t h e r o s a t r o u p e
The Combination performances
KARL
FORMES ADOLPH NEUENDORFF
ADELAIDE PHILLIPS
GIORGIO RONCONI
THEODORE WACHTEL
When the Rosas returned for their second American season in August 1871 they opened in October with the English company at the New York Academy of Music and a German company headed by the famous tenor Theodore Wachtel at the Stadt Theatre in the Bowery. Both theatres are shown in the illustrations.
The second company was formed in partnership with the conductor Adolph Neuendorff. The reluctance of the Academy stockholders to go to the less fashionable Bowery eventually brought Wachtel to the Academy for one Italian language performance on 21 October. The opera was a spectacular Trovatore headed by Parepa, Wachtel, a specially recruited Marietta Gazzaniga as Azucena, with singers from the English company, supported by the orchestra and chorus of both companies. The venture was financially successful and a further eighteen ‘Combination’ performances followed at the Academy in April 1872 with Parepa and Wachtel joined by Santley Adelaide Phillips, and veterans Karl Formes, and Giorgio Ronconi. This was the company’s only Italian language season and also was their only association with some famous names. The operas were Trovatore, Rigoletto, Huguenots, William Tell, Martha, and Lucrezia Borgia. They were very profitable. The final performance on 30 April, consisting of operatic extracts, was announced as a ‘Farewell Gala Night’ as the Rosas were returning to Europe on the following day. It was an emotional occasion before a huge audience with Parepa introducing ‘Star Spangled Banner’ into an extract from Bohemian Girl as a farewell gesture. Carl made a speech at the end of the evening implying only a temporary farewell. But this was not to be. Parepa and the Rosa company had sung before an American audience for the last time.
Karl
Formes, born at Mulheim near Cologne
on 7 August 1815 received his early musical training as a member of his
local church choir and eventually graduated to organist. Family
obligations dominated for a time but he was eventually able to pursue
his vocal ambition making a successful operatic debut as Sarastro in
the Magic Flute
at Cologne’s Stadt Theatre in January 1842.
Two years later he was in Vienna and created the role of Plunkett in
the world premiere of Flotow’s Martha on 25
November 1847.
Appearances in Germany and Holland followed but in 1849 the unsettled
state of the continent brought him to Britain where he became a great
favourite singing the great bass roles at Covent Garden for many
seasons. He was equally successful in America making his debut as
Bertram in Robert Le
Diable at the New York Academy on 30 November 1857
and he subsequently pursued opera, oratorio and concert on both sides
of the Atlantic. He sang Marcel in Huguenots
in one combined
performance on 15 April 1872. It was one of his great roles and Santley
remembered that despite vocal frailties his old colleague’s
‘representaton of the rough old soldier was as perfect as
ever’. Formes eventually settled in San Francisco as a
teacher in 1875. He died there on 15 December 1889 and is buried at
Holy Cross Cemetery.
Marietta Gazzaniga, an Italian soprano
born at Voghera in Lombardy in 1824, was a pupil of Alberto Mazzucato
of Milan. She made her debut in her home town in 1840 and a decade
later she had reached La Scala and the San Carlo and created the title
role in Verdi’s Luisa
Miller at the latter theatre on 8
December 1849. A year later she was the first Lina in the premiere of
Verdi’s Stiffelio
at the Teatro Grande in Trieste on 16
November 1850. An international career followed which seemingly
bypassed London but she did appear in Havana and America. She was
teaching in New York when as a mezzo she sang a dramatic Azucena in
Trovatore
in the first and her only combined performance on 21 October
1871. She eventually returned to Italy and died in Milan on 2 January
1884.
Adolph Neuendorff, born at Hamburg on
13 June 1843, came to America with his father in 1855. He studied music
in New York, and was by turns solo pianist, violinist, and from 1867
was director at the Stadt Theatre in New York. This was a large theatre
on the Bowery owned by Germans, and associated with New
York’s German community. Neuendorff had conducted the
American premiere of Lohengrin
at the Stadt on 3 April 1871 and just a
few months later both he and Rosa were planning more opera there with a
German season built around the famous tenor Theodore Wachtel.
