First and lasting impressions : Julius Rudel looks back on a life in music
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Bibliographic Information
First and lasting impressions : Julius Rudel looks back on a life in music
University of Rochester Press, 2013
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Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The long-awaited memoir of Julius Rudel, the legendary opera conductor and arts administrator, gives insight into his ground-breaking repertory choices and his collaborations with Beverly Sills, Placido Domingo, and others.
As a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, Julius Rudel escaped from Austria after the Nazi invasion and moved to New York, where he began his career as an unpaid musical assistant and worked his way up through the ranks of the newly formed New York City Opera, being named in 1957 as the company's general director and principal conductor. Later, he became the first artistic director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
In his twenty-two-year leadership of New York City Opera, Rudel challenged audiences with new and unusual repertoire -- including fifteen world premieres and three seasons consisting entirely of American operas -- turning the popularly priced "People's Opera" intothe most influential and daring opera company in the United States.
Rudel writes in detail of his unusual repertoire choices and of the political battles behind New York City Opera's move to Lincoln Center in 1966, and hereminisces about his legendary collaborations with Beverly Sills (on Handel's Giulio Cesare and Donizetti's "Three Queens") and Placido Domingo (on Ginastera's Don Rodrigo) -- and about his work with other extraordinary talents including Norman Treigle, Phyllis Curtin, William Ball, Frank Corsaro, Tito Capobianco, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, Harold Prince, and Gian Carlo Menotti.
First and Lasting Impressions givesa rare personal look into Julius Rudel's career as a conductor and administrator during the glory years of New York City Opera.
Julius Rudel was general director and principal conductor of New York City Opera from 1957to 1979, and since that time has been a frequent guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and many of the world's other great opera houses.
Rebecca Paller, a curator at the Paley Center for Media in New York, has written about the arts for publications including Opera News, Opera, Vogue, Playbill, Symphony, and American Theatre.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Early Life in Vienna and the Shadow of the Swastika
"The People's Opera" Takes Flight: The Early Years of New York City Opera
The Flying Baton: A Company in Transition
A Lighter Muse: Broadway Musicals
Brush Up Your Shakespeare and Return to Vienna
Inheriting the Wind
All-American
Intermezzo: The Company Way
Politics and Acoustics: The Move to Lincoln Center
Tintinnabulation: Don Rodrigo and a Young Star Named Domingo
A Summer Idyll: The Magic of Caramoor
Giulio Cesare and the Sills Phenomenon
The Kennedy Center: From Concept to Opening
Glory Days
Jon Vickers: The Third Time Was Not the Charm
Reversal of Fortune
Life after New York City Opera
Appendix: The Three American Seasons of New York City Opera
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"