Royal Opera, London
Encyclopedia
The Royal Opera is an opera company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
. Along with the English National Opera
, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968. Since its inception it has shared the Royal Opera House with the dance company now known as the Royal Ballet.
When the company was formed its policy was to perform all works in English, but since the late 1950s most operas have been given in the original language. From the outset performers have comprised a mixture of British and Commonwealth
singers and international guest stars; fostering the careers of singers from within the company was a consistent policy of the early years. Among the many guest performers have been Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
, Hans Hotter
, Kirsten Flagstad
, Birgit Nilsson
, Maria Callas
, Plácido Domingo
and Luciano Pavarotti
. Among those who have risen to international prominence from the ranks of the company are Joan Sutherland
, Geraint Evans
, Kiri Te Kanawa
and Jon Vickers
.
The company's growth under the management of David Webster
from modest beginnings to parity with the greatest opera houses was recognised by the grant of the title "the Royal Opera" in 1968. Under Webster's successor, John Tooley
, the Royal Opera prospered, but after his retirement in 1988, there followed a period of instability and the closure of the Royal Opera House for rebuilding and restoration between 1997 and 1999. The 21st century has seen a stable managerial regime once more in place. The company has had six music directors since its inception: namely, Karl Rankl
, Rafael Kubelik
, Georg Solti
, Colin Davis
, Bernard Haitink
and Antonio Pappano
.
s had presented short seasons of opera at Covent Garden, sung in the original language, with star singers and conductors. Pre-war opera was described by the historian Montague Haltrecht as "international, dressy and exclusive". During the war, the Royal Opera House was leased by its owners, Covent Garden Properties Ltd, to Mecca Ballrooms
who used it profitably as a dance hall. Towards the end of the war, the owners approached the music publishers Boosey and Hawkes
to see if they were interested in taking a lease of the building and staging opera (and ballet) once more. Boosey and Hawkes took a lease, and granted a sub-lease at generous terms to a not-for-profit charitable trust established to run the operation. The chairman of the trust was Lord Keynes
.
There was some pressure for a return to the pre-war regime of starry international seasons. Sir Thomas Beecham
, who had presented many Covent Garden seasons between 1910 and 1939 confidently expected to do so again after the war. However, Boosey and Hawkes, and David Webster
, whom they appointed as chief executive of the Covent Garden company, were committed to presenting opera all year round, in English with a resident company. It was widely assumed that this aim would be met by inviting the existing Sadler's Wells Opera Company
to become resident at the Royal Opera House. Webster successfully extended just such an invitation to the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, but he regarded the sister opera company as "parochial". He was determined to set up a new opera company of his own. The British government had recently begun to give funds to subsidise the arts, and Webster negotiated an ad hoc grant of £60,000 and an annual subsidy of £25,000, enabling him to proceed.
and Eugene Goossens
, but neither of those conductors was willing to consider an opera company with no leading international stars. Webster appointed a little-known Austrian, Karl Rankl
, to the post. Before the war, Rankl had acquired considerable experience in charge of opera companies in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. He accepted Webster's invitation to assemble and train the principals and chorus of a new opera company, alongside a permanent orchestra that would play in both operas and ballets.
The new company made its debut in a joint presentation, together with the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, of Purcell
's The Fairy Queen on 31 July 1946. The first production by the opera company alone was Carmen
, on 14 January 1947. Reviews were favourable. The Times
said:
All the members of the cast for the production were from Britain or the Commonwealth
. Later in the season, one of England's few pre-war international opera stars, Eva Turner
, appeared as Turandot
. For the company's second season, eminent singers from continental Europe were recruited, including Ljuba Welitsch
, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
, Paolo Silveri
, Rudolf Schock
and Set Svanholm
. Other international stars who were willing to re-learn their roles in English for the company in its early years included Kirsten Flagstad
and Hans Hotter
for The Valkyrie
. Nevertheless, even as early as 1948, the opera in English policy was weakening; the company was obliged to present some Wagner performances in German to recruit leading exponents of the main roles. At first Rankl conducted all the productions; he was dismayed when eminent guest conductors including Beecham, Clemens Krauss
and Erich Kleiber
were later invited for prestige productions, and by 1951 Rankl felt that he was no longer valued, and announced his resignation. In Haltrecht's view, the company built up from nothing by Rankl had outgrown him.
In the early years, the company sought to be innovative and widely accessible. Ticket prices were kept down: in the 1949 season 530 seats were available for each performance at two shillings and sixpence. In addition to the standard operatic repertory, the company pioneered works by modern British composers such as Britten
, Vaughan Williams
, Bliss
, and, later, Walton
. The young stage director Peter Brook
was put in charge of productions, bringing a fresh and sometimes controversial approach to stagings.
, Josef Krips
, Britten and Rudolf Kempe
, were among the guests but none would take the permanent post. It was not until 1954 that Webster found a replacement for Rankl in Rafael Kubelik
. Kubelik announced immediately that he was in favour of continuing the policy of singing in the vernacular: "Everything that the composer has written should be understood by the audience; and that is not possible if the opera is sung in a language with which they are not familiar". This provoked a public onslaught by Beecham, who continued to maintain that it was impossible to produce more than a handful of English-speaking opera stars, and that importing singers from continental Europe was the only way to achieve first-rate results.
Despite Beecham's views, by the mid-1950s the Covent Garden company included many British and Commonwealth singers who were already or were soon to be much sought after by overseas opera houses. Among them were Joan Carlyle
, Marie Collier
, Geraint Evans
, Michael Langdon
, Elsie Morison
, Amy Shuard
, Joan Sutherland
, Josephine Veasey
and Jon Vickers
. Nevertheless, as Lords Goodman
and Harewood
put it in a 1969 report for the Arts Council
, "[A]s time went on the operatic centre of British life began to take on an international character. This meant that, while continuing to develop the British artists, it was felt impossible to reach the highest international level by using only British artists or singing only in English". Guest singers from mainland Europe in the 1950s included Maria Callas
, Boris Christoff
, Victoria de los Ángeles
, Tito Gobbi
and Birgit Nilsson
.
The verdict of the public on whether operas should be given in translation or the original was clear. In 1959, the opera house stated in its annual report, "[T]he percentage attendance at all opera in English was 72 per cent; attendance at the special productions marked by higher prices was 91 per cent … it is 'international' productions with highly priced seats that reduce our losses". The 'opera in English' policy was never formally renounced. On this subject, Peter Heyworth
wrote in The Observer
in 1960 that Covent Garden had "quickly learned the secret that underlies the genius of British institutions for undisturbed change: it continued to pay lip service to a policy that it increasingly ignored".
By the end of the 1950s, Covent Garden was generally regarded as approaching the excellence of the world's greatest opera companies. Its sister ballet company had achieved international recognition and was granted a royal charter in 1956, changing its title to "the Royal Ballet"; the opera company was close to reaching similar eminence. Two landmark productions greatly enhanced its reputation. In 1957, Covent Garden presented the first substantially complete professional staging at any opera house of Berlioz
's vast opera The Trojans
, directed by John Gielgud
and conducted by Kubelik. The Times commented, "It has never been a success; but it is now". In 1958 the present theatre's centenary was marked by Luchino Visconti
's production of Verdi
's Don Carlos
, with Vickers, Gobbi, Christoff, Gré Brouwenstijn
and Fedora Barbieri
, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini
. The work was then a rarity, and had hitherto been widely regarded as impossible to stage satisfactorily, but Visconti's production was a triumph.
, Georg Solti
and Kubelik himself. In June 1960 Solti was appointed musical director from the 1961 season onwards. With his previous experience in charge of the Munich
and Frankfurt opera houses, he was at first uncertain that Covent Garden, not yet consistently reaching the top international level, was a post he wanted. Bruno Walter persuaded him otherwise, and he took up the musical directorship in August 1961. The press gave him a cautious welcome, but there was some concern about a drift away from the company's original policies:
Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular, and promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists. Among those who came to prominence during the decade were Gwyneth Jones and Peter Glossop
. Solti demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of L'heure espagnole
, Erwartung
and Gianni Schicchi
. Nevertheless, Solti and Webster had to take into account the complete opposition on the part of such stars as Callas to opera in translation. Moreover, as Webster recognised, the English-speaking singers wanted to learn their roles in the original so that they could sing them in other countries and on record. Increasingly, productions were in the original language. In the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti was a strong proponent of the stagione
system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system. By 1967, The Times said, "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at the Met
in New York, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan
or Vienna
".
