Vladimir Rosing
Encyclopedia
Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing (November 24, 1963), aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States. In his formative years he experienced the last gasp of the Golden Age of Opera, and subsequently dedicated himself through his singing and directing into breathing new life into opera's outworn mannerisms and methods.
Rosing was considered by many to rank as a singer and performer of the quality of Feodor Chaliapin
. In his book The Perfect Wagnerite George Bernard Shaw
called Chaliapin and Vladimir Rosing "the two most extraordinary singers of the 20th century."
Vladimir Rosing's recordings are best known for his performances of Russian art songs by composers such as Modest Mussorgsky
, Nikolai Tcherepnin
, Alexander Gretchaninov
, Alexander Borodin
and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
. He was the very first singer to record a song by Igor Stravinsky
: Akahito from Three Japanese Songs.
As a stage director, Rosing championed the cause of opera in English, and he attempted to build permanent national opera companies in the United States and England. He directed opera performances "with such acumen and freshness of approach that some writers were tempted to speak of him as a second Reinhardt."
Rosing created his own system of stage movement and acting for singers that proved very effective in his own productions and that he also taught to a new generation of performers.
. His mother was the granddaughter of a Baltic Baron.
Rosing's parents separated when he was three, and his mother took Vladimir and his two older sisters to live in Switzerland
. After four years they returned to Russia to live in Moscow near Rosing's godfather, General Arkady Stolypin, who was Governor of the Kremlin
and father of Pyotr Stolypin
. For a time they lived at the Kremlin as the Governor's guests.
Rosing spent the summer of 1898 on his godfather's nearby country estate. There was a memorable trip with his mother to Yasnaya Polyana
, the nearby estate of Leo Tolstoy
, to meet the great writer. Tolstoy asked Rosing's mother to take a message to General Stolypin to give to the Tsar, but Stolypin later declined to do so.
The Tsar paid a visit to Moscow, and young Vladimir was taken to a performance of Tchaikovsky
's opera Eugene Onegin
, with the baritone Mattia Battistini
, at the Bolshoi Theatre
. The family sat in General Stolypin's box, while Tsar Nicholas II
and his family occupied the Royal Box just a few feet away.
Rosing's parents reconciled the next year, and the family moved back to St. Petersburg. Rosing completed his studies at the Gymnasium (school)
which lasted for eight years in Russia, and the family spent summers on their country estate in Podolia
, Ukraine
.
Russia was one of the biggest early markets for recorded music. Rosing's father brought home a gramophone in 1901, and Vladimir began to listen to and imitate the great singers of the day. He learned a repertoire of songs and arias, singing baritone
as well as tenor
parts. His real desire was to be a bass and sing Boito
's Mefistofele, but nature had other plans for him.
Rosing was an eyewitness to the massacre in front of the Winter Palace
on Bloody Sunday 1905. Politically he then ceased being a monarchist, and allied himself with the Constitutional Democratic Party
. To please his father, who was a successful lawyer, young Vladimir reluctantly studied law at Saint Petersburg University, where he was very active in the fiery student politics that followed the first Russian Revolution of 1905. He sparred in heated debates with future Bolshevik commissar Nikolai Krylenko
. He acted as a student deputy to the Saint Petersburg Soviet where he spent time listening to speeches by Leon Trotsky
and others. Rosing soon developed a life-long animosity towards the Bolsheviks.
Aside from politics, it was music and theater that absorbed Vladimir's youthful energies. His parents finally accepted his musical dreams, and he began to study voice in Russia with Mariya Slavina, Alexandra Kartseva, and Joachim Tartakov.
In 1908 Rosing fell in love with an English musician, Marie Falle, whom he met while on holiday in Switzerland. They married in London in February 1909. He studied voice in London with Sir George Power, before returning to Russia to finish law school.
on May 25, 1913. He spent the summer in Paris studying with Jean de Reszke
and Giovanni Sbriglia
. It was Sbriglia who finally gave Rosing the technique and direction he needed, and an unwanted law career was permanently avoided.
From 1912 to 1916 Rosing released 16 discs on the HMV
label, many of which were recorded by the pioneering American record producer Fred Gaisberg
in St. Petersburg and London.
In 1914 he signed a 6-year contract with impresario Hans Gregor
to be a leading tenor at the Vienna Imperial Opera, but World War One broke out before the fall season started, and Rosing sensibly returned to London.
London's appetite for Russians and Russian music was high after Serge Diaghilev's historic seasons of Russian opera and ballet, and Rosing's recitals in England soon became extremely popular. In addition to his public recitals, Rosing was in demand as a performer for London society's exclusive "At Homes", where he became friendly with rich, famous and powerful people like C. P. Scott
, David Lloyd George
, Lord Reading, Alfred Mond, and the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith
and his wife Margot Asquith
.
Rosing also socialized with writers like Ezra Pound
, George Bernard Shaw
, Hugh Walpole
and Arnold Bennett
, and his circle included the artists Glyn Philpot
, Augustus John
, Walter Sickert
and Charles Ricketts
.
Rosing's ambitions were to have his own opera company. In May 1915 he produced a brief Allied Opera Season at Oscar Hammerstein I
's vacant London Opera House. Rosing presented the English premiere of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades
and introduced Tamaki Miura
as Madama Butterfly
, the first Japanese singer to be cast in that role. The season was brought to an early close when London was targeted by zeppelin
raids for the first time in the war.
Rosing returned to Russia for two months in the summer of 1915 after the Tsar called up the 2nd Reserves. As an only son, Vladimir was officially assigned to the Serbian Red Cross and he was returned to London to organize benefit concerts. He was later awarded the Serbian Order of St. Sava
for his service.
When the Russian Revolution took the world by surprise in March 1917, Rosing went to see Lloyd George to urge him to support the new Provisional Government.. He headed up the newly formed Committee for Repatriation of Political Exiles. A few months later, when Georgy Chicherin
was imprisoned by the British, Rosing met again with Lloyd George to work for Chicherin's release.
As a result of the Bolsheviks seizing power, Rosing was one of many Russians to lose everything. He was no longer a wealthy man. As Russian refugees poured into London, Rosing was at the center of the action. He socialized with Prince Felix Yusupov
, organizer of the murder of Rasputin, and Alexander Kerensky
, Prime Minister of the failed Russian Provisional Government
.
Rosing's recitals were more popular than ever. In the fall of 1919 he joined soprano Emma Calvé
and pianist Arthur Rubinstein
for a concert tour of the English Provinces. He filled in for John McCormack in Belfast, winning the hearts of the Irish. On March 6, 1921 in Albert Hall he gave his 100th London recital.
Rosing recorded 61 discs for the Vocalion Company in the early 1920s.
In June 1921 he presented, with director Theodore Komisarjevsky
and conductor Adrian Boult
, a season of Opera Intime at London's Aeolian Hall. At Rosing's invitation Isadora Duncan
attended one of the performances. The Opera Intime company subsequently toured Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Rosing left England for his first concert tour of the United States and Canada in November 1921. The tour generated an invitation to sing at a White House
State Dinner held by President Harding
on February 2, 1922. With his friends, writer William C. Bullitt and sculptress Clare Sheridan, Rosing organized the last concert of the tour in New York on March 10, 1922 as a benefit for Hoover's American Relief Administration
, raising money to help fight the terrible famine gripping Russia.
Rosing returned for his second tour of the United States and Canada in November 1922. On the voyage back to England in March 1923 he met a representative of Kodak king George Eastman
, which led to an offer a few weeks later to return to the United States to start the opera department at the newly opened Eastman School of Music
in Rochester. Rosing saw a chance to create the opera company he had always wanted, and he jumped at the opportunity to sell Eastman on his dream.
. Rosing analyzed what made them beautiful, graceful or convey emotion and figured out how to transfer that expressive power to physical bodies in movement on a stage. When he spoke of sculpting body movement he was literally bringing great sculptures to life through a set of rules and techniques he had worked out in his mind.
Rosing's central idea was that there is a definite time, place and reason for the beginning of a gesture and a definite time to retrieve it—and that all gestures must be retrieved. He taught rules for the independent and coordinated action of the joints used in sculpting body movement, that every movement has a preparatory movement in the opposite direction, and that the retreat of a gesture is of extreme importance.
