired there in 1942 he was only paid $2,500 for the entire year and told to work part time. Fortunately for him, he was able to supplement his income as of 1946 by becoming "Mr. Opera," the voice that was broadcast every Saturday afternoon nationwide from New York by Texaco.
By hiring Goldovsky in 1942, upon the recommendation of Koussevitsky, Goodrich laid the foundations for the renaissance that bore fruit over the next 50 years. But the 40s and 50s were still lean years compared to the 60s and onward.
The gas rationing of 1943 reduced Tanglewood to a simple red cross benefit concert in the Lennox public library, but this wasn't the entire reason for the leanness of opera in those years.
Public demand for opera seems to have been historically low in Boston in this period. The Metropolitan Opera cancelled it's 1947 tour of Boston completely, and Goldovsky's company was the only local replacement available. During the war, NEC's "Popular Music Program" ( which focussed on the composition and arrangement of big band swing music ) garnered far more tuition revenue than opera instruction.
The Boston Opera House
Boston Opera House (1909)
The Boston Opera House was an opera house located on Huntington Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. It opened in 1909 as the home of the Boston Opera Company and was demolished in 1958 after years of disuse....
that had been built by Parkman Haven and Eben Jordan (who also built nearby NEC
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent school of music in the United States.The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of...
's Jordan Hall
Jordan Hall
Jordan Hall is a 1,019-seat concert hall in Boston, Massachusetts, the principal performance space of the New England Conservatory. It is one block from Boston's Symphony Hall, and together they are considered two of America's most acoustically perfect performance spaces...
, Symphony Hall
Symphony Hall
Symphony Hall usually refers to:* Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, USAIt may also refer to:Concert Halls* Allentown Symphony Hall in Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA* Phoenix Symphony Hall in Phoenix, Arizona, USA...
, and other great Boston buildings) on Boston's celebrated Culture Way was gradually lost to Boston's opera lovers over the years.
By the time Goldovsky and Koussevitsky were reinvigorating Boston high culture in the forties, the building had fallen into the hands of a theatre chain who saw no profit in its original purpose.
"The first spark of revival of interest in a potential resident company was kindled by the protean Boris Goldovsky with his New England Opera Company..."
He made an earnest effort at grand opera in the old hall with his Les Troyens, but he ultimately focussed on teaching and touring.
Goldovsky and the New England Conservatory's Opera aficionados were allowed some use of the hall, but it ultimately fell to the wrecking ball in 1958.
It stood at 343 Huntington Avenue, between Symphony Hall
Symphony Hall, Boston
Symphony Hall is a concert hall located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. Designed by McKim, Mead and White, it was built in 1900 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which continues to make the hall its home. The hall was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999...
and the Museum of Fine Arts
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
, near to New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory
Boston Conservatory
The Boston Conservatory is a performing arts conservatory located in the Fenway-Kenmore region of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in music, dance and musical theater...
, and the Handel and Haydn Society
Handel and Haydn Society
The Handel and Haydn Society is an American chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1815, it remains one of the oldest performing arts organizations in the United States.-Early history:...
from 1908 to 1958.
One of the Boston Globe critics claimed that "Operapathy" had taken hold of Boston's citizens.
"Since the 1957 demolition [sic] of the old opera house, there had been talk of a new performing arts complex....All this had come to nothing."
"With the demise of the opera house, Boston was left with fading vaudeville houses and movie palaces, all with shallow stages and small orchestra pits- none ideal for opera."
The loss of the Opera House was a great blow to the Boston Opera scene, and put the efforts of Goldovsky and the others at great disadvantage. For about forty years afterward, the perennial fulfillment of Boston's operatic aspirations was accomplished by under-financed, under-accommodated devotees in shifting and uncertain circumstances.
After the demolition, "Goldovsky struggled on at Harvard's Loeb Theatre. There he staged his last three Boston productions...". After those few performances, Goldovsky then "retired to the relative leisure of his NEC visiting lectureship. The Conservatory began to fret about opera and 'its need for improvement'."
Chicago also had an "opera drought" of about eight years beginning in 1946.
Women were very important in overcoming these setbacks, but they faced some challenges.