The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works and less familiar pieces. The five composers whose works were given most frequently were Verdi, Puccini
, Wagner, Mozart
and Richard Strauss
; the next most performed composer was Britten. Rarities performed in the 1960s included operas by Handel
and Janáček
(neither composer's works being as common in the opera house then as now), and works by Poulenc
, Ravel
and Tippett
. There was also a celebrated production of Schoenberg
's Moses and Aaron
in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons. In the mainstream repertoire, a highlight of the decade was Franco Zeffirelli
's production of Tosca
in 1964 with Callas, Renato Cioni
and Gobbi. Among the guest conductors who appeared at Covent Garden during the 1960s were Otto Klemperer
, Pierre Boulez
, Claudio Abbado
and Colin Davis
. Guest singers included Jussi Björling
, Mirella Freni
, Sena Jurinac
, Irmgard Seefried
and Astrid Varnay
.
The company made occasional appearances away from the Royal Opera House. Touring within Britain was limited to centres with large enough theatres to accommodate the company's productions, but in 1964 the company made its first appearance at the Proms
in London, in a concert performance of Otello
. Thereafter an annual appearance at the Proms was a regular feature of the company's schedule for many years. In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff
and a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett
. All but two of the principals were British. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
, "beside themselves with enthusiasm".
In 1968, on the recommendation of the Home Secretary
, James Callaghan
, the Queen conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company. It was the third stage company in the UK to be so honoured, following the Royal Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company
.
. One of Webster's last important decisions had been to recommend to the board that Colin Davis should be invited to take over as musical director when Solti left in 1971. It was announced in advance that Davis would work in tandem with Peter Hall, appointed director of productions. Peter Brook had briefly held that title in the company's early days, but in general the managerial structure of the opera company differed markedly from that of the ballet. The latter had always had its own director, subordinate to the chief executive of the opera house but with, in practice, a great degree of autonomy. The opera company was generally run by the chief executive of the opera house and the musical director of the opera company. Appointing a substantial theatrical figure such as Hall was an important departure. Hall, however, changed his mind, and did not take up the appointment, going instead to run the National Theatre
. His defection, and the departure to Australian Opera
of the staff conductor Edward Downes
, a noted Verdi expert, left the company weakened on both production and musical sides.
Like his predecessors, Davis experienced hostility from sections of the audience in his early days in charge. His first production after taking over was a well-received Le nozze di Figaro, in which Kiri Te Kanawa
achieved immediate stardom, but booing was heard at a "disastrous" Nabucco
in 1971, and his conducting of Wagner's Ring
was at first compared unfavourably with that of his predecessor. The Covent Garden board briefly considered replacing him, but was dissuaded by its chairman, Lord Drogheda
. Davis's Mozart was generally admired; he received much praise for reviving the little-known La clemenza di Tito
in 1974. Among his other successes were The Trojans and Benvenuto Cellini
.
Under Davis, the opera house introduced Prom performances, giving, as Bernard Levin
wrote, "an opportunity for those (particularly the young, of course) who could not normally afford the price of stalls tickets to sample the view from the posher quarters at the trifling cost of £3 and a willingness to sit on the floor". Davis conducted more than 30 operas during his 15-year tenure, but, he said, "people like [Lorin] Maazel
, Abbado and [Riccardo] Muti
would only come for new productions". Unlike Rankl, and like Solti, Davis wanted the world's best conductors to come to Covent Garden. He ceded the baton to guests for new productions including Der Rosenkavalier
, Rigoletto
and Aida
. In The Times, John Higgins wrote, "One of the hallmarks of the Davis regime was the flood of international conductors who suddenly arrived at Covent Garden. While Davis has been in control perhaps only three big names have been missing from the roster: Karajan
, Bernstein
and Barenboim
". Among the high-profile guests conducting Davis's company were Carlos Kleiber
for performances of Der Rosenkavalier (1974), Elektra
(1977), La bohème
(1979) and Otello
(1980), and Abbado conducting Un ballo in maschera
(1975), starring Plácido Domingo
and Katia Ricciarelli
.
In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, Davis conducted a number of atonal and other modern operas, including Berg
's Lulu
and Wozzeck
, Tippett
's The Knot Garden
and The Ice Break
, and Alexander Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg
and Eine florentinische Tragödie
.
Among the star guest singers during the Davis years were the sopranos Montserrat Caballé
and Leontyne Price
, the tenors Carlo Bergonzi
, Nicolai Gedda
and Luciano Pavarotti
and the bass Gottlob Frick
. British singers appearing with the company included Janet Baker
, Heather Harper
, John Tomlinson and Richard Van Allan
. Davis's tenure, at that time the longest in the Royal Opera's history, closed in July 1986 not with a gala, but, at his insistence, with a Prom performance of Fidelio
with cheap admission prices.
, who was then the musical director of the Glyndebourne Festival
. He was highly regarded for the excellence of his performances, though his repertory was not large. In particular, he was not known as an interpreter of the Italian opera repertoire (he conducted no Puccini and only three Verdi works during his music directorship at Covent Garden). His tenure began well; a cycle of the Mozart Da Ponte
operas directed by Johannes Schaaf was a success, and although a Ring cycle with the Russian director Yuri Lyubimov
could not be completed, a substitute staging of the cycle directed by Götz Friedrich
was well received. Musically and dramatically the company prospered into the 1990s. A 1993 production of Die Meistersinger
, conducted by Haitink and starring John Tomlinson, Thomas Allen, Gosta Winbergh
and Nancy Gustafson
, was widely admired, as was Richard Eyre
's 1994 staging of La traviata
, conducted by Solti and propelling Angela Gheorghiu
to stardom.
For some time, purely musical considerations were overshadowed by practical and managerial crises at the Royal Opera House. Sir John Tooley retired as general director in 1988, and his post was given to the television executive Jeremy Isaacs
. Tooley later forsook his customary reticence and pronounced the Isaacs period a disaster, citing poor management that failed to control inflated manning levels with a consequent steep rise in costs and ticket prices. The uneasy relations between Isaacs and his colleagues, notably Haitink, were also damaging. Tooley concluded that under Isaacs "Covent Garden had become a place of corporate entertainment, no longer a theatre primarily for opera and ballet lovers". Isaacs was widely blamed for the poor public relations arising from the 1996 BBC
television series The House
, in which cameras were permitted to film the day-to-day backstage life of the opera and ballet companies and the running of the theatre. The Daily Telegraph
commented, "For years, the Opera House was a byword for mismanagement and chaos. Its innermost workings were exposed to public ridicule by the BBC fly-on-the-wall series The House".
The most disruptive event of the decade for both the opera and the ballet companies was the closure of the Royal Opera House between 1997 and 1999 for major rebuilding. The Independent on Sunday asserted that Isaacs "hopelessly mismanaged the closure of the Opera House during its redevelopment". Isaacs, the paper states, turned down the chance of a temporary move to the Lyceum Theatre almost next door to the opera house, pinning his hopes on a proposed new temporary building on London's South Bank
. That scheme was refused planning permission, leaving the opera and ballet companies homeless. Isaacs resigned in December 1996, nine months before the expiry of his contract. Haitink, dismayed by events, threatened to leave, but was persuaded to stay and keep the opera company going in a series of temporary homes in London theatres and concert halls. A semi-staged Ring
cycle at the Royal Albert Hall
gained superlative reviews and won many new admirers for Haitink and the company, whose members included Tomlinson, Anne Evans
and Hildegard Behrens
.