Rosing taught eye focus and head angles. He did away with waving arms and wandering hands and he demanded that every unnecessary movement be eliminated. His staging formula was to move and hold, as though a series of still shots was being photographed, or sculptures animated.
Rosing did not set patterns of stage action to music. He believed opera could achieve its maximum effectiveness with dramatic interpretation resulting from rather than affixing itself to the music. The body and music should become as one—a complete blend of sound and motion, with every motion coming out of the sound.
Rosing built his entire principle of stage action on this theory. It was a choreographic approach, but unlike ballet which is mathematical and its motion continuous, the resulting style was completely different.
In Rochester, Rosing would have the chance to test and refine his theories for the next seven years.
The group of artists that came to work with Rosing in Rochester and helped make his dream a reality included Eugene Goossens
, Albert Coates
, Rouben Mamoulian
, Nicolas Slonimsky
, Otto Luening
, Ernst Bacon
, Emanuel Balaban, Paul Horgan
, Anna Duncan, and Martha Graham
. An initial group of 20 singers was chosen from all across the United States and given full scholarships.
Even though a transition to a new career as a director had begun, Rosing soon made another recital tour of Canada, gave concerts with the Rochester Philharmonic, and on October 20, 1924 he presented a concert at Carnegie Hall
with Nicholas Slonimsky as his accompanist.
In November 1924, after a year of gestation and training, the Rochester American Opera Company was announced. A tour of Western Canada was made in January 1926. Performances in Rochester and Chautauqua
followed. Mary Garden
was so impressed with the group that she came to sing Carmen
with the company in February 1927 at the Eastman School's intimate Kilbourn Hall. Later that month, Vladimir married his second wife, soprano Margaret Williamson, who was a member of the company.
The opera company strictly adhered to a non-star policy, developing instead a unity of ensemble whereby a singer might have a leading role one night and a supporting role the next.
At the invitation of the Theatre Guild
, the Rochester American Opera Company made its New York debut in April 1927, giving a full week of performances at the Guild Theatre with Eugene Goossens conducting.
The musical world took notice. A committee of wealthy and influential backers was formed to help take the company to the next level. Summer 1927 was spent rehearsing in Magnolia, Massachusetts for the fall season and performing at Leslie Buswell's exclusive private theater nearby at Stillington Hall. In December 1927 the newly-christened American Opera Company
performed for President and Mrs. Coolidge
, and 150 members of Congress, at Washington D.C.'s Poli's Theater.
During January and February 1928 the American Opera Company brought seven weeks of opera to Broadway at New York's Gallo Theater. Robert Edmond Jones
contributed powerful set designs.
National tours followed for the next two years, but the Crash of 1929 caused bookings for the 1930 season to dematerialize. The group earned an official endorsement from President Herbert Hoover
, calling for it to become "a permanent national institution", but it was not enough as the country sank into the Great Depression, and the company was soon forced to disband.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Paul Horgan's first novel, The Fault of Angels, published in 1933, is a fictionalized account of the early days of the Eastman School's opera department.
Aside from directing a few plays, the early 1930s were lean times for Rosing. He had become an American citizen in 1930, but when an offer came from the BBC for a broadcast performance he returned to London.
A musical production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
's The Rivals
with songs by Herbert Hughes
and John Robert Monsell was staged at the Kingsway Theatre in September 1935. Queen Mary
attended one of the performances.
On November 2, 1936 the BBC began the world's first regularly scheduled television service. Less than two weeks later, on November 13, The British Music Drama Opera Company under the direction of Vladimir Rosing presented the world's first televised opera, Pickwick by Albert Coates
. The performance was a preview of the new company's upcoming season at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.
The Covent Garden season opened on November 18, 1936 with Boris Godunov
. Madama Butterfly
, The Fair at Sorochyntsi, and Pagliacci
followed, along with the premier of Coates' Pickwick and another new opera, Julia, by Roger Quilter
.
On October 5, 1938 Rosing was back at the BBC for a live television broadcast of Pagliacci with his latest opera venture, the Covent Garden English Opera Company. Again, it was a preview of the upcoming season which opened with Faust
on October 10, with Eugene Goossens conducting. Along with Rigoletto
, Madama Butterfly, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
, Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana
was an unfamiliar work, The Serf, by George Lloyd
. After the London season, the company toured Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
, Arthur Rubinstein
, Paul Robeson
, and the Russian Ballet.
Once safely in Hollywood, Rosing and Coates formed the Southern California Opera Association. In conjunction with the W.P.A. they produced a notable production of Faust
that featured the debut of soprano Nadine Conner
.
Rosing renewed his political activities, becoming Executive Chairman of the Federal Union of Southern California, a new group whose members included Thomas Mann
, John Carradine
, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Melvyn Douglas
. America was clinging to isolationism and Rosing worked hard to try to counteract that movement and help England in the war before it was too late.
When America finally joined the war, Rosing eagerly wanted to be of service. He was finally appointed Director of Entertainment at Camp Roberts, California
in 1943. The film studios lent their stable of stars, and with the help of talented servicemen Rosing directed over 20 productions of musical theater and light opera for the troops. His last production at Camp Roberts was a staged version of Handel
's Messiah
in December 1945.
Along with Capt. Hugh Edwards, another Camp Roberts veteran, Rosing founded the American Operatic Laboratory in 1946. The idea was to offer complete vocal and instrumental courses to music students, as well as returning soldiers on the GI bill. The school started with 17 students, and over the next three years 450 pupils were trained, most of whom were veterans. Over 300 performances were given of 33 different opera productions. One of Rosing's young students, Jean Hillard, eventually became his fourth wife.
Rosing worked locally with the Long Beach Civic Opera Association on productions of The Merry Widow
, Naughty Marietta
, and Rio Rita
in 1946. Under the banner of the American Opera Company of Los Angeles, Val directed Tosca
, The Barber of Seville
, and Faust in 1947 with an up-and-coming young bass named Jerome Hines
. In 1948 the National Opera Association of Los Angeles, under Val's direction, presented The Beggar's Opera
, The Abduction from the Seraglio, Pagliacci, Rigoletto
, Faust, and La traviata
with soprano Jean Fenn
. Productions of The Marriage of Figaro
, The Queen of Spades, and Don Giovanni
with the American Opera Company of Los Angeles completed 1948.
For KFI-TV in 1949 Rosing presented 46 weeks of live televised opera sequences on Sunday afternoons which were voted Outstanding Musical Program of Local Origin by the Southern California Association for Better Radio and T.V.
to revive the comic opera by Prokofiev
, The Love for Three Oranges. Rosing's old friend Theodore Komisarjevsky
had been slated to direct the production but had suffered a heart attack. Vladimir had seen the original failed production, which was commissioned by the Chicago Opera in 1921, and he knew what the work needed to bring it to success. The production opened in November 1949, and was a smash hit. Life Magazine covered it with a three page color-photo spread. The New York company took the production to Chicago to show it off. Prokofiev's opera was brought back by popular demand for two more successive seasons in New York.
Over the next decade Rosing directed ten more productions for the NYCO, including Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe
which ran for two seasons in 1958 and featured the role debut of soprano Beverly Sills
. The production was revived again in 1962.
starring Linda Darnell
for 20th Century Fox in 1949. Grounds for Marriage
with Kathryn Grayson
followed for MGM in 1950. Rosing directed Ezio Pinza
in Strictly Dishonorable
, and Interrupted Melody
with Eleanor Parker
in 1955, also both for MGM.
with Nadine Conner
, Jerome Hines
and Richard Tucker
, which opened the Bowl's summer season. Rosing's work was noticed by the producers of the upcoming The California Story, the official state centennial production to be mounted in the Bowl that fall, and he was awarded the job of directing it. Meredith Willson
was brought on to supervise the music.
The California Story ran for five performances in September 1950. The production was immense. A chorus of 200 and hundreds of actors were employed. The shell of the bowl was removed and the stage was enlarged. The action was expanded to include the surrounding hillsides. Lionel Barrymore
provided the dramatic narration.