When Caldwell successfully created and staged a new production of La Finta Giardiniera in Goldovsky's shop, she believed she was left out of the tour because she was a woman. By 1955, she had decided that in some departments, she could do a better job than her mentor.
The New York Times—long after Fritz Reiner helped Margaret Hillis
Margaret Hillis
Margaret Hillis was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.-Life:...
become a conductor in Chicago—remarked that Hillis "established herself as a choral conductor ... because there were virtually no orchestral conducting opportunities for women when she began her career in the 1950's" ( Margaret Hillis' New York Times obituary ).
Hillis was a choral conductor with the New York City Opera prior to becoming the founder and conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus in 1957.
Carol Fox
Carol Fox (Chicago opera)
Carol Fox was, at the age of 28, the first impresario of the Chicago Lyric Opera and credited with restoring Chicago's pre-Depression operatic glory....
founded the new Chicago Lyric Opera in 1954.
At about this time (circa 1958), Sarah Caldwell started the Opera Company of Boston
Opera Company of Boston
The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active during the late 1950s through the early 1990s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group. At one time, the touring arm of the...
. The first indoor performance of the company was in 1959. She claimed—in her memoir—that Goldovsky's "New England Opera Theatre" had been reduced to one sad production of Don Giovanni.
Louise Pettitt started the Chaminade Opera Group at the same time, and the first performance was in the fall of 1959. The Chaminade goals were similar to those of Santa Fe. They established a scholarship to promote young talent.
The Santa Fe opera was started in 1956/57 with the explicit goal of promoting the genre and developing a large pool of experienced performers.
For some of these women, Tanglewood was a common thread. This summer institution of the arts was created by wealthy women of the Berkshires who invited Koussevitsky in. The famous 'shed' was established when a woman leading the organization called for donations during an rain-drenched concert. The land was donated by women. People who supported the development of women as conductors found opportunities there to foster that development.
Caldwell had been a protege of Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky was a Russian conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America...
for several years prior, and of course their efforts were under the shadow of BSO's great Serge Koussevitsky, the European impresario who created Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...
, and who attracted so many great artists and performers to both Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...
and Boston. Louise sang many times at Tanglewood over the years, and sent her daughter to study under Goldovsky in 1961.
Tanglewood allowed women who sought to become leaders in the field of music, and men who respected them, to work together in a non commercial setting where artistic development was the primary concern.
Margaret Hillis established a Tanglewood Alumni chorus in 1950, and her conducting career was furthered by Fritz Reiner in Chicago.
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, who was a student of Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
in the 1920s, helped Caldwell develop at Tanglewood in the 1950s. Copland chose Boulanger to be his composition instructor, and he became leader of the composition department at Tanglewood. Leonard Bernstein, who worked closely with Caldwell at Tanglewood in the 1950s, and became a close friend of Copland's in the 1930s, became a mentor to Joann Falletta
JoAnn Falletta
JoAnn Falletta is an American classical musician and orchestral conductor.Falletta was educated at the Mannes College of Music and The Juilliard School in New York City...
.
It was at Tanglewood that Goldovsky let Caldwell substitute conduct for him when he was hospitalized for an illness in the early postwar era. He ran the opera department at Tanglewood from the war years until Leinsdorf took over as BSO conductor in about 1961.
Pettitt's family was sympathetic to the idea of women directors. Her son in law studied under Boulanger in Boston in the early sixties, and her husband and brother in law ( a music professor at Boston's Emerson College ) were very supportive. Her brother in law was for many years a keyboardist at Tanglewood. He was also Caldwell's assistant in the opera department, 1950–52, and helped Alice Taylor create the Oakland Opera in the 1970s.
Pettitt's hometown friend, Robert Rounseville
Robert Rounseville
Robert Rounseville was an American tenor, who appeared in opera, operetta, and Broadway musicals.-Career:Rounseville was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts. He made his Broadway debut in a small role in the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical Babes in Arms, then appeared in other musicals in...
, who also studied at Tanglewood, was a lifelong friend and supporter of Mrs Pettitt. He starred in the world premiere of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Europe, before Caldwell brought Stravinsky to BU to conduct the US premiere. Another male advocate in the Boston Symphony Orchestra / Tanglewood community was Pettitt's lifelong friend, violinist Sheldon Rotenberg, who was hired by Koussevitsky in 1948, and stayed with the BSO until 1991. He was brought to Tanglewood from the National Youth Orchestra.
