Royal Opera House Covent Garden

Note by Noël Goodwin











Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the accession of King Edward VII, Covent Garden became a focus both of brilliant singing and increasing prominence for conductors in the years before the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The singers were dominated by Nellie Melba, whose star had been in the ascendant since her debut in 1888. She wielded an influence at the peak of her fame that affected other singers: Luisa Tetrazzini, it was said, had almost to be smuggled in as the sister-in-law of the conductor Cleofonte Campanini for her debut in 1907.

Ostensibly the 'director' at Covent Garden from 1901 to 1906 was the French composer-conductor, André Messager, who was for most of this time also overseeing the Paris Opéra-Comique, and who consequently gave only limited attention to London. Luigi Mancinelli and Leopoldo Mugnone, together with Campanini, and Hans Richter for the German repertory, were the conductors most active in the annual May to July 'season' organised on behalf of the Grand Opera Syndicate, which consisted of business and titled figures who held the lease and exercised overall artistic control.

During these years alone there were more than 50 operas either premiered or staged for the first time in the Opera House, among them such pillars of the later repertory as Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, Pelléas et Mélisande and Parsifal. Enrico Caruso, Emmy Destinn and John McCormack all made hugely successful debuts in addition to Tetrazzini, while the new-fangled acoustic gramophone record was just in time to catch the voices of Francesco Tamagno (Verdi's original Otello), Pol Plançon and Johanna Gadski before their retirement.

Two challenges to the Syndicate involved the first Ring cycle in English mounted by Richter and Percy Pitt in 1908 (their plan to continue this policy was peremptorily killed off by the Syndicate) and the advent of Thomas Beecham. From 1910 he introduced the latest Richard Strauss successes (Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier ) and others, in extra seasons at Covent Garden, bringing him into frequent conflict with the censorship function of the Lord Chamberlain's office on matters of religion and morals, hilariously recounted in the conductor's autobiography, A Mingled Chime.

While the theatre was used as a furniture store during the war years, Beecham and his father Sir Joseph (who died in 1916) became owners of the Covent Garden estate, which included the Opera House. Sir Thomas re-opened Covent Garden in 1919 in association with the Syndicate, but the wartime activities of the Beecham Opera Company led to his bankruptcy the next year, out of which then emerged, in 1922, his British National Opera Company. Summer and winter seasons were given until 1924, when the Syndicate resumed separate control with various changes of its name and membership.

At the time of the first electrical recordings the musical interest at Covent Garden was tilting more to the German repertory, with Bruno Walter as music director in all but name, and the arrival of such singers as Lotte Lehmann, Frida Leider, Elisabeth Schumann, Lauritz Melchior and Friedrich Schorr. Around 1929 to 1931, however, other newcomers like Beniamino Gigli, Ezio Pinza, Rosa Ponselle and the young Eva Turner (whose Turandot debut was in 1928) brought fresh lustre to Italian opera, while Feodor Chaliapine (who had been heard in London before 1914) sang Boris Godounov at Covent Garden in 1928.

The 'seasons' were then only about eight to ten weeks between April/May and June/July; at other times the theatre was dark. Beecham returned in 1932, staving off the closure threatened by the Depression, with four weeks of Wagner conducted by himself, John Barbirolli and others, after which he became primarily responsible for the remaining opera seasons there until 1939. These were supplemented in 1936 by a visit from the Dresden Opera, when Richard Strauss shared the conducting with Karl Böhm. A pendant to the Beecham seasons from 1934 was De Basil's Ballets Russes, with whom Georg Solti made his Covent Garden debut in 1938, some 21 years before he conducted his first opera there.

The mid-1930s brought a memorable debut for Conchita Supervia, first in Rossini's La Cenerentola, before her 1935 Carmen. In 1937, a coronation year, Kirsten Flagstad made her first and only pre-war appearance as Isolde with Lauritz Melchior as Tristan; and Lawrence Tibbett arrived from America to sing both Scarpia and Iago. The next year's future celebrities included Jussi Björling as Manrico, while Richard Tauber was at last heard in Mozart: Belmonte in 1938, and Don Ottavio in 1939.

While the number of works new to Covent Garden in the 1930s did not begin to approach those of the first part of the century, Beecham ensured that as far as possible the best available singers were engaged for the roles best suited to them. With audiences, however, he became steadily more impatient, announcing as the 1939 season ended: 'I will do what I can to give the public an opera season [in 1940] although, frankly, I do not think it deserves one'. But the next opera at Covent Garden was to be seven years and another World War away as the theatre became instead a dance-hall 'for the duration'.


© 1991 Noël Goodwin

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