The California Storys success was to open up a whole new avenue for Rosing's energies: the historical spectacular. The Bowl provided the setting for the first two of these, The Air Power Pageant in 1951 and The Elks Story in 1954.
Rosing also directed three more operas at the Bowl: the ill-fated Die Fledermaus
in 1951, Madama Butterfly with Dorothy Kirsten
in 1960, and The Student Prince
with Igor Gorin
in 1962.
, Vladimir Rosing directed a dozen productions over the next seven years for the Lyric Opera of Chicago
, including Boris Godunov
with Boris Christoff
, Turandot
with Birgit Nilsson
in 1958, and Thaïs
with Leontyne Price
in 1959. Rosing's last opera there, in 1962, was Borodin
's Prince Igor
, also with Boris Christoff—a production that featured sets by Nicola Benois, choreography by Ruth Page
and dancing by the newly free Rudolf Nureyev
.
, brought Rosing to direct Verdi
's Falstaff
in January 1958 at Her Majesty's Theatre. Through 1962, Rosing directed a production each January for the Guild: Macbeth
(1959), Carmen
(1960), Romeo et Juliette (1961) and La traviata
(1962). The renowned Russian conductor Emil Cooper
led the orchestra for the first three seasons.
After a disappointing failure to win bi-partisan support in the Northern and Southern States for this ambitious project, Rosing then conceived of an even bigger production that would instead tell the story of freedom itself.
The Freedom Story would be an ambassador of freedom and peace, sent from America to the rest of the world, performing in local languages. Rosing wanted to use the power of art to fight the forces of totalitarianism that he saw threatening America's freedom. The project won wide support, with an Advisory Board that included Alf Landon, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Meredith Willson had agreed to create the music.
But, while working on the Arizona Story, Rosing contracted septicemia. His once boundless energy was taken away from him. He died in Santa Monica on November 24, 1963.
78
LP
CD
What is perfection in art we, with our finite minds, cannot yet grasp. What seems wonderful and perfect to us now, probably will seem childish in a few hundred years. What seems impossible now will be possible then.
I do hope the time will soon arrive when the masses will awaken themselves to the realization of the great mission of art in life, and will cease to consider it as an amusement, hobby, recreation, snobbism; when governments will cease to be blind and will take art under their special care, will help to develop it as one of the great national treasures and assets, as the great factor for education of the mind, and will give broadly this spiritual food of mankind to the masses. It is time they should understand that it is one of their principal factors (if they are honest) to further the evolution of civilization."
Rosing, Vladimir. "Idealism and Art". Musical Courier, May 10, 1923.
----
"Mussorgsky in his songs invents a completely new medium of musical expressions. He arrives at complete realism, and has a perfect realistic musical tone that portrays the meaning of the word, the psychological state behind the word. He again demands another type of singer, a singer who can master an infinite number of colors in his tones—a singer able to portray in his tone not only beauty and fluent melodic lines, but also the grotesque, and paint realistic pictures with his voice.
In the days of the classics the purists were right—the tone was before everything else. With the sound-treasures that exist in the present-day songs, which portray all of the emotional sides of our life, then I say they are wrong and we are right. Let the purists say that they do not like that kind of song; that is different, and then it would be a question of taste. But to sing those songs with just pure tone is inartistic."
Rosing, Vladimir. "Interpretation in the Art of Singing – Part I". Musical Courier, October 11, 1923
----
"When a singer takes up a song for study he must, first of all, visualize the poem from the beginning to the end. He must create in his mind, a sort of cinematographic film of every movement or emotion that there is in the song. After that he has to place himself into the picture and live in it, becoming actually the character or characters there are in the songs and completely losing his own personality."
Rosing, Vladimir. "Interpretation in the Art of Singing, Part II". Musical Courier, October 18, 1923
----
"To such pitch has Mr. Rosing carried characterizing purpose and projecting power that the listener forgets the song in the singer. A more 'personal' concert then one of Mr. Rosing's is rare indeed. Not even Chaliapin's are more pervaded by a single spirit. He proffers a few words of explanation of his songs; he ventures a happy interchange, Russian-wise, with his audience. He spares neither his own nor the audience’s emotion.
When he believes that pure song is voice to the music in hand, he sings with clear regard for well-shaped, transparent tone, sustained line, warm, felicitous Italian phrasing, adept modulation, spun transition, plastic progress, apt climax.
Mr. Rosing prefers to make his song an insistently expressive art. In his tones he would define and project character; summon picture and vision, evoke and convey passions of the mind, the soul, the body. And he would do all these things to the utmost. For such purpose, he bends or breaks rhythms, chops or fuses phrases, zigzags the melodic line, sharply changes pace or accent, emphasizes contrast, multiplies climax. To gain these ends he uses unashamed what the vestal virgins of song call vocal tricks—the falsetto, for example, or the long-sustained note, swelled, diminished, melted almost inaudibly into the air. He uses them, however, not as display in Galli-Curcian or Tetrazzinian fashion, but to achieve a discoverable point in his vocal design. Above all else, Mr. Rosing would color his tones and impress upon his hearers the personage, the passion, the picture of music and verse as they have stirred his spirit. If the accepted arts of song will so serve him, he uses them expertly, effectively. If they are less viable, he chooses his own means, employs them in his own way."
Parker, H. T. Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance (1922). New York, Dodd, Mead & Co.
----
"Rosing brought to London a style of song and of singing London had never heard before, a stark, realistic Russian song, put over in a stark, realistic Russian manner. London concert halls and drawing rooms... lapped up this neat vodka as avidly as a man who has spent months in the desert or a monastery. The fellow, it was plain, was a savage, a moujik. A vagabond of the Steppes, a wastrel from the Siberian snows. Men were shaken out of their complacency. Women shuddered—and adored him.
Rosing had one of the vividest and most magnetic personalities I had ever come across; rarely have I known anyone who could hold an audience in such a sheer ecstasy of enchantment through a whole recital. A Rosing audience was unlike any other. There was electricity in the air and people crouched forward in their seats as though they were watching some fierce and terrifying melodrama. With Rosing, nearly every song was a melodrama—sometimes a grand guignol melodrama. He acted every song; often he overacted it, sometimes he all but clowned it. The purists were scandalized. The man could do everything but sing, they said. He was a mountebank, a buffoon. He had no right in a concert hall; he ought to be on a fairground. It was outrageous, unparalleled. So it was. Perhaps they were right, but it came off, because, despite all his eccentricities, Rosing was never cheap; in everything he did there was such an overpowering impression of stern, unflinching sincerity. The man simply threw himself into his music and its poem. He sang—eyes closed and feet wide apart, like a blind goalkeeper—not only with his voice but with his heart, brain, body, hands and feet. If he tore a passion to tatters, you felt that that particular passion was much more effective in tatters than intact. If he made a mess of a song, well, it was a glorious mess."
Newton, Ivor
. At the Piano, the world of an accompanist (1966). Hamish Hamilton, London.
Rosing was considered by many to rank as a singer and performer of the quality of Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.During the first phase...
. In his book The Perfect Wagnerite George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
called Chaliapin and Vladimir Rosing "the two most extraordinary singers of the 20th century."
Vladimir Rosing's recordings are best known for his performances of Russian art songs by composers such as Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
, Nikolai Tcherepnin
Nikolai Tcherepnin
Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was born in Saint Petersburg and studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory...
, Alexander Gretchaninov
Alexander Gretchaninov
Alexander Tikhonovich Gretchaninov was a Russian Romantic composer.-His life:Gretchaninov started his musical studies rather late because his father, a businessman, had expected the boy to take over the family firm...
, Alexander Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
. He was the very first singer to record a song by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
: Akahito from Three Japanese Songs.
As a stage director, Rosing championed the cause of opera in English, and he attempted to build permanent national opera companies in the United States and England. He directed opera performances "with such acumen and freshness of approach that some writers were tempted to speak of him as a second Reinhardt."
Rosing created his own system of stage movement and acting for singers that proved very effective in his own productions and that he also taught to a new generation of performers.