One other factor to mention is the cold war. The launching of Sputnik epitomized a new cold war rivalry that extended to culture and even to classical music. Van Cliburn's 1958 victory in the first quadrennial Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow won him a ticker tape parade in Manhattan, among other things. The American impulse to excel in the arts was stimulated in the late 1950s in part by Soviet triumphalism. This was part of the backdrop to the founding of the Chaminade Opera Group, but the very few women who conducted opera in America in the 1950s faced other challenges that were more immediate, and more cumbersome.
Founding of Chaminade Opera Group
In 1958, a year before the founding of the company, Mrs Pettitt directed a limited production of Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" at a small venue, with double piano accompaniment instead of orchestra. The following year she commenced the first official season of the new company with Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel.During her long tenure Mrs Pettitt served in three roles: orchestra conductor, vocal director and dramatic director. She probably did so for a longer, unbroken period than any other American woman. The difficulty of this challenge was illustrated by Boris Goldovsky, who pursued a career as a conductor before becoming an opera lover. In his first conducting class with Fritz Reiner, he
was confronted with the notion that an art form he despised ( Goldovsky as a student loathed opera )
comprised the most difficult and demanding form of conducting.
Reiner reportedly said to Goldovsky in his conducting class at the Curtis Institute:
"Anybody can beat time evenly and it's nothing to be
proud of...I'm not going to waste your time and mine teaching you easy things. What I'm going to do
first is teach you how to conduct operatic recitatives. Because until you've conducted opera,
you don't know what conducting really is"( see page 155 "My Road to Opera" by Goldovsky ).
Reiner forced Goldovsky to coach the opera singers at Curtis in operatic repertoire,
the better to prepare him to be a great conductor. And Goldovsky dedicated his book to three men:
Fritz Reiner, Ernst Lert, and Serge Koussevitzky.
So for Mrs Pettitt to have discharged all three responsibilities ( orchestra director, dramatic director,
singing director ) for such a long period of time is a singular and extraordinary achievement.
Thirty two years after the founding of Chaminade, the Taunton Daily Gazette
Taunton Daily Gazette
The Taunton Daily Gazette is a daily newspaper founded in 1848. Based in Taunton, Massachusetts, its coverage area also includes Berkley, Rehoboth, Dighton, Lakeville, Norton, and Raynham....
wrote that "Long before Sarah Caldwell in Boston or New York's Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills 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...
directed opera companies, there was Louise Pettitt in Attleboro" (Taunton Daily Gazette, Sat Feb 23, 1991, by Nancy C Doyle ). This praise was half right.
Louise Pettitt preceded Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills 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...
by many years.
Sills took over as General Director of the NYCO in 1980.
But Louise was a contemporary of Caldwell.
In Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, beginning in 1954, Fox was running the Lyric Opera
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...
and engaging artists like Maria Callas
Maria Callas
Maria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts...
. But few women in the US were running opera companies when Mrs Pettitt took the helm of Chaminade, and the consistency of her multiple responsibility is notable. Caldwell herself often did not conduct the orchestra in her independent productions. Perhaps no other woman in America so consistently and enduringly performed both as conductor and director as did Mrs Pettitt.
There were few opera companies at all in the United States in 1958. Of those, there were few founded by women, and of those, there were fewer still with a woman serving as both conductor and dramatic director. She was certainly a leader, and a pioneer.
The New England Conservatory's alumni notes claim that Caldwell was "the second woman ever to conduct the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
(1974), and the third woman ever to lead an American opera company" (see Caldwell alumni profile). Certainly the foundation of a successful opera company in the 1950s by an American woman would have been highly unusual.
The works chosen by Mrs Pettitt for her first four seasons did not stray from the standard canon of favorites. After Hänsel und Gretel, a well-known piece then—with which she and her audience were familiar—the next three seasons were devoted to Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, Magic Flute, and Marriage of Figaro.
Her choices later become more daring and ambitious.