After Isaacs left, there was a period of managerial instability, with three chief executives in three years. Isaacs's successor, Genista McIntosh, resigned in May 1997 after five months, citing ill-health. Her post was filled by Mary Allen
, who moved into the job from the Arts Council. Her selection did not comply with the Council's rules for such appointments, and following a critical House of Commons
Select Committee report on the management of the opera house she resigned in March 1998, as did the entire board of the opera house, including the chairman. A new board appointed Michael Kaiser
as general director in September 1998. He oversaw the restoration of the two companies' finances and the re-opening of the opera house. He was widely regarded as a success, and there was some surprise when he left in June 2000 after less than two years to run the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C..
The last operatic music to be heard in the old house had been the finale of Falstaff, conducted by Solti with the singers led by Bryn Terfel
, in a joint opera and ballet farewell gala in July 1997. When the house reopened in December 1999, magnificently restored, Falstaff was the opera given on the opening night, conducted by Haitink, once more with Terfel in the title role.
succeeded Haitink as music director of the Royal Opera. As at 2011, both Hall and Pappano remain in post. Following the redevelopment, a second, smaller auditorium, the Linbury Studio Theatre has been made available available for small-scale productions by the resident companies, and for work produced in the ROH2 programme, which supports new work and developing artists.
In addition to the standard works of the operatic repertoire, the Royal Opera has presented many less well known pieces since 2002, including Cilea
's Adriana Lecouvreur
, Massenet
's Cendrillon
, Prokofiev
's The Gambler
, Rimsky Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride
, Rossini's Il turco in Italia
, Steffani
's Niobe
, and Tchaikovsky's The Tsarina's Slippers
. Among the composers whose works were premiered were Thomas Adès
, Harrison Birtwistle
, Lorin Maazel, and Nicholas Maw
.
Productions in the first five years of Pappano's tenure ranged from Shostakovich
's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
(2004) to Stephen Sondheim
's Sweeney Todd
(2003) starring Thomas Allen and Felicity Palmer
. Pappano's Ring cycle, begun in 2004 and staged as a complete tetralogy in 2007, was praised like Haitink's before it for its musical excellence; it was staged in a production described by Richard Morrison in The Times as "much derided for mixing the homely … the wacky and the cosmic". During Pappano's tenure, his predecessors Davis and Haitink have both returned as guests. Haitink conducted Parsifal, with Tomlinson, Christopher Ventris
and Petra Lang in 2007, and Davis conducted four Mozart operas between 2002 and 2011, Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
in 2007 and Humperdinck
's Hänsel und Gretel in 2008. In 2007, Sir Simon Rattle
conducted a new production of Debussy
's Pelléas et Mélisande starring Simon Keenlyside
, Angelika Kirchschlager
and Gerald Finley
.
The company visited Japan in 2010, presenting a new production of Manon
and the Eyre production of La traviata. While the main company was abroad, a smaller company remained in London, presenting Niobe, Così fan tutte
and Don Pasquale
at Covent Garden.
In 2010, the Royal Opera House received a government subsidy of just over £27m, compared with a subsidy of £15m in 1998. This sum was divided between the opera and ballet companies and the cost of running the building. Compared with opera houses in mainland Europe, Covent Garden's public subsidy has remained low as a percentage of its income – typically 43%, compared with 60% for its counterpart in Munich.
In the latter part of the 2000s the Royal Opera gave an average of 150 performances each season, lasting from September to July, of about 20 operas, nearly half of which were new productions. Productions announced for the 2011–12 season include a new opera by Judith Weir
, and the first performances of The Trojans at Covent Garden since 1972, conducted by Pappano, and starring Jonas Kaufmann
, Eva-Maria Westbroek
and Anna Caterina Antonacci
.
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
. Along with the English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968. Since its inception it has shared the Royal Opera House with the dance company now known as the Royal Ballet.
When the company was formed its policy was to perform all works in English, but since the late 1950s most operas have been given in the original language. From the outset performers have comprised a mixture of British and Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
singers and international guest stars; fostering the careers of singers from within the company was a consistent policy of the early years. Among the many guest performers have been Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, DBE was a German-born Austrian/British soprano opera singer and recitalist. She was among the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century, much admired for her performances of Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, and Wolf.-Early life:Olga Maria Elisabeth Friederike...
, Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose...
, Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Målfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian soprano...
, Birgit Nilsson
Birgit Nilsson
right|thumb|Nilsson in 1948.Birgit Nilsson was a celebrated Swedish dramatic soprano who specialized in operatic and symphonic works...
, 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...
, Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
and Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti
right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...
. Among those who have risen to international prominence from the ranks of the company are Joan Sutherland
Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....
, Geraint Evans
Geraint Evans
Sir Geraint Llewellyn Evans was a Welsh baritone or bass-baritone noted for operatic roles including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, and the title roles in Falstaff and Wozzeck...
, Kiri Te Kanawa
Kiri Te Kanawa
Dame Kiri Jeanette Te Kanawa, ONZ, DBE, AC is a New Zealand / Māori soprano who has had a highly successful international opera career since 1968. Acclaimed as one of the most beloved sopranos in both the United States and Britain she possesses a warm full lyric soprano voice, singing a wide array...
and Jon Vickers
Jon Vickers
Jonathan Stewart Vickers, CC , known professionally as Jon Vickers, is a retired Canadian heldentenor.Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he was the sixth in a family of eight children. In 1950, he was awarded a scholarship to study opera at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto...
.
The company's growth under the management of David Webster
David Webster (opera manager)
Sir David Webster was the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1945 to 1970. He played a key part in the establishment of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera companies....
from modest beginnings to parity with the greatest opera houses was recognised by the grant of the title "the Royal Opera" in 1968. Under Webster's successor, John Tooley
John Tooley
Sir John Tooley is a former general director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. He has also held a range of appointments in the musical world, serving as a trustee or board member for many organisations....
, the Royal Opera prospered, but after his retirement in 1988, there followed a period of instability and the closure of the Royal Opera House for rebuilding and restoration between 1997 and 1999. The 21st century has seen a stable managerial regime once more in place. The company has had six music directors since its inception: namely, Karl Rankl
Karl Rankl
Karl Rankl was a British conductor and composer of Austrian birth. A pupil of the composers Schoenberg and Webern, he conducted at opera houses in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia until fleeing from the Nazis and taking refuge in England in 1939.Rankl was appointed musical director of the...
, Rafael Kubelik
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer.-Early life:Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me." His mother was a Hungarian...
, Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
, Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
, Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink, CH, KBE is a Dutch conductor and violinist.- Early life :Haitink was born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam...
and Antonio Pappano
Antonio Pappano
Antonio Pappano is a British conductor and pianist of Italian parentage.Pappano's family relocated to England from Castelfranco in Miscano near Benevento, Italy in 1958 and at the time of his birth his parents worked in the restaurant business, but Pasquale Pappano, his father, was by vocation a...
.
Background
Before the Second World War, various syndicates or individual impresarioImpresario
An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...
s had presented short seasons of opera at Covent Garden, sung in the original language, with star singers and conductors. Pre-war opera was described by the historian Montague Haltrecht as "international, dressy and exclusive". During the war, the Royal Opera House was leased by its owners, Covent Garden Properties Ltd, to Mecca Ballrooms
Mecca Leisure Group
Mecca Leisure Group was a British business that ran nightclubs, hotels, theme parks, bingo parlors, and Hard Rock Cafes. During the 1960s they were the centre of entertainment with numerous nightclubs throughout major UK towns and cities. Mecca ballrooms were used for the BBC TV show Come Dancing...
who used it profitably as a dance hall. Towards the end of the war, the owners approached the music publishers Boosey and Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and wind musical instruments....
to see if they were interested in taking a lease of the building and staging opera (and ballet) once more. Boosey and Hawkes took a lease, and granted a sub-lease at generous terms to a not-for-profit charitable trust established to run the operation. The chairman of the trust was Lord Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
.
There was some pressure for a return to the pre-war regime of starry international seasons. Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, who had presented many Covent Garden seasons between 1910 and 1939 confidently expected to do so again after the war. However, Boosey and Hawkes, and David Webster
David Webster (opera manager)
Sir David Webster was the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1945 to 1970. He played a key part in the establishment of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera companies....