Neuendorff probably conducted all the Stadt performances although he
shared the baton with Rosa for the later Academy performances. The
partnership ended with the last combined performance in April 1872
although Neuendorff continued to be a busy man. He promoted another
Wachtel season, without Rosa, in 1875, and conducted the first American
Die Walküre
on 2 April 1877. He composed, sometimes conducted the New
York Philharmonic and Boston Pops Orchestras, and in 1889 returned to
conduct opera with the Emma Juch Opera Company for a brief period. He
died in New York on 4 December 1897.
Adelaide Phillips was born on 26 October
1833 at Stratford on Avon. When she was seven years old the family
emigrated to Boston where she made her stage debut as a child singer
and dancer. Jenny Lind heard her in 1850, recommended advanced training
and the following year with some support from Lind and the Boston
community, she became a pupil of the celebrated Manuel Garcia in
London. Three years later on 5 November 1853 she made her debut at the
Teatro Grande in Brescia in the contralto role of Arsace in
Rossini’s Semiramide.
Her American operatic debut, as Azucena
in Trovatore,
was at the New York Academy of Music on 17 March 1856.
Five years later she created the role of Ulrica in the American
première of Verdi’s Ballo
in Maschera in the same theatre on
11 February 1861. Her subsequent career, apart from a European tour in
the autumn of 1861 was opera, concert and oratorio in America. She
never sang with the regular company but made fifteen combined
appearances, in Trovatore,
Rigoletto, Huguenots, Lucrezia Borgia,
and
Martha.
Santley remembered her as a good singer and actress although he
thought she was past her best vocally. This could have been due to
health problem as she was only in her late thirties. She died at
Carlsbad in Germany on 3 October 1882 where she had gone to take the
waters.
Giorgio Ronconi, born at Milan on 6
August 1810
came of a family of singers and was taught by his father. His debut at
Pavia in 1831 was followed over the next decade by appearances at La
Scala and other Italian houses including seven Donizetti premieres en
route. He created the title role in Verdi’s Nabucco at La
Scala
in 1842, made his London debut in the same year, was subsequently at
Covent Garden for almost every season from 1847 to 1866, and was the
jester in first British Rigoletto
there in 1853. Ronconi despite his
outstanding career was not one of the great baritone voices; his
success stemmed from his superb acting skills coupled with a
charismatic stage presence. The Madrid Conservatoire of Music appointed
him as professor of singing in 1874 and he died in that city on 8
January 1890. He appeared in one combined Don Giovanni on 5
April 1872
singing Leporello to Santley’s Don when Santley’s
sole
concern was a performance worthy of his old friend. For once the master
sought to please the servant!
Theodore
Wachtel, the famous German tenor
born
at Hamburg on 10 March 1823, does not appear to have had a musical
background although details of his early life are sparse. However he
was gifted with a natural voice which was eventually recognized and in
his early twenties he studied in Hamburg and Vienna. He made his debut
in 1847, sang in German and continental opera houses, and acquired a
reputation as a tenore robusto with a brilliant top to the voice
although critics sometimes complained that the artistry did not match
the vocalism. He reached London and Covent Garden in 1862 and sang
there for three seasons during the 1870s before sailing to
America in September 1871 where Rosa and Neuendorff promptly engaged
him for the Stadt Theatre on a percentage basis. Wachtel would received
forty percent of the gross receipts after deducting four hundred
dollars nightly. The season opened to a packed house on September 18
with Wachtel in his most famous role, Chapelon, in Adolphe
Adam’s
Le Postillon de
Lonjumeau (illustrated) sung in German with Neuendorff
conducting. The ‘whip song’ brought the house down;
he
displayed his renowned upper register to great effect in both chest and
mixed voice and, as he was reputed to have once been a stable boy, knew
how to handle the whip. The season continued successfully but tensions
were mounting with the temperamental Wachtel, despite initially
averaging six thousand dollars weekly, questioning receipts, trying to
dictate repertoire, and sometimes threatening not to sing. The Rosas
eventually had to threaten legal action to bring him to heel. Salary
arrangements for the combined performances are not known but he would
have been well paid as he sang in all of them. The last performance
featured an extract from Le
Postillon de Lonjumeau, the only time that
the Academy audience heard him in his signature role. He never sang for
the Rosas again. He retired in the 1880s and died in
Frankfurt
on 14 November 1893.
© 2017 John Ward