1964–1990: Innovation and Exploration
By 1964, Mrs Pettitt was able to incorporate members of the Boston BalletBoston Ballet
Boston Ballet, founded in 1963 by E. Virginia Williams, was the first professional repertory ballet company in New England. Boston Ballet’s national and international reputation developed under the leadership of Artistic Directors Violette Verdy , Bruce Marks , and Anna-Marie Holmes...
company into her production of Song Of Norway, an opera about the famous European composer, Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
(Providence Journal, November 8, 1964). Her daughter sang that same year with Joan Sutherland in Caldwell's production of "I Puritani" in Boston. At this point, international stars started coming to Boston, including Renata Tebaldi, Placido Domingo, and Sutherland.
Her later productions still included works by Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti, Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
, in addition to Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, Bizet, Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...
, and Britten. But as her confidence and appetite grew, and emboldened by applause, she gradually opened the repertoire to less familiar composers, like Boito, Smetana
Smetana
Smetana is a Slavic loanword in English for a dairy product that is produced by souring heavy cream. Smetana is from Central and Eastern Europe, sometimes perceived to be specifically of Russian origin. It is a soured cream product like crème fraîche , but nowadays mainly sold with 15% to 30%...
, Massenet, Gounod and others. And this opening of the repertoire mirrored groundbreaking work happening across the world of opera in those years.
And her ability to draw bright young talent grew.
After more than a dozen years of experience, the Chaminade Opera Group was reaching new heights in the 1970s, recruiting well established professionals and receiving praise in the press. Turnout was often standing room only, and the group was forced to add extra performances to accommodate the rising interest (Attleboro Sun Chronicle, December 7, 1973). The frequent participation of a photogenic young Miss Massachusetts
Miss Massachusetts
For the state pageant affiliated with Miss USA, see Miss Massachusetts USAThe Miss Massachusetts competition is a scholarship pageant put on annually by the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Foundation, Inc...
named Deborah O'Brien may have also drawn some of the additional interest.
In 1977, Greater Boston's Patriot Ledger
The Patriot Ledger
The Patriot Ledger is a daily afternoon newspaper published in Quincy, Massachusetts and serving the South Shore. Its circulation is 55,000 on weekdays and 63,000 for its Weekend edition which is published on Saturday mornings....
newspaper compared Mrs Pettitt's production of Mephistopheles favorably to those of Sarah Caldwell (The Patriot Ledger, Wednesday December 14, 1977 ). Critic Sue Cromwell wrote that "Sarah Caldwell fans, presumably waiting patiently for the Opera Company of Boston's new season to begin, missed the kind of performance that is their meat and drink", adding that "Sarah's seasoned fans would have torn the house down." John Bates, of Caldwell's "Opera Company of Boston" served as Pettitt's young "Wagner" in the Chaminade effort. Cromwell noted that "...the same kinds of strengths and weaknesses appear to prevail with both the professional Caldwell company and the semi-pro Chaminade."
Over the years, several people who sang for her company also sang for the Caldwell company.
Interestingly, Mrs Pettitt's own daughter Pamela sang with both the Caldwell Company and Chaminade Opera Group.
Peter Feldman, who had toured six times with the Goldovsky Institute (see Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky was a Russian conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America...
), played the title role in Chaminade's Mephistopheles, and personally translated his entire role from the original Italian libretto for the Chaminade production. Mr Bates served in several Caldwell and Pettitt productions.
In 1985 and 1987, Louise directed baritone Donald Wilkinson, who now teaches at Harvard and MIT. His experience clearly shows the value of her company regionally as a promoter of opera.
These achievements were valuable to the opera community at large, but many of the early promoters of opera, like Goldovsky and Pettitt, gradually found themselves surrounded by well financed competitors.
By the late 1970s, the number of opera companies in the country had vastly increased, to the point that the Metropolitan Opera Guild tried to conduct a sort of census. The opera 'drought' of the 40s was clearly long gone. The Chaminade Opera Group was now one of many companies.
Boston Opera in crisis of 1990: Pettitt temporarily takes mantle from the faltering Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell's Boston company gradually fell apart, and by 1990, Tanglewood's opera department had long since been pared back by the BSO trustees. Eric Leinsdorf had fired Goldovsky from Tanglewood in the early 1960s, and abolished the opera department there. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that Seiji Ozawa re-introduced opera at Tanglewood on an equal basis with the other genres."Sarah's 1989 production of Leonard Bernstein's Mass was her last effort that could
be ranked as a piece of innovative theater,...".