Early life
Rosing was born into an aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia on January 23, 1890. His father was descended from a Swedish officer captured at the Battle of PoltavaBattle of Poltava
The Battle of Poltava on 27 June 1709 was the decisive victory of Peter I of Russia over the Swedish forces under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld in one of the battles of the Great Northern War. It is widely believed to have been the beginning of Sweden's decline as a Great Power; the...
. His mother was the granddaughter of a Baltic Baron.
Rosing's parents separated when he was three, and his mother took Vladimir and his two older sisters to live in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. After four years they returned to Russia to live in Moscow near Rosing's godfather, General Arkady Stolypin, who was Governor of the Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
and father of Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin served as the leader of the 3rd DUMA—from 1906 to 1911. His tenure was marked by efforts to repress revolutionary groups, as well as for the institution of noteworthy agrarian reforms. Stolypin hoped, through his reforms, to stem peasant unrest by creating a class of...
. For a time they lived at the Kremlin as the Governor's guests.
Rosing spent the summer of 1898 on his godfather's nearby country estate. There was a memorable trip with his mother to Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana was the home of the writer Leo Tolstoy, where he was born, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is buried. Tolstoy called Yasnaya Polyana his "inaccessible literary stronghold". It is located southwest of Tula, Russia and from Moscow.In 1921, the estate formally became his...
, the nearby estate of Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, to meet the great writer. Tolstoy asked Rosing's mother to take a message to General Stolypin to give to the Tsar, but Stolypin later declined to do so.
The Tsar paid a visit to Moscow, and young Vladimir was taken to a performance of Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's opera Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
, with the baritone Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini was an Italian operatic baritone. He became internationally famous due to the beauty of his voice and the virtuosity of his singing technique, and he earned the sobriquet "King of Baritones".-Early life:...
, at the Bolshoi Theatre
Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...
. The family sat in General Stolypin's box, while Tsar Nicholas II
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
and his family occupied the Royal Box just a few feet away.
Rosing's parents reconciled the next year, and the family moved back to St. Petersburg. Rosing completed his studies at the Gymnasium (school)
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
which lasted for eight years in Russia, and the family spent summers on their country estate in Podolia
Podolia
The region of Podolia is an historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast. Northern Transnistria, in Moldova, is also a part of Podolia...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
.
Russia was one of the biggest early markets for recorded music. Rosing's father brought home a gramophone in 1901, and Vladimir began to listen to and imitate the great singers of the day. He learned a repertoire of songs and arias, singing baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
as well as tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
parts. His real desire was to be a bass and sing Boito
Arrigo Boito
Arrigo Boito , aka Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito, pseudonym Tobia Gorrio, was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's operas Otello and Falstaff, and his own opera Mefistofele...
's Mefistofele, but nature had other plans for him.
Rosing was an eyewitness to the massacre in front of the Winter Palace
Winter Palace
The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian monarchs. Situated between the Palace Embankment and the Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and...
on Bloody Sunday 1905. Politically he then ceased being a monarchist, and allied himself with the Constitutional Democratic Party
Constitutional Democratic party
The Constitutional Democratic Party was a liberal political party in the Russian Empire. Party members were called Kadets, from the abbreviation K-D of the party name...
. To please his father, who was a successful lawyer, young Vladimir reluctantly studied law at Saint Petersburg University, where he was very active in the fiery student politics that followed the first Russian Revolution of 1905. He sparred in heated debates with future Bolshevik commissar Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet legal system, rising to become People's Commissar for Justice and Prosecutor General of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.Krylenko was an...
. He acted as a student deputy to the Saint Petersburg Soviet where he spent time listening to speeches by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and others. Rosing soon developed a life-long animosity towards the Bolsheviks.
Aside from politics, it was music and theater that absorbed Vladimir's youthful energies. His parents finally accepted his musical dreams, and he began to study voice in Russia with Mariya Slavina, Alexandra Kartseva, and Joachim Tartakov.
In 1908 Rosing fell in love with an English musician, Marie Falle, whom he met while on holiday in Switzerland. They married in London in February 1909. He studied voice in London with Sir George Power, before returning to Russia to finish law school.
Recital career and politics
After a season in St. Petersburg as an up-and-coming tenor with Joseph Lapitsky's innovative Theatre of Musical Drama in 1912, Vladimir Rosing made his London concert debut in Albert HallAlbert Hall
Albert P. Hall is an American actor.Born in Brighton, Alabama, Hall graduated from the Columbia University School of the Arts in 1971. That same year he appeared Off-Broadway in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and on Broadway in the Melvin Van Peebles musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death...
on May 25, 1913. He spent the summer in Paris studying with Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, , was a Polish tenor. Renowned internationally for the high quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing, he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century....
and Giovanni Sbriglia
Giovanni Sbriglia
Giovanni Sbriglia , was an Italian tenor and prominent teacher of singing.A native of Naples, Sbriglia attended the city's music conservatory before making his debut, aged 21, at the Teatro San Carlo. He then performed throughout Italy before being engaged by Max Maretzek for New York City's...
. It was Sbriglia who finally gave Rosing the technique and direction he needed, and an unwanted law career was permanently avoided.
From 1912 to 1916 Rosing released 16 discs on the HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
label, many of which were recorded by the pioneering American record producer Fred Gaisberg
Fred Gaisberg
Frederick William Gaisberg was an American-born musician, recording engineer and one of the earliest classical music producers for the gramophone. He himself did not use the term 'producer' and was not an impresario like his protégé Walter Legge of EMI or an innovator like John Culshaw of Decca...
in St. Petersburg and London.
In 1914 he signed a 6-year contract with impresario Hans Gregor
Hans Gregor
Hans Gregor was a German actor and arts administrator.Gregor directed several German-language theaters, including in Barmen-Elberfeld from 1898 to 1905. In Berlin, he led the Komische Oper as its director from 1905 to 1911...
to be a leading tenor at the Vienna Imperial Opera, but World War One broke out before the fall season started, and Rosing sensibly returned to London.
London's appetite for Russians and Russian music was high after Serge Diaghilev's historic seasons of Russian opera and ballet, and Rosing's recitals in England soon became extremely popular. In addition to his public recitals, Rosing was in demand as a performer for London society's exclusive "At Homes", where he became friendly with rich, famous and powerful people like C. P. Scott
C. P. Scott
Charles Prestwich Scott was a British journalist, publisher and politician. Born in Bath, Somerset, he was the editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 until 1929 and its owner from 1907 until his death...
, David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
, Lord Reading, Alfred Mond, and the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith
H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916...
and his wife Margot Asquith
Margot Asquith
Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith , born Emma Alice Margaret Tennant, was an Anglo-Scottish socialite, author and wit...
.
Rosing also socialized with writers like Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...
and Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
, and his circle included the artists Glyn Philpot
Glyn Philpot
Glyn Warren Philpot , was an English artist, best known for his portraits of contemporary figures such as Siegfried Sassoon, and Vladimir Rosing....
, Augustus John
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....
, Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
and Charles Ricketts
Charles Ricketts
Charles de Sousy Ricketts was a versatile English artist, illustrator, author and printer, and is best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set and costume designer.-Life and career:Ricketts was born in Geneva...
.
Rosing's ambitions were to have his own opera company. In May 1915 he produced a brief Allied Opera Season at Oscar Hammerstein I
Oscar Hammerstein I
Oscar Hammerstein I was a businessman, theater impresario and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America...
's vacant London Opera House. Rosing presented the English premiere of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades (opera)
The Queen of Spades, Op. 68 is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere took place in 1890 in St...
and introduced Tamaki Miura
Tamaki Miura
was a Japanese opera singer famous for her performances as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.Miura made her operatic debut in Tokyo in 1911 and the same year went to Europe to perform and study...
as Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, the first Japanese singer to be cast in that role. The season was brought to an early close when London was targeted by zeppelin
Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874 and detailed in 1893. His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894 and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899...
raids for the first time in the war.
