Nicola Rescigno, 92, Co-Founded Dallas Opera

Nicola Rescigno, who died Monday at 92, was founding conductor of both the Chicago Lyric Opera and the Dallas Opera, where he led the American debuts of singers including Joan Sutherland and Placido Domingo, the designer Franco Zeffirelli, and a host of others.He was closely associated with Maria Callas, and conducted her American debut in 1954 at the Lyric in “Norma.” Three years later, the diva made national news at the Dallas Civic Opera debut with a program of showpiece arias under Rescigno’s baton. Newspapers headlined, “Callas in Dallas.”Though devoted to the Italian lyric tradition in conventional settings, Rescigno also conducted the American professional premieres of Handel’s “Alcina,” Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea,” and Dominick Argento’s “The Aspern Papers.” He helped make the Dallas Opera into something more formidable than just another regional company.“There would have been no Dallas Opera if it weren’t for Nicola Rescigno,” the Dallas Opera’s director of artistic administration, Jonathan Pell, told the Dallas Morning News.Rescigno was born May 16, 1916, in Manhattan to Italian parents. His father was a trumpeter at the Metropolitan Opera for 30 years, and several of his relatives were also professional musicians. He was educated at Italian boarding schools and also earned a doctor of jurisprudence degree at the University of Rome. He then returned to New York, and studied at Juilliard. Rescigno made his American debut in 1943, conducting “La Traviata” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He later spent a season with the touring San Carlo Opera Company, whose impresario, Fortune Gallo, decided that the handsome young Rescigno would attract young fans “like Frank Sinatra.”“He has studied every score he directs with one of the world’s great conductors of that particular music,” a well-known American contralto, Gladys Swarthout, told the Washington Post in 1948. “He is going to make a real place for himself.”In 1953, he literally helped create a new place for himself by joining with Carol Fox and Lawrence Kelly to form the Lyric Theater, soon renamed the Lyric Opera. Two years later, Kelly and Rescigno left in a dispute over artistic control, and Kelly — also a lapsed law student and more the impresario of the pair — settled on Dallas as an up-and-coming spot for a new company.Following the triumphant 1957 Callas debut, the soprano sang in several more Dallas productions including “Lucia di Lammermoor,” “La Traviata,” and “Medea.” She was feuding at the time with the Met’s manager, Rudolf Bing. A flood of stars followed her onto the Dallas stage: Renata Tebaldi, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, and José Carreras. Despite the glamour, paychecks were sometimes late. “Where is check and where is bank?” the Austrian soprano Helga Dernesch reportedly asked on arriving for a production of “Fidelio.”Kelly died in 1974, leaving Rescigno to lead the company for several years. In 1978, he explained the Dallas Opera’s conservative approach to repertory and staging: “I don’t feel we have to prove a point — to be didactic or go along with the fads. Art is above that.”He did manage to bring the first performance of Wagner to Dallas, “Tristan und Isolde” in 1975. The performance was immortalized when the delirious Tristan, sung by Jon Vickers, looked up from his sickbed and told the audience, “Shut up your damn coughing!”Rescigno was a guest conductor throughout North and South America and Europe, including for “Aida” at the Baths of Caracalla in 1989 and 1990. In 1978 came his perhaps surprisingly late debut at the Met — Bing had exited the stage by then. At the Met, he directed Beverly Sills in “Don Pasquale” and Luciano Pavarotti in “L’Elisir D’Amore.”Relations with Kelly’s eventual replacement in Dallas, Plato Karayanis, did not go smoothly, and Rescigno left in 1990 amid a dispute over musicians’ salaries and creative control. He did not conduct again.The rancor long past, he was remembered with all the affection due a civic father in Dallas, and although known for his temper, he had a softer side as well.“The things he loved most in the world were food, music, and gossip,” Mr. Pell told the Dallas Morning News. “He had an unending source of stories, some of them quite bawdy, and he loved to invite people over and cook pasta.”Rescigno is survived by his companion of 40 years, Aldo Marcoaldi, and several nieces and nephews, including Joseph Rescigno, principal conductor of the Florentine Opera Company of Milwaukee.

Nicola Rescigno, 92, Co-Founded Dallas Opera

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