"Although buoyed by the success of Mass, by the time 1990 rolled around, Sarah was on the
cusp of her last Boston season, her company tottering on the edge of financial ruin with
little hope of rescue."
See an explanation of her difficulties in "Sarah Caldwell, Indomitable Director of the Opera Company of Boston, Dies at 82" article by Anthony Tommasini, New York Times March 25, 2006.
The last performance of her company in its own theater was June 17, 1990.
Her theatre was shuttered for building code violations in December 1990.
By this point Mrs Pettitt's company—a more enduring institution—found itself thriving in Boston. In January of that year, the Boston Opera Company (not Caldwell's "Opera Company of Boston") featured Mrs Pettitt's production of Bizet's Pearl Fishers in the Strand Theater in Boston.
With the support of the City of Boston, the federal Economic Development Administration, and Community Development Block Grant money,
the Strand was saved and renovated in the late '70s. While Boston City Hall backed revitalization of the Strand, with help from community groups, it has not been primarily used as an opera house since the re-opening. But when the Caldwell organization faltered, it provided shelter to the Chaminade group.
Richard Dyer, the eminent Globe columnist who presided at New England Conservatory's 2008 centennial of Boris Goldovsky ( recounting tales of Boston Opera from the '40s, '50s and '60s along with international stars Phyllis Curtin, George Shirley, Sherrill Milnes, Rosalind Elias, Justino Diaz and local luminaries such as John Moriarty and many others ) lionized Mrs Pettitt and her company for their efforts in the 1990 production.
Among the professional performers onstage in the 1990 Pettitt production was Deborah Sasson (ibid). Deborah was born in Boston, and having worked with Mrs Pettitt and Seiji Ozawa
Seiji Ozawa
is a Japanese conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of large-scale late Romantic works. He is most known for his work as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera.-Early years:...
, she has moved on to become a celebrated European performer.
Pettitt's collaborators that year included Randall J. Kulunis, who at the time saw the failure of the Caldwell efforts and the loss of Caldwell's venue an as an opportunity to resurrect the original plans of the original Huntington Street Boston Opera House (1909)
Boston Opera House (1909)
The Boston Opera House was an opera house located on Huntington Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. It opened in 1909 as the home of the Boston Opera Company and was demolished in 1958 after years of disuse....
and put fully staged opera once again in a proper Boston hall. Pettitt's company cooperated in this noble venture, although no resurrection occurred. Dyer hailed the effort.
In the narrative of Boston Opera history, this may have been the highwater mark for Mrs Pettitt and her Chaminade group. But she continued using Boston singers in her productions for many more years, and continued to draw on the Boston Opera community for talent, ticket sales, inspiration, and collaboration.
Not only did she and her Chaminade Opera Group continue staging operas long after the folding of Caldwell's company, but they also established a broad repertoire of oratorio works, including Mendelssohn's
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
Elijah
Elijah (oratorio)
Elijah, in German: Elias, is an oratorio written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1846 for the Birmingham Festival. It depicts various events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings in the Old Testament....
, Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
's Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana (Orff)
Carmina Burana is a scenic cantata composed by Carl Orff in 1935 and 1936. It is based on 24 of the poems found in the medieval collection Carmina Burana...
, and many famous and lesser known requiems and masses. Her favorite requiem was Brahms'
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
German Requiem
Ein deutsches Requiem
A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 by Johannes Brahms, is a large-scale work for chorus, orchestra, and a soprano and a baritone soloist, composed between 1865 and 1868. It comprises seven movements, which together last 65 to 80 minutes, making this work Brahms's longest...
and Chaminade Opera Group singers performed it several times as an oratorio piece under the direction of Mrs Pettitt. They also founded an opera scholarship.
Perhaps it was her longevity or reputation—or successes—that finally brought a representative of the New York Times to review a night of her work, toward the twilight of her sixty years in musical performance. But the Times was really unprepared to measure her pioneering efforts and her service to the popular propagation of high culture in America. Nor were they even prepared to review the creative and artistic innovations of her career. Anthony Tommasini
Anthony Tommasini
-Early years:Tommasini was born in Brooklyn around 1948 and raised on Long Island. He was admitted to Oberlin College's Conservatory of Music, but chose to matriculate at Yale University in order to obtain a broader liberal arts education...
