Fausto Cleva

Fausto Cleva (born May 17, 1902 in Trieste , † August 6, 1971 in Athens ) was an American conductor of Italian origin.

Cleva began his musical education at the conservatory in his hometown and continued it in Milan. In 1920 he made his debut as an opera conductor at the Teatro Carcano in Milan with a performance of La traviata . In the same year he went to New York to the Metropolitan Opera , where he worked as assistant conductor until 1925 and from 1938 to 1940, and also as choir conductor from 1935 to 1938 and from 1941 to 1941. He was also musical director of the Cincinnati Summer Opera from 1934 to 1963 .

In 1942 he directed the production of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Metropolitan Opera . In the same year he conducted a performance of La traviata with Bidú Sayão at the San Francisco Opera , with which he remained connected until the early 1950s . He was also a conductor at the Chicago Opera from 1942 to 1946 . In 1951 he returned to the Metropolitan Opera as a conductor and opened the 1951–52 season with a performance of Aida with Zinka Milanov , Mario del Monaco and George London . In more than 670 performances at the Met, he devoted himself primarily to the Italian and French operatic repertoire.

Cleva was also successful internationally. Among other things, he conducted La bohème in Havana in 1947 with Hjördis Schymberg as Mimi and in 1959 at the Edinburgh Festival the Rigoletto with the ensemble of the Royal Swedish Opera. He also left a number of important recordings, including Ruggero Leoncavallos Pagliacci with Richard Tucker and Giuseppe Valdengo , Alfredo Catalanis La Wally with Renata Tebaldi and Mario Del Monaco ; Giacomo Puccini's Tosca with Maria Callas , Franco Corelli and Tito Gobbi and Verdi's Luisa Miller with Anna Moffo and Carlo Bergonzi . He died in Athens in 1971 during an open air performance of Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice .

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personal data
SURNAME	Cleva, Fausto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American conductor
DATE OF BIRTH	May 17, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH	Trieste
DATE OF DEATH	August 6, 1971
Place of death	Athens