Lotfi Mansouri

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lotfallah "Lotfi" Mansouri (born June 15, 1929 in Tehran , † August 30, 2013 in San Francisco , California ) was an American opera director and director of Iranian origin .

Life

At his father's request, Mansouri went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to study medicine, but was soon discovered by Irving Beckman , the director of the university's opera workshop, because of his talent as a singer . He appeared as an extra in a production of the opera Otello by the San Francisco Opera and was given the title role in the film The Day I met Caruso in 1956 due to his external resemblance to the singer .

A short time later he received an invitation from Los Angeles City College to direct the performance of Mozart's Così fan tutte , and because of his assistant professor at UCLA. He received a scholarship to study with Lotte Lehmann at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where he became Herbert Graf's assistant in 1959 .

When Graf was hired as artistic director of the Zurich Opera in 1960 , he invited Mansouri, who received American citizenship that year, to accompany him as director. In his first year in Zurich he directed four major productions: the European premiere of the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti and the Verdi operas La traviata , Don Pasquale by Donizetti and Samson and Dalila by Saint-Saëns . From 1965 to 1976 Mansouri was a director at the Geneva Opera.

During his stay in Switzerland, he also directed performances in Italy (including at Scala ) and the USA (including at the Metropolitan Opera and Santa Fe Opera ). In 1971 he was commissioned by the Iranian minister of education to build the opera house in Tehran, the stage productions of which he directed until 1975.

In 1976 Mansouri became general manager of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, which he directed for twelve years. During that time, more than thirty new opera productions were created, including twelve Canadian premieres. Mention should be made of Berg's Lulu and Wozzeck , Britten's Death in Venice , Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Thomas ' Hamlet . In 1983 he introduced the display of English translations of foreign language opera texts during the performance, a procedure that soon found widespread use in North America.

From 1988 to 2001, Mansouri was General Manager of the San Francisco Opera. This is where u. a. Performances of John Adams ' The Death of Klinghoffer (1992), Conrad Susas Dangerous Liaisons (1994), Stewart Wallace's Harvey Milk (1996), André Previns A Streetcar Named Desire (1998) and Jake Heggies Dead Man Walking (2000). In collaboration with the Kirov Opera, Prokofiev's War and Peace , Mussorgski's Boris Godunov , Glinkas Ruslan and Lyudmila , Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and others were performed. a. listed. In 2005 the San Francisco Opera honored him with a gala concert and he received the San Francisco Opera Medal .

Fonts

  • Lotfi Mansouri, An Operatic Life , Autobiography, Mosaic Press / Stoddart Publishing, 1982

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Former SF Opera director Lotfi Mansouri dies at 84  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ledger-enquirer.com  
personal data
SURNAME Mansouri, Lotfi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mansouri, Lotfallah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American opera director and director
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Tehran
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 2013
Place of death San Francisco