Peter Paul Fuchs
Encyclopedia
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-born conductor and composer, best known for his conducting appointments with American orchestras and for his teaching. He was also a prolific composer although little of his music survives in performance. His writings include two influential music text books.
Early life
Peter Paul Fuchs was born on October 30, 1916 in Vienna, Austria, son of Dr. Adolf Fuchs, a well known heart specialist, and Marianne Rusicka, a piano teacher. His grandfather was Alois Rusicka, a prominent Viennese lawyer, originally from the same hometown as Gustav Mahler, and who had encouraged Mahler’s father to further young Gustav’s musical studies. After his academic studies in the “gymnasium”, he graduated in 1935 from the Vienna Academy of Music where his mentors were Felix WeingartnerFelix Weingartner
Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.-Biography:...
and Joseph Krips in conducting, and Karl Weigl
Karl Weigl
Karl Ignaz Weigl was an Austrian composer. He was born in Vienna, being the son of a bank official who was also a keen amateur musician. Alexander Zemlinsky took him as a private pupil in 1896. Weigl went to school at the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium and graduated from there in 1899...
in composition. In 1936 Fuchs was engaged as conductor and repetiteur for the German Theater in Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...
, Czechoslovakia. The volatile politics of the period and the imminent Nazi invasion meant he was forced to leave Brno. Without a valid passport or job he spent two years living in exile in Switzerland and Italy until he received a US visa.
Exile in America
In 1938 he sailed for America with a letter of recommendation from Felix Weingartner, a tooth brush, $5.00, and a basic change of clothes. When he arrived in the US he supported himself by accompanying singers and instrumentalists, and playing for ballet classes. He toured with a small Ballet company in 1939-40 and in October 1940 he was hired as accompanist for the Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera. Fuchs arranged for his parents to leave Nazi occupied Austria in 1940, and brought them to America; two years later he was inducted into the army and automatically became an American citizen. Following the end of hostilities in 1945, he returned to the Metropolitan OperaMetropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
as a full time staff conductor until 1950 working with Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
, George Szell
George Szell
George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...
, Fritz Reiner
Fritz Reiner
Frederick Martin “Fritz” Reiner was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century.-Biography:...
, Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf was a naturalized American Austrian conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality...
, Ettore Panizza
Ettore Panizza
Ettore Panizza was an Argentinian conductor and composer, one of the leading conductors of the early 20th century. Panizza possessed technical mastery and was popular and influential during his time, widely admired by Richard Strauss.- Biography :Panizza was born in Buenos Aires, of Italian parents...
, and others. He also conducted at the San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
, the Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera is an American opera company based in Cincinnati, Ohio and the second oldest opera company in the United States .-History:...
, the Central City Opera
Central City Opera
Central City Opera is the fifth-oldest opera company in the United States, founded in 1932. Each festival is presented in the 550-seat historic Central City Opera House built in 1878 in the gold mining era town of Central City, Colorado. Pelham G...
, and the Tanglewood Music Festival
Tanglewood Music Festival
The Tanglewood Music Festival is a music festival held every summer on the Tanglewood estate in Lenox, Massachusetts in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts....
where he was assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
.
Post-Met years
He left the Met in 1950 to become professor of music and opera at Louisiana State UniversityLouisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
, first as conductor and teacher, then as head of the opera department in 1952. His responsibilities later in the decade when he became the conductor of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra
Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra
The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1947, is an orchestra located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.In 1940, a group of women formed a string quartet, playing in their own homes, their long-term dream being to have a symphony orchestra able to service the local community...
, an appointment he held for the next 16 years, and also conductor of the Birmingham Opera in Alabama and of the Beaumont Opera in Beaumont, Texas. In Beaumont he was conductor and stage director for 13 years. He also developed an international career and guest conducted in Holland, Greece, Germany, Romania, Portugal, and in his native Austria, appearing with such orchestras the Tonkünstler Orchestra
Tonkünstler Orchestra
The Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich is an Austrian orchestra based in Vienna and St. Pölten, Lower Austria.-Origin of the name:The orchestra's name has its origins in the Tonkünstler-Sozietät, Wien, which was organizing concerts in the era of Haydn and Mozart...
, the Aachen
Theater Aachen
Theater Aachen is a theatre in Aachen, Germany. It is the principal venue in that city for operas, musical theatre, plays, and concerts. It is the home of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra. Construction on the original theatre began in 1822 and it opened on 15 May 1825...
, the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra
North German Radio Symphony Orchestra
The North German Radio Symphony Orchestra is a German orchestra, the symphony orchestra of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg....
, and the Romanian National Opera
Romanian National Opera
The Romanian National Opera is one of the national opera companies of Romania, situated in a historical building in Bucharest, near the Cotroceni neighbourhood....
in Bucharest.
Louisiana State University awarded Peter Paul Fuchs an honorary Doctorate when he retired in 1976, and he then became Music Director and Conductor of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra where he remained until 1988 and was also Artistic Director and Conductor of the Greensboro Opera Company from 1981 to 1992.
He died in Greensboro on March 26, 2007.
Writings
Fuchs translated several operas from several languages into English for American editors, notably Verdi’s A Masked BallUn ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
for the Metropolitan Opera. His writing included two notable books, The Musical Theater of Walter Felsenstein (W. W. Norton) and The Psychology of Conducting (MCA), which has become required reading in many universities.
Compositions
He had been composing chamber music, symphonies and opera since he was a teenager in Vienna. In Baton Rouge in the 1960’s he conducted his opera “Serenade at Noon” at Louisiana State University. Then, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, excerpts from his opera “White Agony” were produced at the Komische Oper in Berlin (where Felsenstein had directed). In 1992, the Greensboro Opera produced a staged version of “White Agony” staged by his wife, Elissa Minet Fuchs, former ballerina of Ballet Russe and the Metropolitan Opera. As well as his three operas (Serenade at Noon, The White Agony, and The Heretic), his other compositions include a symphony, a Concertino for Piano and Orchestra, Inventions for Wind Instruments, string quartets, a violin sonata, works for piano, and many songs. (See this note by John McLaughlin Williams on Fuchs' music). He directed many opera workshops notably at the Manhattan School of MusicManhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
where, in 1962, he conducted the premier of Jan Meyerowitz’s “Godfather Death”. Both his daughter Debora Porazzi and son in law Arturo Porazzi work production roles on Broadway.
Students
His conducting students included:- Bill ContiBill ContiWilliam "Bill" Conti is an American film music composer who is frequently the conductor at the Academy Awards ceremony.-Early life and career:...
, composer and conductor mostly active in Hollywood and television. - Milton Crotts, former conductor of the Guam Symphony Orchestra and currently Professor at Davidson CollegeDavidson CollegeDavidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine, although it has recently dropped to 11th in U.S. News...
. - Janet Galván, professor of music and conductor at Ithaca CollegeIthaca CollegeIthaca College is a private college located on the South Hill of Ithaca, New York. The school was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a conservatory of music. The college has a strong liberal arts core, but also offers several pre-professional programs and some graduate programs. The college is...
, New York. - Adrian McDonnell :fr:Adrian McDonnell, conductor of the Orchestre de la Cité Internationale in Paris and professor of conducting at the Conservatoire Frederic Chopin.
Recordings
- Podcast of a private recording of Peter Paul Fuchs' Five Miniatures for chamber ensemble.
Sources
- Unpublished biographical notes by Elissa Minet Fuchs
- On An Overgrown Path