, whom they appointed as chief executive of the Covent Garden company, were committed to presenting opera all year round, in English with a resident company. It was widely assumed that this aim would be met by inviting the existing Sadler's Wells Opera Company
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
to become resident at the Royal Opera House. Webster successfully extended just such an invitation to the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, but he regarded the sister opera company as "parochial". He was determined to set up a new opera company of his own. The British government had recently begun to give funds to subsidise the arts, and Webster negotiated an ad hoc grant of £60,000 and an annual subsidy of £25,000, enabling him to proceed.
Beginnings
Webster's first priority was to appoint a musical director to build the company from scratch. He negotiated with Bruno WalterBruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
and Eugene Goossens
Eugène Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.-Biography:He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens and the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens...
, but neither of those conductors was willing to consider an opera company with no leading international stars. Webster appointed a little-known Austrian, Karl Rankl
Karl Rankl
Karl Rankl was a British conductor and composer of Austrian birth. A pupil of the composers Schoenberg and Webern, he conducted at opera houses in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia until fleeing from the Nazis and taking refuge in England in 1939.Rankl was appointed musical director of the...
, to the post. Before the war, Rankl had acquired considerable experience in charge of opera companies in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. He accepted Webster's invitation to assemble and train the principals and chorus of a new opera company, alongside a permanent orchestra that would play in both operas and ballets.
The new company made its debut in a joint presentation, together with the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, of Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
's The Fairy Queen on 31 July 1946. The first production by the opera company alone was Carmen
Carmen
Carmen 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...
, on 14 January 1947. Reviews were favourable. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
said:
All the members of the cast for the production were from Britain or the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
. Later in the season, one of England's few pre-war international opera stars, Eva Turner
Eva Turner
Dame Eva Turner DBE was an English dramatic soprano with an international reputation. Her strong, steady and well-trained voice was renowned for its clarion power in Italian and German operatic roles.-Career:...
, appeared as Turandot
Turandot
Turandot 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...
. For the company's second season, eminent singers from continental Europe were recruited, including Ljuba Welitsch
Ljuba Welitsch
Ljuba Welitsch was a celebrated Bulgarian, later Austrian, operatic soprano.She studied singing at Sofia Conservatory with professor Georgi Zlatev-Cherkin. After specializing in Vienna, she first appeared in Sofia in 1936...
, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, DBE was a German-born Austrian/British soprano opera singer and recitalist. She was among the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century, much admired for her performances of Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, and Wolf.-Early life:Olga Maria Elisabeth Friederike...
, Paolo Silveri
Paolo Silveri
Paolo Silveri was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, one of the finest Verdi baritones of his time....
, Rudolf Schock
Rudolf Schock
Rudolf Johann Schock was a German tenor.He sang a wide repertory from operetta to Lohengrin, recording among others opera and lieder, doing television, radio and film work. Slim and handsome, he made many films.His voice fell almost into the heldentenor fach but was smaller and more...
and Set Svanholm
Set Svanholm
Set Svanholm was a Swedish operatic tenor, considered the leading Tristan and Siegfried of the first decade following World War II....
. Other international stars who were willing to re-learn their roles in English for the company in its early years included Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Målfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian soprano...
and Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose...
for The Valkyrie
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
. Nevertheless, even as early as 1948, the opera in English policy was weakening; the company was obliged to present some Wagner performances in German to recruit leading exponents of the main roles. At first Rankl conducted all the productions; he was dismayed when eminent guest conductors including Beecham, Clemens Krauss
Clemens Krauss
Clemens Heinrich Krauss was an Austrian conductor and opera impresario, particularly associated with the music of Richard Strauss.-Biography:...
and Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber was an Austrian conductor.- Biography :Born in Vienna, Kleiber studied in Prague...
were later invited for prestige productions, and by 1951 Rankl felt that he was no longer valued, and announced his resignation. In Haltrecht's view, the company built up from nothing by Rankl had outgrown him.
In the early years, the company sought to be innovative and widely accessible. Ticket prices were kept down: in the 1949 season 530 seats were available for each performance at two shillings and sixpence. In addition to the standard operatic repertory, the company pioneered works by modern British composers such as Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
, and, later, Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
. The young stage director Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
was put in charge of productions, bringing a fresh and sometimes controversial approach to stagings.
1950s
After Rankl's departure the company engaged a series of guest conductors while Webster sought a new musical director. His preferred candidates, Erich Kleiber, John BarbirolliJohn Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, Josef Krips
Josef Krips
Josef Alois Krips was an Austrian conductor and violinist.-Biography:Krips was born in Vienna and went on to become a pupil of Eusebius Mandyczewski and Felix Weingartner. From 1921 to 1924, he served as Weingartner's assistant at the Vienna Volksoper and as répétiteur and chorus master...
, Britten and Rudolf Kempe
Rudolf Kempe
Rudolf Kempe was a German conductor.- Biography :Kempe was born in Dresden, where from the age of fourteen he studied at the Dresden State Opera School. He played oboe in the opera orchestra of Dortmund and then in the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, from 1929...
, were among the guests but none would take the permanent post. It was not until 1954 that Webster found a replacement for Rankl in Rafael Kubelik
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer.-Early life:Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me." His mother was a Hungarian...
. Kubelik announced immediately that he was in favour of continuing the policy of singing in the vernacular: "Everything that the composer has written should be understood by the audience; and that is not possible if the opera is sung in a language with which they are not familiar". This provoked a public onslaught by Beecham, who continued to maintain that it was impossible to produce more than a handful of English-speaking opera stars, and that importing singers from continental Europe was the only way to achieve first-rate results.
Despite Beecham's views, by the mid-1950s the Covent Garden company included many British and Commonwealth singers who were already or were soon to be much sought after by overseas opera houses. Among them were Joan Carlyle
Joan Carlyle
Joan Carlyle is a Welsh opera singer .After studying singing with Madame Nicklass Kempner, Joan Carlyle auditioned for the Royal Opera House and was put under contract by music director Rafael Kubelík and made her debut in 1955.She became one of the principal English-speaking singers who emerged at...
, Marie Collier
Marie Collier
Marie Collier was an Australian operatic soprano.Marie Collier was born in Ballarat, Victoria. She first came to prominence in 1952 singing the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana for the National Theatre Opera company in Melbourne...
, Geraint Evans
Geraint Evans
Sir Geraint Llewellyn Evans was a Welsh baritone or bass-baritone noted for operatic roles including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, and the title roles in Falstaff and Wozzeck...
, Michael Langdon
Michael Langdon
Michael Langdon was a British bass opera singer.Langdon was born in Wolverhampton. He had six half brothers and sisters, the youngest, Maud being 19 years his senior. His father, Harry was sixty when his youngest son was born and by all accounts a very strong personality...
, Elsie Morison
Elsie Morison
Elsie Jean Morison is an Australian soprano.Morison was born in Ballarat, Victoria, and studied at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music from 1943-45...
, Amy Shuard
Amy Shuard
Amy Shuard CBE was an English operatic soprano renowned in such dramatic roles as Elektra, Turandot and Brünnhilde. She created both title roles in Janáček's Káťa Kabanová and Jenůfa in their respective British premieres. She has been described as "the best English dramatic soprano since Eva...
, Joan Sutherland
Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....
, Josephine Veasey
Josephine Veasey
Josephine Veasey is a British mezzo-soprano, particularly associated with Wagner and Berliozroles.-Life and career:Born in Peckham, she studied with Audrey Langford, and became a member of the Royal Opera House chorus in 1949, she made her debut as a soloist in 1955, as the Shepherd Boy in...
and Jon Vickers
Jon Vickers
Jonathan Stewart Vickers, CC , known professionally as Jon Vickers, is a retired Canadian heldentenor.Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he was the sixth in a family of eight children. In 1950, he was awarded a scholarship to study opera at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto...
. Nevertheless, as Lords Goodman
Arnold Goodman, Baron Goodman
Arnold Abraham Goodman, Baron Goodman, CH, QC, was a British lawyer and political advisor.-Life:Lord Goodman was educated at University College London and Downing College, Cambridge. He became a leading London lawyer as Senior Partner in the law firm Goodman, Derrick & Co...
and Harewood
George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, KBE AM , styled The Hon. George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was the elder son of the 6th Earl of Harewood , and Princess Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of King George V of the United Kingdom and...
put it in a 1969 report for the Arts Council
Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...