Rosing returned to Russia for two months in the summer of 1915 after the Tsar called up the 2nd Reserves. As an only son, Vladimir was officially assigned to the Serbian Red Cross and he was returned to London to organize benefit concerts. He was later awarded the Serbian Order of St. Sava
Order of St. Sava
The Order of St. Sava was a decoration instituted by the order King Milan I of Serbia in 1883. The Order of Saint Sava originally was established to recognize civilians for meritorious achievements in the arts and sciences. In 1914 a change was made permitting military personnel to receive the...
for his service.
When the Russian Revolution took the world by surprise in March 1917, Rosing went to see Lloyd George to urge him to support the new Provisional Government.. He headed up the newly formed Committee for Repatriation of Political Exiles. A few months later, when Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin was a Marxist revolutionary and a Soviet politician. He served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government from March 1918 to 1930.-Childhood and early career:...
was imprisoned by the British, Rosing met again with Lloyd George to work for Chicherin's release.
As a result of the Bolsheviks seizing power, Rosing was one of many Russians to lose everything. He was no longer a wealthy man. As Russian refugees poured into London, Rosing was at the center of the action. He socialized with Prince Felix Yusupov
Felix Yusupov
Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston , was best known for participating in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, the faith healer who was said to have influenced decisions of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna.-Biography:...
, organizer of the murder of Rasputin, and Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolutions of 1917.Kerensky served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution...
, Prime Minister of the failed Russian Provisional Government
Russian Provisional Government
The Russian Provisional Government was the short-lived administrative body which sought to govern Russia immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II . On September 14, the State Duma of the Russian Empire was officially dissolved by the newly created Directorate, and the country was...
.
Rosing's recitals were more popular than ever. In the fall of 1919 he joined soprano Emma Calvé
Emma Calvé
Emma Calvé, born Rosa Emma Calvet , was a French operatic soprano.Calvé was probably the most famous French female opera singer of the Belle Époque. Hers was an international career, and she sang regularly and to considerable acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, and the Royal Opera...
and pianist Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
for a concert tour of the English Provinces. He filled in for John McCormack in Belfast, winning the hearts of the Irish. On March 6, 1921 in Albert Hall he gave his 100th London recital.
Rosing recorded 61 discs for the Vocalion Company in the early 1920s.
In June 1921 he presented, with director Theodore Komisarjevsky
Theodore Komisarjevsky
Fyodor Fyodorovich Komissarzhevsky or Theodore Komisarjevsky, as he is better known in the West, was a Russian theatrical director and designer. He began his career in Moscow, but had his greatest influence in London...
and conductor Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
, a season of Opera Intime at London's Aeolian Hall. At Rosing's invitation Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
attended one of the performances. The Opera Intime company subsequently toured Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Rosing left England for his first concert tour of the United States and Canada in November 1921. The tour generated an invitation to sing at a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
State Dinner held by President Harding
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th President of the United States . A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate , as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator...
on February 2, 1922. With his friends, writer William C. Bullitt and sculptress Clare Sheridan, Rosing organized the last concert of the tour in New York on March 10, 1922 as a benefit for Hoover's American Relief Administration
American Relief Administration
American Relief Administration was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director....
, raising money to help fight the terrible famine gripping Russia.
Rosing returned for his second tour of the United States and Canada in November 1922. On the voyage back to England in March 1923 he met a representative of Kodak king George Eastman
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream...
, which led to an offer a few weeks later to return to the United States to start the opera department at the newly opened Eastman School of Music
Eastman School of Music
The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...
in Rochester. Rosing saw a chance to create the opera company he had always wanted, and he jumped at the opportunity to sell Eastman on his dream.
Theory of movement
By the time Vladimir Rosing went to Rochester, he had already started to develop his own theories of movement and stage direction. The breakthrough had come by spending weeks studying the great statues in the LouvreLouvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
. Rosing analyzed what made them beautiful, graceful or convey emotion and figured out how to transfer that expressive power to physical bodies in movement on a stage. When he spoke of sculpting body movement he was literally bringing great sculptures to life through a set of rules and techniques he had worked out in his mind.
Rosing's central idea was that there is a definite time, place and reason for the beginning of a gesture and a definite time to retrieve it—and that all gestures must be retrieved. He taught rules for the independent and coordinated action of the joints used in sculpting body movement, that every movement has a preparatory movement in the opposite direction, and that the retreat of a gesture is of extreme importance.
Rosing taught eye focus and head angles. He did away with waving arms and wandering hands and he demanded that every unnecessary movement be eliminated. His staging formula was to move and hold, as though a series of still shots was being photographed, or sculptures animated.
Rosing did not set patterns of stage action to music. He believed opera could achieve its maximum effectiveness with dramatic interpretation resulting from rather than affixing itself to the music. The body and music should become as one—a complete blend of sound and motion, with every motion coming out of the sound.
Rosing built his entire principle of stage action on this theory. It was a choreographic approach, but unlike ballet which is mathematical and its motion continuous, the resulting style was completely different.
In Rochester, Rosing would have the chance to test and refine his theories for the next seven years.
American Opera Company
With George Eastman's backing, Rosing envisioned professionally training a group of young American singers and turning them into a national repertory company, performing opera across the United States in easy-to-understand English translations. With the help of enthusiastic artists and benefactors, he accomplished exactly that.The group of artists that came to work with Rosing in Rochester and helped make his dream a reality included Eugene Goossens
Eugène Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.-Biography:He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens and the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens...
, Albert Coates
Albert Coates (musician)
Albert Coates was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses...
, Rouben Mamoulian
Rouben Mamoulian
Rouben Mamoulian was an Armenian-American film and theatre director.-Biography:Born in Tbilisi, Georgia to an Armenian family, Rouben relocated to England and started directing plays in London in 1922...
, Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky was a Russian born American composer, conductor, musician, music critic, lexicographer and author. He described himself as a "diaskeuast" ; "a reviser or interpolator."- Life :...
, Otto Luening
Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music....
, Ernst Bacon
Ernst Bacon
Ernst Lecher Bacon was an American composer, pianist, and conductor. A prolific author, Bacon composed over 250 songs over his career. He was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships and a Pulitzer Scholarship in 1932 for his Second Symphony.-Biography:Ernst Bacon was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May...
, Emanuel Balaban, Paul Horgan
Paul Horgan
Paul Horgan was an American author of fiction and non-fiction, most of which was set in the Southwestern United States. He was the recipient of two Pulitzer prizes in History...
, Anna Duncan, and Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
. An initial group of 20 singers was chosen from all across the United States and given full scholarships.
Even though a transition to a new career as a director had begun, Rosing soon made another recital tour of Canada, gave concerts with the Rochester Philharmonic, and on October 20, 1924 he presented a concert at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
with Nicholas Slonimsky as his accompanist.
In November 1924, after a year of gestation and training, the Rochester American Opera Company was announced. A tour of Western Canada was made in January 1926. Performances in Rochester and Chautauqua
Chautauqua
Chautauqua was an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with...
followed. Mary Garden
Mary Garden
Mary Garden , was a Scottish operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century...
was so impressed with the group that she came to sing Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
with the company in February 1927 at the Eastman School's intimate Kilbourn Hall. Later that month, Vladimir married his second wife, soprano Margaret Williamson, who was a member of the company.
The opera company strictly adhered to a non-star policy, developing instead a unity of ensemble whereby a singer might have a leading role one night and a supporting role the next.
At the invitation of the Theatre Guild
Theatre Guild
The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players.Its original purpose was to...
, the Rochester American Opera Company made its New York debut in April 1927, giving a full week of performances at the Guild Theatre with Eugene Goossens conducting.
The musical world took notice. A committee of wealthy and influential backers was formed to help take the company to the next level. Summer 1927 was spent rehearsing in Magnolia, Massachusetts for the fall season and performing at Leslie Buswell's exclusive private theater nearby at Stillington Hall. In December 1927 the newly-christened American Opera Company
American Opera Company
The American Opera Company was the name of four different opera companies active in the United States. The first company was a short-lived opera company founded in New York City in February, 1886 that lasted only one season...
performed for President and Mrs. Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...
, and 150 members of Congress, at Washington D.C.'s Poli's Theater.
