We mark the first performance on May 22, 1874 – 149 years ago today – of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, written in memory of the Italian novelist, poet, and patriot Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1872).” Background In June of 1870, the 57-year-old Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) agreed to compose an opera for the brand-new Cairo Opera Theater. The Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt personally handled the negotiations, as the opera was to celebrate nothing less than the opening of the Suez Canal. No expense was spared, either on the opera or on Verdi, who received the unheard-of commissioning fee of 150,000 gold francs: roughly $1,935,000 today! The opera – Aida – received its premiere in Cairo on December 24, 1871. With no disrespect intended towards either the Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt or the Cairo Opera Theater, the opera’s real premiere – as far as Verdi and the larger opera world were concerned – took place six weeks later: at La Scala in Milan on February 8, 1872. That Italian premiere was a triumph, the greatest of Verdi’s career to date. He himself received 32 curtain calls! The only contemporary Italian artist who could possibly be considered as beloved as Giuseppe Verdi was the […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Archive for San Francisco Performances
We mark the birth on May 8, 1829 – 194 years ago today – of the American composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, in New Orleans. He died, all-too-young, on December 18, 1869 at the age of forty, in exile in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Events that occurred in September of 1865 in San Francisco, California and across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland led directly to Gottschalk’s “exile” to South America. Those frankly tawdry events, most unfairly, have been recounted way too often and as a result, they have come to obscure Gottschalk’s memory as a composer, pianist, patriot, and philanthropist. That’s because people like me continue to write about them as if they, somehow, encapsulated the totality of who and what Louis Moreau Gottschalk was. I hate myself for having participated in this unholy example of scandal mongering – I do – and I stand before you filled with shame and remorse. Nevertheless. Nevertheless, I fully intend to rehash these salacious events here and now with the understanding that following that rehash, we will spend the remainder of this post and all of tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post doing penance, by providing a proper account of the cultural […]
Continue ReadingOn May 1, 1786 – on what was also a Monday, 237 years ago today – a miracle was heard for the first time: Wolfgang Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro received its premiere at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Some 100 years later, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote this about The Marriage of Figaro: “Every number in Figaro is for me a marvel; I simply cannot fathom how anyone could create anything so perfect. Such a thing has never been done, not even by Beethoven.” Herr Brahms, when you’re right, you’re right, and this case you are so right! 237 years after the premiere, Brahms’ awe of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro mirrors our own. For many of us – myself included – it is, simply, the greatest opera ever composed. Composing an Italian Language Opera for the Viennese On May 7th, 1783 – some three years before the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro – Mozart wrote the following in a letter to his father back in Salzburg: “The Italian opera buffa [here in Vienna] is very popular. I have looked through more than a hundred libretti [meaning literally “little book,” the script of an opera] but I have […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the final San Francisco performance – on the evening of Tuesday, April 17, 1906, 117 years ago today – of the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (1874-1921). That performance at the no longer extant Grand Opera House at No. 2 Mission Street (between 2nd and 3rd Streets) was not intended to have been Caruso’s last local appearance, but circumstances beyond his control assured that it was! Enrico Caruso (1874-1921) Caruso was born into a poor family in Naples, Italy, on February 24th, 1874. He was the third of seven children (and not the nineteenth of twenty-one, as Caruso himself often claimed!). Following in the professional footsteps of his father, Marcellino Caruso, who was a mechanic, young Enrico was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer at the age of 11. He “discovered” his voice singing in a church choir, and as a teenager he made a few extra dinero singing on the streets and in the cafes of Naples. At the age of 18, Caruso had something of a revelation, when he used money he had earned as a singer to buy his first new pair of shoes. Realizing his real professional potential, he began taking voice lessons, and his […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the premiere on April 10, 1868 – 155 years ago today – of Johannes Brahms’ magnificent A German Requiem, for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Johannes Brahms, Again? I know I’ve been going heavy on Brahms (1833-1897) as of late. I would apologize if he wasn’t so fascinating a person and if his music wasn’t so darned good, but he was a fascinating person and his music is superb, so our continued attention is well deserved. It’s not as if we didn’t have other topical options for this date. For example, on this date in 1970 – 53 years ago today – Paul McCartney “officially” announced the split-up of The Beatles. Okay; whatever; if there’s one topic that’s gotten more play here in Music History Monday than Bach, Brahms and Beethoven combined, it’s the fourth “B”: The Beatles. The breakup of The Beatles? Sorry, but yawn. The “Wilhelm Scream” Then there’s this. April 10, 1921, marks the birth – 102 years ago today – of the American singer, songwriter, actor, and comedian Shelby Frederick “Sheb” Wooley, in Erick Oklahoma (he died in Nashville, Tennessee on September 16, 2003, at the age of 82). For the vast majority of […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the death on April 3, 1897 – 126 years ago today – of the German composer and pianist Johannes Brahms at the age of 63. One of the great ones and along with Sebastian Bach and Louis van Beethoven one of the three bees – the killer bees – Brahms was born in the Hanseatic port city of Hamburg on May 7, 1833. We will get to Maestro Brahms in just a moment but first – with appropriate fanfare – I offer up this edition of “This Day in Music History Stupid.” Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust; Be Kind to My Ashes, Though Snort if You Must On April 3, 2007 – 16 years ago today – the Reuters news agency reported that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards (born December 18, 1943) admitted in a soon-to-be published interview with NME (New Musical Express) magazine that he had snorted his father’s ashes during a drug binge. I think we’ve all wondered the same thing at some point or another: given his personal habits and corpse-like appearance, how and why is Keith Richards still alive, yet still performing at nearly 80 years of age? Richards would seem to be […]
Continue ReadingA quick comment in reference to the title of today’s post, “Papa’s Last Appearance.” Not that you really need me to tell you, but by “Papa” we are not referring to Papa John Schnatter, who founded “Papa John’s Pizza” in 1984. Neither are we referring to the stand-up comedian Tom Papa, the sportscaster Greg Papa, the American rock band Papa Roach, nor the American Paul Karason (1950-2013), also-known-as “Papa Smurf,” whose skin turned to a purplish-blue color as a result of ingesting a home-made brew of silver chloride colloid. By “Papa,” we are referring to Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) who was once-and-forever nicknamed “papa” while still in his thirties by the grateful musicians who worked for him! We mark what turned out to be the final public appearance of “Papa” Joseph Haydn on March 27, 1808 – 215 years ago today – at a concert held in honor of his upcoming 76th birthday. The gala concert, held at Vienna’s University Hall, featured a performance of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, which had been completed ten years before, in 1798. The concert was what we would call today a “star-studded event”: everyone who was anyone in Vienna’s musical world was there, including […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the wedding on March 20, 1969 – 54 years ago today – between the Liverpool-born Beatle John Lennon (1940-1980) and the Tokyo-born artist and musician Yoko Ono (born 1933). Their wedding took place in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. At the time of their marriage, Lennon was 28 years old, and Ono was 36. Classic Rock ‘n’ Roll as a Geriatric Phenomenon Given their seminal, world-wide cultural impact, the brevity of The Beatles’ tenure remains, for me, nothing short of mind-boggling. Let us consider. The Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which cemented their world-wide fame, occurred on February 9, 1964. The band’s final paid concert occurred on August 29, 1966, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, just thirty months later. The Beatles’ final album to be recorded, Abbey Road, was released three years after that, on September 26, 1969. (For our information, the album Let it Be, which had been recorded prior to Abbey Road, was released in May 1970.) The Beatles, then, was strictly a 1960s band. The last time they were together as a quartet was on August 22, 1969, when they attended a photo […]
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