, "[A]s time went on the operatic centre of British life began to take on an international character. This meant that, while continuing to develop the British artists, it was felt impossible to reach the highest international level by using only British artists or singing only in English". Guest singers from mainland Europe in the 1950s included 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...
, Boris Christoff
Boris Christoff
Boris Christoff was a Bulgarian opera singer...
, Victoria de los Ángeles
Victoria de los Ángeles
Victoria de los Ángeles was a Spanish Catalan operatic soprano and recitalist whose career began in the early 1940s and reached its height in the years from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Her obituary in The Times noted that she must be counted “among the finest singers of the second half...
, Tito Gobbi
Tito Gobbi
Tito Gobbi was an Italian operatic baritone with an international reputation.-Biography:Tito Gobbi was born in Bassano del Grappa and studied law at the University of Padua before he trained as a singer. Giulio Crimi, a well-known Italian tenor of a previous generation, was Gobbi's teacher in Rome...
and Birgit Nilsson
Birgit Nilsson
right|thumb|Nilsson in 1948.Birgit Nilsson was a celebrated Swedish dramatic soprano who specialized in operatic and symphonic works...
.
The verdict of the public on whether operas should be given in translation or the original was clear. In 1959, the opera house stated in its annual report, "[T]he percentage attendance at all opera in English was 72 per cent; attendance at the special productions marked by higher prices was 91 per cent … it is 'international' productions with highly priced seats that reduce our losses". The 'opera in English' policy was never formally renounced. On this subject, Peter Heyworth
Peter Heyworth
Peter Lawrence Frederick Heyworth was an American-born English music critic and biographer. He wrote the definitive biography of Otto Klemperer and was a prominent supporter of avant-garde music....
wrote in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
in 1960 that Covent Garden had "quickly learned the secret that underlies the genius of British institutions for undisturbed change: it continued to pay lip service to a policy that it increasingly ignored".
By the end of the 1950s, Covent Garden was generally regarded as approaching the excellence of the world's greatest opera companies. Its sister ballet company had achieved international recognition and was granted a royal charter in 1956, changing its title to "the Royal Ballet"; the opera company was close to reaching similar eminence. Two landmark productions greatly enhanced its reputation. In 1957, Covent Garden presented the first substantially complete professional staging at any opera house of Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's vast opera The Trojans
Les Troyens
Les Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...
, directed by John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
and conducted by Kubelik. The Times commented, "It has never been a success; but it is now". In 1958 the present theatre's centenary was marked by Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
's production of Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
, with Vickers, Gobbi, Christoff, Gré Brouwenstijn
Gré Brouwenstijn
The Dutch lyric-dramatic soprano Gré Brouwenstijn was a famous opera singer whose stage career spanned from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s. She was admired for her warm, radiant voice, her stage presence, her dramatic instincts, and her "Ingrid Bergman" looks...
and Fedora Barbieri
Fedora Barbieri
Fedora Barbieri was an Italian mezzo-soprano.Barbieri was born in Trieste. She made her official debut in Florence in 1940, but retired in 1943 because of her marriage. She re-emerged in 1945. She was one of the first performers to investigate and perform in early operas by Monteverdi and Pergolesi...
, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini
Carlo Maria Giulini
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor.-Biography:Giulini was born in Barletta, Italy, to a father born in Lombardy and a mother born in Naples; but he was raised in Bolzano, which at the time of his birth was part of Austria...
. The work was then a rarity, and had hitherto been widely regarded as impossible to stage satisfactorily, but Visconti's production was a triumph.
1960s
Kubelik did not renew his contract when it expired, and from 1958 there was an interregnum until 1961, covered by guest conductors including Giulini, Kempe, Tullio SerafinTullio Serafin
-Biography:Tullio Serafin was a leading Italian opera conductor with a long career and a very broad repertoire who revived many 19th century bel canto operas by Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti to become staples of 20th century repertoire...
, Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
and Kubelik himself. In June 1960 Solti was appointed musical director from the 1961 season onwards. With his previous experience in charge of the Munich
Bavarian State Opera
The Bavarian State Opera is an opera company based in Munich, Germany.Its orchestra is the Bavarian State Orchestra.- History:The opera company which was founded under Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy has been in existence since 1653...
and Frankfurt opera houses, he was at first uncertain that Covent Garden, not yet consistently reaching the top international level, was a post he wanted. Bruno Walter persuaded him otherwise, and he took up the musical directorship in August 1961. The press gave him a cautious welcome, but there was some concern about a drift away from the company's original policies:
Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular, and promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists. Among those who came to prominence during the decade were Gwyneth Jones and Peter Glossop
Peter Glossop
Peter Glossop was an English baritone who was the only Englishman to have sung Verdi's great tragic baritone roles at La Scala, Milan...
. Solti demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of L'heure espagnole
L'heure espagnole
L'heure espagnole is a one-act opera, described as a comédie musicale, with music by Maurice Ravel to a French libretto by Franc-Nohain, based on his play of the same name first performed at the Théâtre de l'Odéon on 28 October 1904...
, Erwartung
Erwartung
Erwartung , Op.17 is a one-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by Marie Pappenheim. Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until June 6, 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky with Marie Gutheil-Schoder as the soprano. The work takes the unusual form of a monologue for solo...
and Gianni Schicchi
Gianni Schicchi
Gianni Schicchi is a comic opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, composed in 1917–18. The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. The work is the third and final part of Puccini's Il trittico —three one-act operas with...
. Nevertheless, Solti and Webster had to take into account the complete opposition on the part of such stars as Callas to opera in translation. Moreover, as Webster recognised, the English-speaking singers wanted to learn their roles in the original so that they could sing them in other countries and on record. Increasingly, productions were in the original language. In the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti was a strong proponent of the stagione
Stagione
Stagione is an organizational system for presenting opera, often used by large houses. Typically each production is cast separately and has a brief but intensive run of performances. By contrast, companies that use a repertory system maintain a permanent company and rotate productions over many...
system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system. By 1967, The Times said, "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at the Met
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...
in New York, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan
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...
or Vienna
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
".
The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works and less familiar pieces. The five composers whose works were given most frequently were Verdi, Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
, Wagner, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
; the next most performed composer was Britten. Rarities performed in the 1960s included operas by Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
and Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
(neither composer's works being as common in the opera house then as now), and works by Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
and Tippett
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...
. There was also a celebrated production of Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's Moses and Aaron
Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto was by the composer after the Book of Exodus.-Compositional history:...
in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons. In the mainstream repertoire, a highlight of the decade was Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
's production of Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
in 1964 with Callas, Renato Cioni
Renato Cioni
Renato Cioni is an Italian operatictenor, particularly associated with the Italian repertory.Born on the Isle of Elba, the son of a fisherman, Cioni received his main musical education at the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence...
and Gobbi. Among the guest conductors who appeared at Covent Garden during the 1960s were Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...
, Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera,...
and Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
. Guest singers included Jussi Björling
Jussi Björling
Johan Jonatan "Jussi" Björling was a Swedish tenor. One of the leading operatic singers of the 20th Century, Björling appeared frequently at the Royal Opera House in London, La Scala in Milan, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as well as at other major European opera...
, Mirella Freni
Mirella Freni
Mirella Freni, birth name Mirella Fregni, is an Italian opera soprano whose repertoire includes Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and Tchaikovsky...
, Sena Jurinac
Sena Jurinac
Sena Jurinac Sena (Srebrenka) Jurinac Sena (Srebrenka) Jurinac ([juˈrinats] (24 October 192122 November 2011) was a Bosnian Croat/Austrian operatic soprano.Born in Travnik, Bosnia-Herzegovina, she studied at the Zagreb Academy of Music, and also with Milka Kostrenčić (whose other well-known...