During January and February 1928 the American Opera Company brought seven weeks of opera to Broadway at New York's Gallo Theater. Robert Edmond Jones
Robert Edmond Jones
Robert Edmond Jones was an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer. He is credited with incorporating the new stagecraft into the American drama. His designs sought to integrate the scenic elements into the storytelling instead of having them stand separate and indifferent from the play’s...
contributed powerful set designs.
National tours followed for the next two years, but the Crash of 1929 caused bookings for the 1930 season to dematerialize. The group earned an official endorsement from President Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
, calling for it to become "a permanent national institution", but it was not enough as the country sank into the Great Depression, and the company was soon forced to disband.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Paul Horgan's first novel, The Fault of Angels, published in 1933, is a fictionalized account of the early days of the Eastman School's opera department.
Aside from directing a few plays, the early 1930s were lean times for Rosing. He had become an American citizen in 1930, but when an offer came from the BBC for a broadcast performance he returned to London.
First televised opera
Rosing remained popular as a recitalist in England, and he resumed giving concerts there upon his return in 1933. Rosing signed a new contract with the Parlophone Company and recorded 32 discs (with the new electrical method) between 1933 and 1937.A musical production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
's The Rivals
The Rivals
The Rivals, a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, is a comedy of manners in five acts. It was first performed on 17 January 1775.- Production :...
with songs by Herbert Hughes
Herbert Hughes (musicologist)
Herbert Hughes was an Irish composer, music critic and collector of folk songs.He was born and brought up in Belfast, Ireland, but completed his formal music education at the Royal College of Music, London, graduating in 1901...
and John Robert Monsell was staged at the Kingsway Theatre in September 1935. Queen Mary
Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....
attended one of the performances.
On November 2, 1936 the BBC began the world's first regularly scheduled television service. Less than two weeks later, on November 13, The British Music Drama Opera Company under the direction of Vladimir Rosing presented the world's first televised opera, Pickwick by Albert Coates
Albert Coates (musician)
Albert Coates was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses...
. The performance was a preview of the new company's upcoming season at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.
The Covent Garden season opened on November 18, 1936 with Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
. Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, The Fair at Sorochyntsi, and Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
followed, along with the premier of Coates' Pickwick and another new opera, Julia, by Roger Quilter
Roger Quilter
Roger Quilter was an English composer, known particularly for his songs.-Biography:Born in Hove, Sussex, Quilter was a younger son of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, who was a noted art collector...
.
On October 5, 1938 Rosing was back at the BBC for a live television broadcast of Pagliacci with his latest opera venture, the Covent Garden English Opera Company. Again, it was a preview of the upcoming season which opened with Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
on October 10, with Eugene Goossens conducting. Along with Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
, Madama Butterfly, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
, Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
was an unfamiliar work, The Serf, by George Lloyd
George Lloyd (composer)
George Walter Selwyn Lloyd was a British composer.-Early life:Of Cornish ancestry, Lloyd grew up in a family with great enthusiasm for music. He was mainly home-schooled because of rheumatic fever. He later studied violin with Albert Sammons and composition with Harry Farjeon. He was a student at...
. After the London season, the company toured Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
World War II
When war broke out again in Europe in September 1939, Rosing decided to go with his friend Albert Coates to Southern California. Rosing married his third wife, the English actress Vicki Campbell, and they boarded the SS Washington in Southampton on October 3, 1939. The ship was overflowing with artists fleeing Europe, such as Arturo ToscaniniArturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
, Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, and the Russian Ballet.
Once safely in Hollywood, Rosing and Coates formed the Southern California Opera Association. In conjunction with the W.P.A. they produced a notable production of Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
that featured the debut of soprano Nadine Conner
Nadine Conner
Nadine Conner was an American operatic soprano, radio singer and music teacher.She was born in Compton, California as Evelyn Nadine Henderson, and was the descendent of some of the earliest non-Hispanic settlers in California.Diagnosed as a teenager with pulmonary disease, her doctor suggested she...
.
Rosing renewed his political activities, becoming Executive Chairman of the Federal Union of Southern California, a new group whose members included Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, John Carradine
John Carradine
John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...
. America was clinging to isolationism and Rosing worked hard to try to counteract that movement and help England in the war before it was too late.
When America finally joined the war, Rosing eagerly wanted to be of service. He was finally appointed Director of Entertainment at Camp Roberts, California
Camp Roberts, California
Camp Roberts is a California National Guard post in central California, located on both sides of the Salinas River in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, now run by the California Army National Guard. It is named after Harold W. Roberts, a World War I Medal of Honor recipient...
in 1943. The film studios lent their stable of stars, and with the help of talented servicemen Rosing directed over 20 productions of musical theater and light opera for the troops. His last production at Camp Roberts was a staged version of Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
in December 1945.
Along with Capt. Hugh Edwards, another Camp Roberts veteran, Rosing founded the American Operatic Laboratory in 1946. The idea was to offer complete vocal and instrumental courses to music students, as well as returning soldiers on the GI bill. The school started with 17 students, and over the next three years 450 pupils were trained, most of whom were veterans. Over 300 performances were given of 33 different opera productions. One of Rosing's young students, Jean Hillard, eventually became his fourth wife.
Rosing worked locally with the Long Beach Civic Opera Association on productions of The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
, Naughty Marietta
Naughty Marietta (operetta)
Naughty Marietta is an operetta in two acts, with libretto by Rida Johnson Young and music by Victor Herbert. Set in New Orleans in 1780, it tells how Captain Richard Warrington is commissioned to unmask and capture a notorious French pirate calling himself "Bras Priqué" – and how he is helped and...
, and Rio Rita
Rio Rita
Rio Rita may refer to:*Rio Rita , a 1927 musical*Rio Rita , a 1929 film starring Bebe Daniels and John Boles, with Wheeler and Woolsey as comedy relief...
in 1946. Under the banner of the American Opera Company of Los Angeles, Val directed Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
, and Faust in 1947 with an up-and-coming young bass named Jerome Hines
Jerome Hines
The American Jerome A. Hines was a basso opera singer who performed at the Metropolitan Opera from 1946 to 1987...
. In 1948 the National Opera Association of Los Angeles, under Val's direction, presented The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
, The Abduction from the Seraglio, Pagliacci, Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
, Faust, and La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
with soprano Jean Fenn
Jean Fenn
Jean Fenn is an American soprano who had an active opera career in North America during the 1950s through the 1970s. An attractive blond with a statuesque figure, Fenn was a disciplined, well-schooled singer with an excellent technique, wide range, and a highly polished sound...
. Productions of The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
, The Queen of Spades, and Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
with the American Opera Company of Los Angeles completed 1948.
For KFI-TV in 1949 Rosing presented 46 weeks of live televised opera sequences on Sunday afternoons which were voted Outstanding Musical Program of Local Origin by the Southern California Association for Better Radio and T.V.
New York City Opera
In the fall of 1949 an offer came from the New York City OperaNew York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
to revive the comic opera by Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, The Love for Three Oranges. Rosing's old friend Theodore Komisarjevsky
Theodore Komisarjevsky
Fyodor Fyodorovich Komissarzhevsky or Theodore Komisarjevsky, as he is better known in the West, was a Russian theatrical director and designer. He began his career in Moscow, but had his greatest influence in London...
had been slated to direct the production but had suffered a heart attack. Vladimir had seen the original failed production, which was commissioned by the Chicago Opera in 1921, and he knew what the work needed to bring it to success. The production opened in November 1949, and was a smash hit. Life Magazine covered it with a three page color-photo spread. The New York company took the production to Chicago to show it off. Prokofiev's opera was brought back by popular demand for two more successive seasons in New York.
Over the next decade Rosing directed ten more productions for the NYCO, including Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
which ran for two seasons in 1958 and featured the role debut of soprano Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...
. The production was revived again in 1962.
