Il Thu, 7 Aug 2008 16:30:07 +0200, "Kermit" ha
scritto:

L'ho fatto e come dici tu c'è pochissimo, quasi nulla. Ho trovato un
articolo in inglese che mi sembra il più "degno" e riporto il testo.
E' incredibile che per qualunque attorucolo di cinema o di teatro si
parli a lungo e con grande cordoglio, se muore, mentre un direttore di
fama come Rescigno nessuno o quasi lo compiange.
Eppure la musica è ancora l'unica cosa forse che ci consente di
esportare qualcosa all'estero. Dei nostri attori, per quanto bravi o
istrioni che siano non interessa a nessuno e rimangano entro le
patrie frontiere, non essendo il teatro per motivi di lingua, una
forma d'arte universale come la musica.

GP

QUOTE:

From The Times August 7, 2008

Nicola Rescigno: distinguished Italian-American conductor

Nicola Rescigno
The Italian-American conductor Nicola Rescigno played a vital role in
American operatic life. A co-founder of the Lyric Theatre (now Lyric
Opera) of Chicago and Dallas Civic Opera (now the Dallas Opera), he
led the latter company as artistic director for more than three
decades.

Rescigno also maintained a successful guest-conducting career with
leading companies, specialising in Italian repertoire. He had a
reputation as a conductor who genuinely loved singers, and those who
regularly collaborated with him thrived under his influence.

Rescigno was born in New York in 1916. He had opera as a birthright
(his father, an Italian trumpeter who resettled in the US, played in
the Metropolitan Opera orchestra). He received a thorough training
from the conductor Giorgio Polacco and the composers Ildebrando
Pizzetti and Vittorio Giannini.

Verdi’s music, which would figure prominently throughout Rescigno’s
career, provided his springboard into the professional world when he
debuted leading La traviata in 1943 with the San Carlo Opera, a noted
touring ensemble of the period, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In
his midthirties Rescigno arrived at San Francisco Opera, leading Il
barbiere di Siviglia and Madama Butterfly. His early years also
included stints as music director of Connecticut Opera and Havana
Opera.

Two bold and enterprising young Chicagoans — a singer, Carol Fox, and
a businessman, Lawrence V. Kelly — invited Rescigno to join themin
founding a company that would keep international-quality opera
productions permanently at Chicago when other attempts in recent
decades had failed. With Rescigno as artistic director and principal
conductor, the Lyric Theatre presented its so-called calling-card
performances of Don Giovanni in February 1954, with a remarkable
international cast featuring Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Eleanor Steber and
Léopold Simoneau. During the inaugural season the following autumn
Rescigno led works of Bellini (Norma with Maria Callas’s US debut,
opening the season), Rossini, Verdi, Donizetti, and Puccini, plus The
Taming of the Shrew by his teacher Giannini. The following season
Rescigno conducted another eight operas and three ballets. After 1955
he returned to the Lyric for just two productions, La favorita (1974)
and La Cenerentola (1976).

A dispute in which the Lyric Theatre’s board of directors sided with
Fox left Rescigno and Kelly without a company to lead. Looking further
afield, they saw Dallas as a community ready for world-class opera.
With Rescigno again serving as artistic director and principal
conductor, Dallas Civic Opera opened in 1957 with a concert featuring
Callas.

Rescigno and Callas enjoyed a close association. The two collaborated
at both Dallas and Covent Garden in La traviata and Medea, also
performing the latter work at the famous amphitheatre of Epidaurus in
Greece. Other Callas-Rescigno performances included Lucia di
Lammermoor (Dallas), Il pirata (the American Opera Society’s
presentation in New York and Washington), Tosca (Paris), and concerts
in the US, the UK (Royal Festival Hall, 1959), Spain, Germany, the
Netherlands, and Belgium.

Rescigno worked in Dallas with innumerable important artists over the
decades. The company drew attention for the US debuts of Joan
Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, Magda Olivero, Teresa Berganza,
Plácido Domingo and Jon Vickers. With Rescigno conducting, Dallas
presented the US premiere of Handel’s Alcina (with Sutherland) and
America’s first staged performance of a Vivaldi opera, Orlando furioso
(with Marilyn Horne). In 1988 Rescigno conducted the triumphant world
premiere of Dominick Argento’s The Aspern Papers with the artists for
whom the work was written, Frederica von Stade and Elisabeth
Söderström.

During Rescigno’s Dallas years, he also became a familiar guest
conductor worldwide. He appeared in many Italian theatres, as well as
at Glyndebourne and the leading houses of Zürich and Buenos Aires,
among others. At the Metropolitan Opera he conducted Don Pasquale
(debut, 1978), L’elisir d’amore, L’italiana in Algeri and La traviata.
He returned to San Francisco Opera in 1984 for La sonnambula.

After Kelly’s premature death in 1974, Rescigno ran the Dallas company
as general director. His new administrative responsibilities gave him
little joy, however. Once Plato Karayanis arrived in 1977 as general
director, Rescigno returned to the position of artistic director,
which he kept until his departure from the company in 1990. He
continued to guest-conduct elsewhere but within a few years had
retired to a home he had long maintained in a suburb of Rome.

Rescigno’s discography includes numerous operatic recitals with Callas
(their 1959 Hamburg concert has been released on DVD). Many of their
live opera performances were circulated on private labels before EMI
“officially” released the Dallas inaugural concert and the New York
Pirata several years ago.

Among Rescigno’s commercial recordings are Tosca (Mirella Freni,
Luciano Pavarotti, Sherrill Milnes), Lucia di Lammermoor (Edita
Gruberova, Alfredo Kraus), excerpts from Francesca da Rimini (Magda
Olivero, Mario del Monaco) and operatic recitals by the sopranos June
Anderson and Ruth Ann Swenson.

Rescigno is survived by his longtime companion, Aldo Marcoaldi. One of
his nephews is the conductor Joseph Rescigno.

Nicola Rescigno, conductor and opera administrator, was born on May
28, 1916. He died on August 4, 2008, aged 92

UNQUOTE