, Irmgard Seefried
Irmgard Seefried
Irmgard Seefried was a distinguished German soprano who sang opera and lieder.Maria Theresia Irmgard Seefried was born in Köngetried, near Mindelheim, Bavaria, Germany, the daughter of educated Austrian-born parents. She studied at Augsburg University before making her debut in Aachen as the...
and Astrid Varnay
Astrid Varnay
Ibolyka Astrid Maria Varnay was an American dramatic soprano of Hungarian heritage and Swedish birth, who did most of her work in the United States and Germany. She was one of the best-known Wagnerian heroic sopranos of her generation...
.
The company made occasional appearances away from the Royal Opera House. Touring within Britain was limited to centres with large enough theatres to accommodate the company's productions, but in 1964 the company made its first appearance at the Proms
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
in London, in a concert performance of Otello
Otello
Otello 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....
. Thereafter an annual appearance at the Proms was a regular feature of the company's schedule for many years. In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
and a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett
Richard Rodney Bennett
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE is an English composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works...
. All but two of the principals were British. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
, "beside themselves with enthusiasm".
In 1968, on the recommendation of the Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
, James Callaghan
James Callaghan
Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, KG, PC , was a British Labour politician, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980...
, the Queen conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company. It was the third stage company in the UK to be so honoured, following the Royal Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
.
1970 to 1986
Webster retired in June 1970. The music critic Charles Osborne wrote, "When he retired, he handed over to his successor an organization of which any opera house in the world might be proud. No memorial could be more appropriate". The successor was Webster's former assistant, John TooleyJohn Tooley
Sir John Tooley is a former general director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. He has also held a range of appointments in the musical world, serving as a trustee or board member for many organisations....
. One of Webster's last important decisions had been to recommend to the board that Colin Davis should be invited to take over as musical director when Solti left in 1971. It was announced in advance that Davis would work in tandem with Peter Hall, appointed director of productions. Peter Brook had briefly held that title in the company's early days, but in general the managerial structure of the opera company differed markedly from that of the ballet. The latter had always had its own director, subordinate to the chief executive of the opera house but with, in practice, a great degree of autonomy. The opera company was generally run by the chief executive of the opera house and the musical director of the opera company. Appointing a substantial theatrical figure such as Hall was an important departure. Hall, however, changed his mind, and did not take up the appointment, going instead to run the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
. His defection, and the departure to Australian Opera
Opera Australia
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...
of the staff conductor Edward Downes
Edward Downes
Sir Edward Thomas "Ted" Downes, CBE was an English conductor, specialising in opera.He was associated with the Royal Opera House from 1952, and with Opera Australia from 1970. He was also well known for his long working relationship with the BBC Philharmonic and for working with the Netherlands...
, a noted Verdi expert, left the company weakened on both production and musical sides.
Like his predecessors, Davis experienced hostility from sections of the audience in his early days in charge. His first production after taking over was a well-received Le nozze di Figaro, in which Kiri Te Kanawa
Kiri Te Kanawa
Dame Kiri Jeanette Te Kanawa, ONZ, DBE, AC is a New Zealand / Māori soprano who has had a highly successful international opera career since 1968. Acclaimed as one of the most beloved sopranos in both the United States and Britain she possesses a warm full lyric soprano voice, singing a wide array...
achieved immediate stardom, but booing was heard at a "disastrous" Nabucco
Nabucco
Nabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
in 1971, and his conducting of Wagner's Ring
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
was at first compared unfavourably with that of his predecessor. The Covent Garden board briefly considered replacing him, but was dissuaded by its chairman, Lord Drogheda
Charles Moore, 11th Earl of Drogheda
Charles Garrett Ponsonby Moore, 11th Earl of Drogheda, KG, KBE was a British peer.Born Viscount Moore, he was the eldest son of Henry Moore, 10th Earl of Drogheda and his first wife, Kathleen and was educated at Eton. In 1940, he became a captain in the Territorial Army division of the Royal...
. Davis's Mozart was generally admired; he received much praise for reviving the little-known La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito , K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Metastasio...
in 1974. Among his other successes were The Trojans and Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini (opera)
Benvenuto Cellini is an opera in two acts with music by Hector Berlioz and libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier. It was the first of Berlioz's operas. The story is loosely based on the memoirs of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The opera is technically very challenging...
.
Under Davis, the opera house introduced Prom performances, giving, as Bernard Levin
Bernard Levin
Henry Bernard Levin CBE was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics,...
wrote, "an opportunity for those (particularly the young, of course) who could not normally afford the price of stalls tickets to sample the view from the posher quarters at the trifling cost of £3 and a willingness to sit on the floor". Davis conducted more than 30 operas during his 15-year tenure, but, he said, "people like [Lorin] Maazel
Lorin Maazel
Lorin Varencove Maazel is an American conductor, violinist and composer.- Early life :Maazel was born to Jewish-American parents in Neuilly-sur-Seine in France and brought up in the United States, primarily at his parents' home in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. His father, Lincoln Maazel , was...
, Abbado and [Riccardo] Muti
Riccardo Muti
Riccardo Muti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.-Childhood and education:...
would only come for new productions". Unlike Rankl, and like Solti, Davis wanted the world's best conductors to come to Covent Garden. He ceded the baton to guests for new productions including Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
, Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
and Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
. In The Times, John Higgins wrote, "One of the hallmarks of the Davis regime was the flood of international conductors who suddenly arrived at Covent Garden. While Davis has been in control perhaps only three big names have been missing from the roster: Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
, 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 Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....
". Among the high-profile guests conducting Davis's company were Carlos Kleiber
Carlos Kleiber
Carlos Kleiber was a German-born, Austrian classical conductor who spent most of his early life in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Vienna and New York City, and from the early 1960s his professional career in Germany.- Early career :...
for performances of Der Rosenkavalier (1974), Elektra
Elektra (opera)
Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama Elektra. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal...
(1977), La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
(1979) and Otello
Otello
Otello 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....
(1980), and Abbado conducting Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
(1975), starring Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
and Katia Ricciarelli
Katia Ricciarelli
-Biography:Born at Rovigo, Veneto, to a very poor family, she struggled during her younger years when she studied music.She studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, won several vocal competitions in 1968, and made her professional debut as Mimì in La bohème in Mantua in 1969,...
.
In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, Davis conducted a number of atonal and other modern operas, including Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
's Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
and Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
, Tippett
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...
's The Knot Garden
The Knot Garden
The Knot Garden is the third opera by composer Michael Tippett for which he wrote the original English libretto. The work had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 December 1970 conducted by Sir Colin Davis and produced by Sir Peter Hall...
and The Ice Break
The Ice Break
The Ice Break is an opera in three acts by Michael Tippett, to an original English libretto by the composer. It was first produced at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 7 July 1977, conducted by Colin Davis, the dedicatee of the opera....
, and Alexander Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg
Der Zwerg
Der Zwerg , Op.17 is an opera in one act by Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky to a libretto by Georg Klaren, freely adapted from the short story The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde.-Composition history:...
and Eine florentinische Tragödie
Eine florentinische Tragödie
Eine florentinische Tragödie , Op. 16 is an opera in one act by Alexander Zemlinsky to a libretto adapted by the composer from a German translation by Max Meyerfeld of a play by Oscar Wilde.-Performance history:...
.
Among the star guest singers during the Davis years were the sopranos Montserrat Caballé
Montserrat Caballé
Montserrat Caballé is a Spanish operatic soprano. Although she sang a wide variety of roles, she is best known as an exponent of the bel canto repertoire, notably the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi....
and Leontyne Price
Leontyne Price
Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant",...
, the tenors Carlo Bergonzi
Carlo Bergonzi
Carlo Bergonzi is an Italian operatic tenor. Although he performed and recorded some bel canto and verismo roles, he is above all associated with the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, including a large number of the composer's lesser-known works that he helped revive...
, Nicolai Gedda
Nicolai Gedda
Nicolai Gedda is a Swedish operatic tenor. Having made some two hundred recordings, Gedda is said to be the most widely recorded tenor in history...
and Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti
right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...
and the bass Gottlob Frick
Gottlob Frick
Gottlob Frick was a German bass who sang in opera. He was known for his wide repertory including Wagner and Mozart roles, as well as those of Nicolai and Lortzing.-Career:...
. British singers appearing with the company included Janet Baker
Janet Baker
Dame Janet Abbott Baker, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten...
