Thomas Schippers

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Thomas Schippers (born March 9, 1930 in Portage , Michigan , † December 16, 1977 in New York City , New York ) was an American conductor and composer .

Life

Thomas Schippers had piano lessons from the age of four, and later organ lessons from the organist of the Lukas Church in Kalamazoo . He graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School at the age of fourteen and then studied at the Curtis Institute , privately with Olga Samaroff and at the Juilliard School of Music . At the age of seventeen he studied composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University .

In 1948, Schippers won second prize in a Philadelphia Orchestra conducting competition and went to New York to become a conductor. Together with other young musicians, he founded the Lemonade Opera Company, a low-budget company that performed standard works of opera literature such as Mozart's Don Giovanni , Pergolesi's La serva padrona and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel .

In 1949 he went on a tour of South America with Eileen Farrell . At the same time he met the composer Gian Carlo Menotti and conducted his opera The Consul shortly after its premiere in 1950 . On Christmas Eve 1951, he conducted his Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors in a television premiere that was broadcast live across the country.

At the age of twenty-one, Schippers conducted Menotti's opera The Old Maid and The Thief at the New York City Opera as the youngest conductor to ever appear there. When the conductor Tullio Serafin was absent from the opera house in 1953 , Schippers replaced him at short notice in the performance of Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole .

In 1955 Schippers became conductor at the Metropolitan Opera . In the same year he received a Tony Award as a conductor and was named one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Men” in the United States, and he made his debut as a conductor at Milan's Teatro alla Scala . In 1958 he was musical director of Menotti's first Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto , which opened with a performance of Verdi's Macbeth staged by Luchino Visconti . The next year, Donizetti's unfinished opera Le duc d'Albe was performed in a version completed by Schipper.

In 1959 Schippers met Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Moscow , where he performed Samuel Barber's Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance and Menotti's Two Interludes . In December 1961 he conducted a highly acclaimed performance of Cherubinis Médée with Maria Callas at La Scala .

For Richard Wagner's 150th birthday , he conducted Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Bayreuth Festival in 1963 . In the 1963–64 season he conducted 36 performances of four operas at the Metropolitan Opera.

For the opening of the new opera house of the Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center in 1966 , Schippers conducted Samuel Barber's opera based on Shakespeare's Antonius and Cleopatra . In 1970 he succeeded Max Rudolf as conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra , which he directed until his death. He also performed at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Teatro Comunale di Firenze and other opera houses.

In 1976 Schippers was appointed conductor of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia for the 1977–1978 season . Due to his lung cancer, he could no longer take up the position and had to cancel all other engagements, including a performance of La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Bernard Jacobson:  Schippers, Thomas. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  2. ^ Hallmark Hall of Fame: Amahl and the Night Visitors. In: The Paley Center for Media. (English).
personal data
SURNAME Schippers, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Portage , Michigan, United States
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1977
Place of death New York City , New York, United States