Thomas Schippers
Thomas Schippers ( born March 9, 1930 in Portage, Michigan, † December 16, 1977 in New York City ) was an American conductor and composer.
Schippers had from the age of four piano lessons and later studied organ with the organist of St. Luke's Church in Kalamazoo. He completed the age of fourteen, the Central High School of Kalamazoo now and then studied at the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School of Music. The age of seventeen he was a composition student of Paul Hindemith at Yale University.
1948 Schippers won the second prize in a conducting competition of the Philadelphia Orchestra and went to New York to become a conductor. With other young musicians, he founded the Lemonade Opera Company, a low-budget company, performed the standard works of the operatic repertoire such as Mozart's Don Giovanni, Pergolesi's La Serva padrona and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel.
In 1949 he undertook as a companion of Eileen Farrell, a South American tour. At the same time, he met the composer Gian Carlo Menotti know and conducted the following year the premiere of his opera The Consul. On Christmas Eve of 1951, he conducted the opera Christmas Amahl and the Night Visitors in a television show that was broadcast nationwide live.
Twenty-one year conducted Schippers Menotti's opera The Old Maid and The Thief on the New York City Opera as the youngest conductor who had ever occurred there. As in 1953, the conductor Tullio Serafin turned out at the opera house, took him Schippers short in the performance of Ravel's L' Heure Espagnole.
1955 Schippers conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. In the same year he was honored as a conductor with a Tony Award and voted one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the U.S., and he made his conducting debut at the Milan Teatro alla Scala. 1958 he was musical director of Menotti first Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds, which opened with a staged by Luchino Visconti production of Verdi's Macbeth. The next year, followed by a performance of Donizetti 's unfinished opera Il Duca d' Alba in a completed version of Schippers.
1959 Schippers met in Moscow with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted together here on Samuel Barber's Medea 's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance and Menotti Two Interludes. In December 1961 he conducted at La Scala, a highly acclaimed performance of Cherubini's Medea with Maria Callas.
On the 150th birthday of Richard Wagner, he conducted his 1963 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Bayreuth Festival. In the season 1963-64 he conducted 36 performances of four operas at the Metropolitan Opera.
At the opening of the new opera house the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in 1966 Schippers conducted Samuel Barber opera based on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. In 1970, he was followed by Max Rudolph as conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which he led until his death. Besides this he continued on at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Teatro Comunale in Florence and other opera houses.
1976 Schippers was appointed for the 1977-78 season as conductor of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Due to his lung disease, he could no longer take the place and had all other obligations, including a performance of La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera, cancel.