, Heather Harper
Heather Harper
Heather Harper CBE is a Northern Ireland-born British operatic soprano.She was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1930, where she received her early musical training...
, John Tomlinson and Richard Van Allan
Richard Van Allan
Richard Van Allan CBE was a versatile British operatic bass singer who had a lengthy career.He sang varied repertoire at Covent Garden and English National Opera, as well as at numerous important houses worldwide...
. Davis's tenure, at that time the longest in the Royal Opera's history, closed in July 1986 not with a gala, but, at his insistence, with a Prom performance of Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
with cheap admission prices.
1987 to 2002
To succeed Davis, the Covent Garden board chose Bernard HaitinkBernard Haitink
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink, CH, KBE is a Dutch conductor and violinist.- Early life :Haitink was born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam...
, who was then the musical director of the Glyndebourne Festival
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
. He was highly regarded for the excellence of his performances, though his repertory was not large. In particular, he was not known as an interpreter of the Italian opera repertoire (he conducted no Puccini and only three Verdi works during his music directorship at Covent Garden). His tenure began well; a cycle of the Mozart Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte....
operas directed by Johannes Schaaf was a success, and although a Ring cycle with the Russian director Yuri Lyubimov
Yuri Lyubimov
Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov is a Soviet and Russian stage actor and director associated with the internationally-renowned Taganka Theatre which he founded ,...
could not be completed, a substitute staging of the cycle directed by Götz Friedrich
Götz Friedrich
Götz Friedrich was a German opera and theatre director.He was a student and assistant of Walter Felsenstein at the Komische Oper Berlin in Berlin, where he went on to direct his early productions...
was well received. Musically and dramatically the company prospered into the 1990s. A 1993 production of Die Meistersinger
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
, conducted by Haitink and starring John Tomlinson, Thomas Allen, Gosta Winbergh
Gösta Winbergh
Gösta Winbergh was a Swedish tenor and Mozart admirer.Winbergh was born in Stockholm. He is often mentioned as among Sweden's and, indeed, the world's finest tenors, included with Jussi Björling and Nicolai Gedda....
and Nancy Gustafson
Nancy Gustafson
Nancy Gustafson is an American opera singer.She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1978 and her M.Mus. from Northwestern University...
, was widely admired, as was Richard Eyre
Richard Eyre
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...
's 1994 staging of La traviata
La traviata
La 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...
, conducted by Solti and propelling Angela Gheorghiu
Angela Gheorghiu
Angela Gheorghiu is a Romanian soprano opera singer. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has sung as soprano leading roles at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States...
to stardom.
For some time, purely musical considerations were overshadowed by practical and managerial crises at the Royal Opera House. Sir John Tooley retired as general director in 1988, and his post was given to the television executive Jeremy Isaacs
Jeremy Isaacs
Sir Jeremy Isaacs is a British television producer and executive, winner of many BAFTA awards and international Emmy Awards. He was also General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden .-Early life:...
. Tooley later forsook his customary reticence and pronounced the Isaacs period a disaster, citing poor management that failed to control inflated manning levels with a consequent steep rise in costs and ticket prices. The uneasy relations between Isaacs and his colleagues, notably Haitink, were also damaging. Tooley concluded that under Isaacs "Covent Garden had become a place of corporate entertainment, no longer a theatre primarily for opera and ballet lovers". Isaacs was widely blamed for the poor public relations arising from the 1996 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television series The House
The House (television documentary)
The House is an award-winning fly on the wall documentary television series in six episodes which showed various behind-the-scenes events at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden...
, in which cameras were permitted to film the day-to-day backstage life of the opera and ballet companies and the running of the theatre. The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
commented, "For years, the Opera House was a byword for mismanagement and chaos. Its innermost workings were exposed to public ridicule by the BBC fly-on-the-wall series The House".
The most disruptive event of the decade for both the opera and the ballet companies was the closure of the Royal Opera House between 1997 and 1999 for major rebuilding. The Independent on Sunday asserted that Isaacs "hopelessly mismanaged the closure of the Opera House during its redevelopment". Isaacs, the paper states, turned down the chance of a temporary move to the Lyceum Theatre almost next door to the opera house, pinning his hopes on a proposed new temporary building on London's South Bank
South Bank
South Bank is an area of London, England located immediately adjacent to the south side of the River Thames. It forms a long and narrow section of riverside development that is within the London Borough of Lambeth to the border with the London Borough of Southwark and was formerly simply known as...
. That scheme was refused planning permission, leaving the opera and ballet companies homeless. Isaacs resigned in December 1996, nine months before the expiry of his contract. Haitink, dismayed by events, threatened to leave, but was persuaded to stay and keep the opera company going in a series of temporary homes in London theatres and concert halls. A semi-staged Ring
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
cycle at the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
gained superlative reviews and won many new admirers for Haitink and the company, whose members included Tomlinson, Anne Evans
Anne Evans
Dame Anne Evans DBE is an international Welsh operatic soprano.-Education:Anne Elizabeth Jane Evans was born in London of Welsh descent. She studied at the Royal College of Music with among others Margaret Cable, and the Geneva Conservatoire. She was accepted into the conservatoire without...
and Hildegard Behrens
Hildegard Behrens
Hildegard Behrens was a German soprano with a wide repertory including Wagner, Weber, Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Alban Berg roles.-Biography:...
.
After Isaacs left, there was a period of managerial instability, with three chief executives in three years. Isaacs's successor, Genista McIntosh, resigned in May 1997 after five months, citing ill-health. Her post was filled by Mary Allen
Mary Allen
Mary Allen is a British writer, broadcaster, arts administrator and management consultant best known for her controversial and turbulent period as Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House.-Early career:...
, who moved into the job from the Arts Council. Her selection did not comply with the Council's rules for such appointments, and following a critical House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
Select Committee report on the management of the opera house she resigned in March 1998, as did the entire board of the opera house, including the chairman. A new board appointed Michael Kaiser
Michael Kaiser
Michael M. Kaiser is president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.Dubbed "the turnaround king" for his work at such arts institutions as the Kansas City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Opera House, Kaiser has...
as general director in September 1998. He oversaw the restoration of the two companies' finances and the re-opening of the opera house. He was widely regarded as a success, and there was some surprise when he left in June 2000 after less than two years to run the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C..
The last operatic music to be heard in the old house had been the finale of Falstaff, conducted by Solti with the singers led by Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel Jones CBE is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner....
, in a joint opera and ballet farewell gala in July 1997. When the house reopened in December 1999, magnificently restored, Falstaff was the opera given on the opening night, conducted by Haitink, once more with Terfel in the title role.
2002 to date
Following years of disruption and conflict, stability was restored to the opera house and its two companies after the appointment in May 2001 of a new chief executive, Tony Hall, formerly a senior executive at the BBC. The following year the young conductor Antonio PappanoAntonio Pappano
Antonio Pappano is a British conductor and pianist of Italian parentage.Pappano's family relocated to England from Castelfranco in Miscano near Benevento, Italy in 1958 and at the time of his birth his parents worked in the restaurant business, but Pasquale Pappano, his father, was by vocation a...
succeeded Haitink as music director of the Royal Opera. As at 2011, both Hall and Pappano remain in post. Following the redevelopment, a second, smaller auditorium, the Linbury Studio Theatre has been made available available for small-scale productions by the resident companies, and for work produced in the ROH2 programme, which supports new work and developing artists.
In addition to the standard works of the operatic repertoire, the Royal Opera has presented many less well known pieces since 2002, including Cilea
Francesco Cilea
Francesco Cilea was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.-Biography:...
's Adriana Lecouvreur
Adriana Lecouvreur
Adriana Lecouvreur is an opera in four acts by Francesco Cilea to an Italian libretto by Arturo Colautti, based on the play by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé...
, Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
's Cendrillon
Cendrillon
Cendrillon is an opera—described as a "fairy tale"—in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Cain based on Perrault's 1698 version of the Cinderella fairy tale. The scenario was conceived by Massenet and Cain at the Cavendish Hotel while they were in London for the...
, Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
's The Gambler
The Gambler (Prokofiev)
The Gambler is an opera in four acts by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer, based on the story of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky....