, the great New York Times expert—who literally wrote the (best-selling) book on opera—reviewed a belabored production of hers in the 1990s and found it charming, and warm, but riddled with weakness. The semi-professional tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
had a weak high range. The woodwinds seemed "under-rehearsed." Mr Tommasini could not recommend that particular show to his readers, and evinced incognizance of both her early role as a pioneering woman and her long regional importance in fostering generations of experienced singers.
Mrs Pettitt was by then in her late seventies, and American opera was no longer the desolate wilderness of so many years before. The catalogues of companies, stars, venues and repertoires had become lengthy, surfeited. She had always provided probative opportunity on evidence of good faith where she witnessed promising talent in league with high enthusiasm. In the case of Sasson and others, the opportunity was well requited. On a budget of almost zero, working long hours for no pay, in a nonprofit, in the interest of promoting unproven ability, it would be inappropriate to judge her efforts by the performance standards of the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
, or La Scala
La Scala
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...
. And yet, having pioneered the introduction of fully staged opera into the mainstream of civic life in America, and having done so without supportive academic incubation (like by Boston University for Caldwell) or prolonged mentoring (like Goldovsky for Caldwell) during a time when American women were effectively barred from leadership in all fields, Mrs Pettitt found herself finally surrounded by the field of well supported competitors she had always sought to engender (the same is true for Goldovsky, who made such a case in his memoir: see Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky was a Russian conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America...
), and still refused to deny opportunity to the unproven, and the unfinished. Mr Tommasini sought to judge her narrowly, within the facile intellectual confines of mere technical pedantry. He was truly unqualified to take her measure.
Although age and illness (particularly that of her lifelong love George Arthur Pettitt) gradually began to affect her productiveness in the new millennium, she maintained an incontrovertible optimism and resolve. Her teaching and rehearsal schedules exhibited the same relentless diligence as previously. On the day she died, she was awaiting several voice students, and was three weeks into a six week schedule for an upcoming choral concert (supporting Chaminade).
She died on March 25, 2006 at her home in Massachusetts, about ten weeks after her partner of 65 years. She outlived Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell was a notable American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director of opera.- Life :Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old...
—a very similar woman—by exactly two days. An archive of her work and that of the Chaminade Opera Group is being assembled under the auspices of Wheaton College, Norton Massachusetts.
Her conducting credits with Chaminade include the following
- The Marriage of FigaroThe Marriage of FigaroLe nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
by Mozart, - The Magic FluteThe Magic FluteThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
by Mozart, - Così Fan TutteCosì fan tutteCosì fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
by Mozart, - Die FledermausDie FledermausDie Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
by Johann Strauss IIJohann Strauss IIJohann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
, - Eine Nacht in VenedigEine Nacht in VenedigEine Nacht in Venedig is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II and was premiered in Berlin on 3 October 1883 in the Neues Friedrich Wilhelmstadisches Theater, and is the only one of the operettas of Johann Strauss II ever to be premiered outside Vienna...
– A Night in Venice by Johann Strauss IIJohann Strauss IIJohann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
, - The Tales of Hoffman by OffenbachJacques OffenbachJacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, - La PéricholeLa PéricholeLa Périchole is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French-language libretto based on the 1829 one act play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français...
by OffenbachJacques OffenbachJacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, - La TraviataLa traviataLa traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
by Verdi, - OtelloOtelloOtello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
by Verdi, - The Pearl Fishers by Bizet,
- CarmenCarmenCarmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
by Bizet, - The GondoliersThe GondoliersThe Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
by Gilbert & Sullivan, - The MikadoThe MikadoThe Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
by Gilbert & Sullivan, - TurandotTurandotTurandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
by Puccini, - L'Elisir D'AmoreL'elisir d'amoreL'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
by Donizetti, - The Merry WidowThe Merry WidowThe Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
by Lehár, - The Bartered BrideThe Bartered BrideThe Bartered Bride is a comic opera in three acts by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, to a libretto by Karel Sabina. The opera is considered to have made a major contribution towards the development of Czech music. It was composed during the period 1863–66, and first performed at the...
by SmetanaSmetanaSmetana is a Slavic loanword in English for a dairy product that is produced by souring heavy cream. Smetana is from Central and Eastern Europe, sometimes perceived to be specifically of Russian origin. It is a soured cream product like crème fraîche , but nowadays mainly sold with 15% to 30%...