Opera in films
Rosing directed opera sequences for four films during this period, starting with Everybody Does ItEverybody Does It
Everybody Does It is a 1949 comedy film starring Paul Douglas, Linda Darnell and Celeste Holm.In the film, a businessman's wife tries to become an opera star, failing miserably due to her lack of talent...
starring Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell was an American film actress.Darnell was a model as a child, and progressed to theater and film acting as an adolescent. At the encouragement of her mother, she made her first film in 1939, and appeared in supporting roles in big budget films for 20th Century Fox throughout the 1940s...
for 20th Century Fox in 1949. Grounds for Marriage
Grounds for Marriage
Grounds for Marriage is a 1951 American romantic comedy film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. Written and produced by Samuel Marx, the film stars Van Johnson and Kathryn Grayson.-Plot:...
with Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and operatic soprano singer.From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to MGM by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals...
followed for MGM in 1950. Rosing directed Ezio Pinza
Ezio Pinza
Ezio Pinza was an Italian basso opera singer with a rich, smooth and sonorous voice. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas...
in Strictly Dishonorable
Strictly Dishonorable (1951 film)
Strictly Dishonorable is a 1951 romantic comedy film written, produced and directed by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, and starring Ezio Pinza and Janet Leigh...
, and Interrupted Melody
Interrupted Melody
Interrupted Melody is a 1955 biographical film which tells the story of Australian opera singer Marjorie Lawrence's struggle with polio. The film was made by MGM, directed by Curtis Bernhardt and produced by Jack Cummings from a screenplay by Marjorie Lawrence, Sonya Levien, and William Ludwig.The...
with Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Jean Parker is an American screen actress. Her versatility led to her being dubbed Woman of a Thousand Faces, the title of her biography by Doug McClelland.- Early life :...
in 1955, also both for MGM.
Hollywood Bowl
In 1950, as California was celebrating one hundred years of statehood, Rosing was at the Hollywood Bowl directing a new production of FaustFaust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
with Nadine Conner
Nadine Conner
Nadine Conner was an American operatic soprano, radio singer and music teacher.She was born in Compton, California as Evelyn Nadine Henderson, and was the descendent of some of the earliest non-Hispanic settlers in California.Diagnosed as a teenager with pulmonary disease, her doctor suggested she...
, Jerome Hines
Jerome Hines
The American Jerome A. Hines was a basso opera singer who performed at the Metropolitan Opera from 1946 to 1987...
and Richard Tucker
Richard Tucker
Richard Tucker was an American operatic tenor.-Early life:Tucker was born Rivn Ticker in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of Romanian immigrants from Bessarabia. His father, Shmul Ticker, and mother Fanya-Tsipa Ticker had already adopted the surname "Tucker" by the time their son entered first...
, which opened the Bowl's summer season. Rosing's work was noticed by the producers of the upcoming The California Story, the official state centennial production to be mounted in the Bowl that fall, and he was awarded the job of directing it. Meredith Willson
Meredith Willson
Robert Meredith Willson was an American composer, songwriter, conductor and playwright, best known for writing the book, music and lyrics for the hit Broadway musical The Music Man...
was brought on to supervise the music.
The California Story ran for five performances in September 1950. The production was immense. A chorus of 200 and hundreds of actors were employed. The shell of the bowl was removed and the stage was enlarged. The action was expanded to include the surrounding hillsides. Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...
provided the dramatic narration.
The California Storys success was to open up a whole new avenue for Rosing's energies: the historical spectacular. The Bowl provided the setting for the first two of these, The Air Power Pageant in 1951 and The Elks Story in 1954.
Rosing also directed three more operas at the Bowl: the ill-fated Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
in 1951, Madama Butterfly with Dorothy Kirsten
Dorothy Kirsten
Dorothy Kirsten was an American operatic soprano.-Biography:...
in 1960, and The Student Prince
The Student Prince
The Student Prince is an operetta in four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works...
with Igor Gorin
Igor Gorin
Igor Gorin was an Austrian baritone and music teacher.-Early life:Gorin was born Ignatz Greenberg on October 26, 1904, in the small village of Grodek in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Sholom Greenberg, was a rabbi and a Talmudist who taught religion in Grodek and in the neighboring...
in 1962.
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Starting in 1955 with Il tabarroIl tabarro
Il tabarro is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on Didier Gold's play La houppelande. It is the first of the trio of operas known as Il trittico...
, Vladimir Rosing directed a dozen productions over the next seven years for the Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...
, including Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
with Boris Christoff
Boris Christoff
Boris Christoff was a Bulgarian opera singer...
, Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
with Birgit Nilsson
Birgit Nilsson
right|thumb|Nilsson in 1948.Birgit Nilsson was a celebrated Swedish dramatic soprano who specialized in operatic and symphonic works...
in 1958, and Thaïs
Thaïs
Thaïs was a famous Greek hetaera who lived during the time of Alexander the Great and accompanied him on his campaigns. She is most famous for instigating the burning of Persepolis. At the time, Thaïs was the lover of Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander's generals...
with Leontyne Price
Leontyne Price
Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant",...
in 1959. Rosing's last opera there, in 1962, was Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
's Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
, also with Boris Christoff—a production that featured sets by Nicola Benois, choreography by Ruth Page
Ruth Page
Ruth Page was an American ballerina and choreographer, considered a pioneer in creating works on American themes. To the classical ballet vocabulary she added movements from sports, popular dance and everyday gestures....
and dancing by the newly free Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a Russian dancer, considered one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.In 1961 he...
.
Opera Guild of Montreal
The Opera Guild of Montreal, founded by soprano Pauline DonaldaPauline Donalda
Pauline Donalda, OC was a Canadian operatic soprano.Born Pauline Lightstone in Montreal, Quebec, she studied music at Royal Victoria College. In 1902 she studied in Paris and made her debut in 1904 in Nice. In 1922, she opened a studio in Paris and became a teacher...
, brought Rosing to direct Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
in January 1958 at Her Majesty's Theatre. Through 1962, Rosing directed a production each January for the Guild: Macbeth
Macbeth (opera)
Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...
(1959), Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
(1960), Romeo et Juliette (1961) and La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
(1962). The renowned Russian conductor Emil Cooper
Emil Cooper
Emil Albertovich Cooper, also known as Emil Kuper was a Russian conductor and violinist, of English ancestry....
led the orchestra for the first three seasons.
Centennials
The success of The California Story at the Hollywood Bowl in 1950 led to the show being revived in equally grand fashion for San Diego's yearly Fiesta del Pacifico in 1956, 1957, and 1958. Other states took notice, and Rosing was hired to write and direct centennial productions for Oregon in 1959, Kansas in 1961, and Arizona in 1963. He was assisted by his fifth wife, Ruth Scates, whom he married in 1959.The Freedom Story
The centennial of the Civil War was approaching and Rosing conceived of a spectacular production, The Civil War Story, that would be funded jointly by participating States and tour the country for several years in commemoration. Rosing would produce, write and direct the production.After a disappointing failure to win bi-partisan support in the Northern and Southern States for this ambitious project, Rosing then conceived of an even bigger production that would instead tell the story of freedom itself.
The Freedom Story would be an ambassador of freedom and peace, sent from America to the rest of the world, performing in local languages. Rosing wanted to use the power of art to fight the forces of totalitarianism that he saw threatening America's freedom. The project won wide support, with an Advisory Board that included Alf Landon, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Meredith Willson had agreed to create the music.
But, while working on the Arizona Story, Rosing contracted septicemia. His once boundless energy was taken away from him. He died in Santa Monica on November 24, 1963.
Recordings
Vladimir Rosing's complete discography was published in The Record Collector (Vol. 36 No. 3, July, August, September 1991). All the original recordings were issued as 78 RPM records on HMV, Vocalion and Parlophone, but a number have been re-released on LP and CD.78
- From 1912-1916 Rosing recorded 16 discs for the HMV label.
- In the 1920s Rosing recorded 61 discs for the Vocalion Company in England and America.
- In the mid-1930s, after returning to England, Rosing recorded his last 32 discs for the Parlophone Company.
- Three previously unreleased recordings in the EMI vault were discovered and issued to collectors by Historic MastersHistoric MastersHistoric Masters is a historical reissue record label, based in Takeley, Hertfordshire, England, dedicated to making available quality pressings on vinyl of rare 78 rpm recordings of opera singers...
on HM 161 and HM 199b.
LP
- In 1952, American Decca released an LP album, Fourteen Songs of Mussorgsky (DL 9577) taken from Rosing's Parlophone recordings made in April 1935.