, Rimsky Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride
The Tsar's Bride (opera)
The Tsar's Bride is an opera in four acts by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer's tenth opera. The libretto, by Il’ya Tyumenev, is based on the drama of the same name by Lev Mey. Mey's play was first suggested to the composer as an opera subject in 1868 by Mily Balakirev...
, Rossini's Il turco in Italia
Il turco in Italia
Il turco in Italia is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The Italian-language libretto was written by Felice Romani...
, Steffani
Agostino Steffani
Agostino Steffani was an Italian ecclesiastic, diplomat and composer.-Biography:Steffani was born at Castelfranco Veneto. At a very early age he was admitted as a chorister at San Marco, Venice...
's Niobe
Niobe, regina di Tebe
Niobe, regina di Tebe is a rarely performed opera in 3 Acts by Agostino Steffani, first performed at the Munich court theatre during the carnival season of 1688. It is a tragedy focusing on the Ancient Greek character of Niobe. The libretto is by Orlandi, after Ovid's Metamorphoses. The score is...
, and Tchaikovsky's The Tsarina's Slippers
Cherevichki
Cherevichki [alternative renderings are The Little Shoes, The Tsarina's Slippers, Les caprices d'Oxane, and Gli stivaletti] is a comic-fantastic opera in 4 acts, 8 scenes, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was composed in 1885 in Maidanovo, Russia...
. Among the composers whose works were premiered were Thomas Adès
Thomas Adès
Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
, Harrison Birtwistle
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...
, Lorin Maazel, and Nicholas Maw
Nicholas Maw
John Nicholas Maw was a British composer.-Biography:Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Maw was the son of Clarence Frederick Maw and Hilda Ellen Chambers. He attended the Wennington School, a boarding school, in Wetherby in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 14...
.
Productions in the first five years of Pappano's tenure ranged from Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preis and the composer, and is based on the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is sometimes referred to informally as Lady Macbeth...
(2004) to Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
's Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
(2003) starring Thomas Allen and Felicity Palmer
Felicity Palmer
Dame Felicity Joan Palmer, DBE , is an English mezzo-soprano and music professor. She sang soprano roles until 1983....
. Pappano's Ring cycle, begun in 2004 and staged as a complete tetralogy in 2007, was praised like Haitink's before it for its musical excellence; it was staged in a production described by Richard Morrison in The Times as "much derided for mixing the homely … the wacky and the cosmic". During Pappano's tenure, his predecessors Davis and Haitink have both returned as guests. Haitink conducted Parsifal, with Tomlinson, Christopher Ventris
Christopher Ventris
Christopher Ventris is a British tenor. He is particularly known for his role as Parsifal which he performed at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008....
and Petra Lang in 2007, and Davis conducted four Mozart operas between 2002 and 2011, Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
in 2007 and Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck was a German composer, best known for his opera, Hänsel und Gretel. Humperdinck was born at Siegburg in the Rhine Province; at the age of 67 he died in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.-Life:After receiving piano lessons, Humperdinck produced his first composition...
's Hänsel und Gretel in 2008. In 2007, Sir Simon Rattle
Simon Rattle
Sir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE is an English conductor. He rose to international prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and since 2002 has been principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic ....
conducted a new production of Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
's Pelléas et Mélisande starring Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside CBE is a British baritone who has had an active international career performing in operas and concerts since the mid 1980s.-Early life and education:...
, Angelika Kirchschlager
Angelika Kirchschlager
Angelika Kirchschlager is an Austrian mezzo-soprano opera and lieder singer.-Career:Kirchschlager began her musical training at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where she studied percussion and piano. In 1984, she went to the Vienna Music Academy, where she studied with Gerhard Kahry and Walter Berry...
and Gerald Finley
Gerald Finley
-Career:He was born in Montreal and received his musical education in St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, King's College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music in London, England...
.
The company visited Japan in 2010, presenting a new production of Manon
Manon
Manon 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...
and the Eyre production of La traviata. While the main company was abroad, a smaller company remained in London, presenting Niobe, Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così 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....
and Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
at Covent Garden.
In 2010, the Royal Opera House received a government subsidy of just over £27m, compared with a subsidy of £15m in 1998. This sum was divided between the opera and ballet companies and the cost of running the building. Compared with opera houses in mainland Europe, Covent Garden's public subsidy has remained low as a percentage of its income – typically 43%, compared with 60% for its counterpart in Munich.
In the latter part of the 2000s the Royal Opera gave an average of 150 performances each season, lasting from September to July, of about 20 operas, nearly half of which were new productions. Productions announced for the 2011–12 season include a new opera by Judith Weir
Judith Weir
Judith Weir CBE, is a British composer.-Biography:Her music has been appreciated by audiences and critics alike. She trained with John Tavener while still at school and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976...
, and the first performances of The Trojans at Covent Garden since 1972, conducted by Pappano, and starring Jonas Kaufmann
Jonas Kaufmann
Jonas Kaufmann is a German operatic tenor. Although he has sung a variety of leading roles including both the Mozart and Wagner repertoire, he is particularly known for his performances in spinto roles such as Don José in Carmen, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur, and the title...
, Eva-Maria Westbroek
Eva-Maria Westbroek
Eva-Maria Westbroek is a Dutch soprano. She is one of three daughters of the geology researcher and professor Peter Westbroek....
and Anna Caterina Antonacci
Anna Caterina Antonacci
Anna Caterina Antonacci is an Italian soprano, known for her roles in the bel canto and Baroque repertoire.Born in Ferrara, Antonacci studied in Bologna, and made her debut as Rosina in 1986 at Arezzo. She spans the soprano and mezzo-soprano repertoire...
.
Musical and managerial heads, 1946 to date
| Opera company musical director/music director | ROH chief executive |
|---|---|
| 1946 to 1951: Karl Rankl Karl Rankl Karl Rankl was a British conductor and composer of Austrian birth. A pupil of the composers Schoenberg and Webern, he conducted at opera houses in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia until fleeing from the Nazis and taking refuge in England in 1939.Rankl was appointed musical director of the... |
1946 to 1970: David Webster David Webster (opera manager) Sir David Webster was the chief executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1945 to 1970. He played a key part in the establishment of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera companies.... |
| 1955 to 1958: Rafael Kubelík Rafael Kubelík Rafael Jeroným Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer.-Early life:Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me." His mother was a Hungarian... |
|
| 1961 to 1971: Georg Solti Georg Solti Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his... |
|
| 1971 to 1986: Colin Davis Colin Davis Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett.... |
1970 to 1988: John Tooley John Tooley Sir John Tooley is a former general director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. He has also held a range of appointments in the musical world, serving as a trustee or board member for many organisations.... |
| 1987 to 2002: Bernard Haitink Bernard Haitink Bernard Johan Herman Haitink, CH, KBE is a Dutch conductor and violinist.- Early life :Haitink was born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam... |
1988 to 1996: Jeremy Isaacs Jeremy Isaacs Sir Jeremy Isaacs is a British television producer and executive, winner of many BAFTA awards and international Emmy Awards. He was also General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden .-Early life:... |
| January to May 1997: Genista McIntosh | |
| September 1997 to March 1998: Mary Allen Mary Allen Mary Allen is a British writer, broadcaster, arts administrator and management consultant best known for her controversial and turbulent period as Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House.-Early career:... |
|
| September 1998 to June 2000: Michael Kaiser Michael Kaiser Michael M. Kaiser is president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.Dubbed "the turnaround king" for his work at such arts institutions as the Kansas City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Opera House, Kaiser has... |
|
| 2002 to present: Antonio Pappano Antonio Pappano Antonio Pappano is a British conductor and pianist of Italian parentage.Pappano's family relocated to England from Castelfranco in Miscano near Benevento, Italy in 1958 and at the time of his birth his parents worked in the restaurant business, but Pasquale Pappano, his father, was by vocation a... |
May 2001 to present: Tony Hall |
- Since the 1980s, the title "music director" has been adopted in place of "musical director".
- From 1946 to 1980 the chief executive was known as "general administrator"; from 1980 as "general director". The current title is "chief executive"