, - ManonManonManon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
by Massenet, - MephistophelesMephistophelesMephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...
by Boito, - FaustFaust (opera)Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
by Gounod, - The Ballad of Baby DoeThe Ballad of Baby DoeThe Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
by Douglas Moore, - The Merry Wives of WindsorThe Merry Wives of WindsorThe Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
by Carl Otto NicolaiCarl Otto NicolaiCarl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai was a German composer, conductor, and founder of the Vienna Philharmonic. Nicolai is best known for his operatic version of Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor...
, - The Song of Norway by Robert Wright and George Forrest (see Grieg),
- Hansel & Gretel by Humperdinck.
Chaminade actors include
Deborah Sasson.Deborah was born in Boston and studied at Oberlin Conservatory. She sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera early in her career. She had her Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in Showboat
Showboat
A showboat, or show boat, was a form of theater that traveled along the waterways of the United States, especially along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers . A showboat was basically a barge that resembled a long, flat-roofed house, and in order to move down the river, it was pushed by a small tugboat...
. She was introduced to the Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
Staatsoper
Hamburg State Opera
The Hamburg State Opera is one of the leading opera companies in Germany.Opera in Hamburg dates back to 2 January 1678 when the "Opern-Theatrum" was inaugurated with a performance of a biblical Singspiel by Johann Theile...
by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, and as her website says: "Das war der Beginn ihrer deutsche Karriere." She has sung at Vienna, in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, Los Angeles and Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, inter alia; She sang with the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
.
She has appeared in numerous European television specials, alongside José Carreras
José Carreras
Josep Maria Carreras i Coll , better known as José Carreras , is a Spanish Catalan tenor particularly known for his performances in the operas of Verdi and Puccini...
and others. Among the highlights of her career, she mentions performing in Japan with Seiji Ozawa
Seiji Ozawa
is a Japanese conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of large-scale late Romantic works. He is most known for his work as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera.-Early years:...
, and performing Mahler's 8th Symphony
Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is often performed with fewer than a...
under his direction with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in New York.
Donald Wilkinson performed for the Chaminade Opera Group in 1985 and 1987, early in his opera career. He has performed under the direction of Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was awarded a Tanglewood fellowship. He teaches voice at Harvard and MIT. He has sung across Europe.
Benjamin Cox, Jeanine Kelley, and Jack Bates were all from Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston
Opera Company of Boston
The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active during the late 1950s through the early 1990s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group. At one time, the touring arm of the...
;
William "Bill" Cashman performed professionally in Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston ( January 1973 – May 1979 ) and in Pettitt's Chaminade Opera Group. He also performed at the Louise Pettitt memorial concert.
Jon Berberian trained with the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
.
Peter Feldman. Peter toured six seasons with Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky was a Russian conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America...
of Goldovsky Institute; He studied at Boston University's opera program 1957–1961. He performed under stage direction by Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell was a notable American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director of opera.- Life :Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old...
and Boris Goldovsky. He performed at the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
, among others.
James Van Der Post, who has sung opera in companies across the United States and in Europe;
Randall Kulunis. Randall studied at the Boston Conservatory
Boston Conservatory
The Boston Conservatory is a performing arts conservatory located in the Fenway-Kenmore region of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in music, dance and musical theater...
Opera Department under legendary mentor John Moriarty
John Moriarty
John Moriarty may refer to:*John Moriarty , American conductor and stage director*John Moriarty , Irish writer and philosopher*John Kundereri Moriarty , Australian football player and artist...
, and at New England Conservatory under Boris Goldovsky. He and his brother at one point recovered the plans of the old Boston Opera House (1909)
Boston Opera House (1909)
The Boston Opera House was an opera house located on Huntington Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. It opened in 1909 as the home of the Boston Opera Company and was demolished in 1958 after years of disuse....
, intending to rebuild it.
Deborah O'Brien ( the 1971 Miss Massachusetts, and an associate of the Opera Company of Boston );
Michael Popowich of the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
.
Michael Duarte, a longtime friend and collaborator of Mrs Pettitt's, and a lead in several of her productions, is expected to take her place within Chaminade Opera as director.