- TAP Records selected Vladimir Rosing for its Twenty Great Russian Singers of the Twentieth Century (T 320) released in 1959.
- Rosing was next included in Volume 3 of EMI's massive The Record of SingingThe Record of SingingThe Record of Singing is a compilation of classical-music singing from the first half of the 20th century, the era of the 78-rpm record.It was issued on LP by EMI, successor to the British company His Master's Voice — perhaps the leading organization in the early history of audio recording.The...
in 1984 (EX 290169 3), re-released on CD in 1999. - Not forgotten in his birth country, the Soviet record label Melodiya released a comprehensive 3-record set in the 1980s on their Musical Heritage Series (M10 46417 003, M10 46475 007, & M10 48083 006).
- "The Songs of Moussorgsky" (another reissue of the 1930s Parlophone recordings) was released in Japan by Artisco Records (YD-3014).
CD
- In 1993 Pearl Records released a collection, Russian Art Song (GEMM 9021), pairing the 1930s recordings of Vladimir Rosing and Oda Slobodskaya.
- Stars of David - Music by Singers of Jewish Heritage - Audio Encyclopedia AE 002. Rosing's inclusion on this CD set is a stretch. Rosing's mother was half Jewish—but his upbringing was completely Russian Orthodox.
- Treasures of the St. Petersburg State Museum (NI 7915/6), a double-CD released by Nimbus Records in 2004, featured two of Rosing's recordings.
- Naxos Records included three of Rosing's recordings on the 2006 Naxos Historical release of Mussorgsky: Khovanschina.
- Anthology of Russian Romance: Tenors in the Russian Vocal Tradition includes four tracks by Rosing. 2008 Music Online.
- Vocal Record Collectors' Society - 2009 Issue #V1660, distributed by Norbeck, Peters & Ford, includes one Rosing track.
Marriages
- Marie Falle; married 1909; divorced 1926; son, Valerian, born 1910.
- Margaret (Peggy) Williamson; married 1927; divorced 1931; daughter, Diana, born 1928.
- Winifred (Vicki) Campbell; married 1939; divorced 1951.
- Virginia (Jean) Hillard; married 1952; divorced 1959; son, Richard, born 1955.
- Ruth Scates, married 1959.
Writing
During the Cold War period, when anti-Communism was at its height, Rosing channeled his political energies into writing a novel as well as a series of scripts about Russia for stage and television.- The House of Rosanoff, a novel set in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution, all the way through World War II.
- The Crown Changes Hands, a play about class struggle during the Russian Revolution, produced twice in Los Angeles (1948 and 1953).
- Lenin, a biographical play, written in the 1950s.
- Stalin, a biographical television script, written in the late 1950s.
Quotes
"I look upon music and art from a very idealistic standpoint. To me, music is closely connected with the whole evolutionary process, the progress of the human race, the fundamental question of being—of life—of God.What is perfection in art we, with our finite minds, cannot yet grasp. What seems wonderful and perfect to us now, probably will seem childish in a few hundred years. What seems impossible now will be possible then.
I do hope the time will soon arrive when the masses will awaken themselves to the realization of the great mission of art in life, and will cease to consider it as an amusement, hobby, recreation, snobbism; when governments will cease to be blind and will take art under their special care, will help to develop it as one of the great national treasures and assets, as the great factor for education of the mind, and will give broadly this spiritual food of mankind to the masses. It is time they should understand that it is one of their principal factors (if they are honest) to further the evolution of civilization."
Rosing, Vladimir. "Idealism and Art". Musical Courier, May 10, 1923.
----
"Mussorgsky in his songs invents a completely new medium of musical expressions. He arrives at complete realism, and has a perfect realistic musical tone that portrays the meaning of the word, the psychological state behind the word. He again demands another type of singer, a singer who can master an infinite number of colors in his tones—a singer able to portray in his tone not only beauty and fluent melodic lines, but also the grotesque, and paint realistic pictures with his voice.
In the days of the classics the purists were right—the tone was before everything else. With the sound-treasures that exist in the present-day songs, which portray all of the emotional sides of our life, then I say they are wrong and we are right. Let the purists say that they do not like that kind of song; that is different, and then it would be a question of taste. But to sing those songs with just pure tone is inartistic."
Rosing, Vladimir. "Interpretation in the Art of Singing – Part I". Musical Courier, October 11, 1923
----
"When a singer takes up a song for study he must, first of all, visualize the poem from the beginning to the end. He must create in his mind, a sort of cinematographic film of every movement or emotion that there is in the song. After that he has to place himself into the picture and live in it, becoming actually the character or characters there are in the songs and completely losing his own personality."
Rosing, Vladimir. "Interpretation in the Art of Singing, Part II". Musical Courier, October 18, 1923
----
"To such pitch has Mr. Rosing carried characterizing purpose and projecting power that the listener forgets the song in the singer. A more 'personal' concert then one of Mr. Rosing's is rare indeed. Not even Chaliapin's are more pervaded by a single spirit. He proffers a few words of explanation of his songs; he ventures a happy interchange, Russian-wise, with his audience. He spares neither his own nor the audience’s emotion.
When he believes that pure song is voice to the music in hand, he sings with clear regard for well-shaped, transparent tone, sustained line, warm, felicitous Italian phrasing, adept modulation, spun transition, plastic progress, apt climax.
Mr. Rosing prefers to make his song an insistently expressive art. In his tones he would define and project character; summon picture and vision, evoke and convey passions of the mind, the soul, the body. And he would do all these things to the utmost. For such purpose, he bends or breaks rhythms, chops or fuses phrases, zigzags the melodic line, sharply changes pace or accent, emphasizes contrast, multiplies climax. To gain these ends he uses unashamed what the vestal virgins of song call vocal tricks—the falsetto, for example, or the long-sustained note, swelled, diminished, melted almost inaudibly into the air. He uses them, however, not as display in Galli-Curcian or Tetrazzinian fashion, but to achieve a discoverable point in his vocal design. Above all else, Mr. Rosing would color his tones and impress upon his hearers the personage, the passion, the picture of music and verse as they have stirred his spirit. If the accepted arts of song will so serve him, he uses them expertly, effectively. If they are less viable, he chooses his own means, employs them in his own way."
Parker, H. T. Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance (1922). New York, Dodd, Mead & Co.
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"Rosing brought to London a style of song and of singing London had never heard before, a stark, realistic Russian song, put over in a stark, realistic Russian manner. London concert halls and drawing rooms... lapped up this neat vodka as avidly as a man who has spent months in the desert or a monastery. The fellow, it was plain, was a savage, a moujik. A vagabond of the Steppes, a wastrel from the Siberian snows. Men were shaken out of their complacency. Women shuddered—and adored him.
Rosing had one of the vividest and most magnetic personalities I had ever come across; rarely have I known anyone who could hold an audience in such a sheer ecstasy of enchantment through a whole recital. A Rosing audience was unlike any other. There was electricity in the air and people crouched forward in their seats as though they were watching some fierce and terrifying melodrama. With Rosing, nearly every song was a melodrama—sometimes a grand guignol melodrama. He acted every song; often he overacted it, sometimes he all but clowned it. The purists were scandalized. The man could do everything but sing, they said. He was a mountebank, a buffoon. He had no right in a concert hall; he ought to be on a fairground. It was outrageous, unparalleled. So it was. Perhaps they were right, but it came off, because, despite all his eccentricities, Rosing was never cheap; in everything he did there was such an overpowering impression of stern, unflinching sincerity. The man simply threw himself into his music and its poem. He sang—eyes closed and feet wide apart, like a blind goalkeeper—not only with his voice but with his heart, brain, body, hands and feet. If he tore a passion to tatters, you felt that that particular passion was much more effective in tatters than intact. If he made a mess of a song, well, it was a glorious mess."
Newton, Ivor
Ivor Newton
Ivor Newton CBE was an English pianist who was particularly noted as an accompanist to international singers and string players. He was one of the first to bring a distinct personality to the accompanist's role. He toured extensively to all continents and appeared at music festivals such as...
. At the Piano, the world of an accompanist (1966). Hamish Hamilton, London.