Arthur Bloomfield

A famous recording I grew up with in the 40s was the 1933 abridged Der Rosenkavalier with that manic maestro Otto Klemperer’s onetime girlfriend Elisabeth Schumann, his maybe-almost-girlfriend Lotte Lehmann and the apparently unpursued Maria Olczewska, all under the baton of Robert Heger, not exactly a household name in the annals of conducting and one … Read more

Surfing the net the other day I stumbled on a bundle of pure anecdote heaven, the memoirs of Mr. Richard Temple Savage, the bass clarinet of London’s Covent Garden Opera back in the 30s-40s-50s. This charming book, titled A Voice from the Pit and originally published in 1988 — some of it was serialized in … Read more

A proper headline for this essay, and a banner one too, should proclaim: LEO BLECH GREAT VERDI CONDUCTOR. One rather expects a German with excellent Berlin credentials — and a crisp little name, by the way, that means “tin,” but Blech had no tin ear — to be the genius he was with Wagner. But the grace, drama … Read more

Perhaps you readers have heard the term “house conductor.” This translates as a musician who works or worked more or less exclusively in radio or recordings, and likely had administrative duties as well, such as the now-forgotten Piero Coppola who ran the artistic side of French HMV in the Thirties besides presiding over many recordings and good … Read more

A few articles back I was trumpeting the good marksmanship of SFO boss Kurt Herbert Adler in hiring strong, interesting conductors. Surely none of his finds was better than Niksa Bareza, a Croatian with excellent credentials (Scala, Bolshoi, Vienna etc.) who studied with the great Hermann Scherchen, pillar of Westminster Records’ wonderful catalog in the … Read more

After sampling another batch of historic broadcasts, Arthur Bloomfield our guest commentator (and historian of the San Francisco Opera) writes: When the Adler Years were settled into their cruising altitude back in the 1970s  there was usually a frisson when that earlierday auteur director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle came up with a new production. And there were … Read more

Our guest commentator (and historian of the San Francisco Opera) Arthur Bloomfield writes: Time to review another of the protein-rich San Francisco Opera seasons from the final years of Kurt Herbert Adler’s long reign as the company’s all-seeing general director, that veritable eagle of Van Ness Avenue. Listening again to the 1979 broadcasts, where to begin? … Read more

Here is the fifth in Arthur Bloomfield’s occasional series of Time Machine trips into the world of opera three or four generations ago, focusing on the conductors’ art. As Maestro Fausto Cleva once said on the Met Opera Quiz, in answer to the question “Who is the most important person in an opera performance?”, “The … Read more

As we said at the end of our first installment on the 1978 season (see Arthur Bloomfield – Dropping in On the Final Adler Years at the San Francisco Opera: The Spirit of ’78) Kurt Herbert Adler, the SFO’s general director, came down from his office, momentarily withdrawing his fingers from numerous administrative pies, to conduct … Read more

Our guest commentator Arthur Bloomfield writes: When, in 1977, my publisher asked me to bring my history of the SFO up to date, naturally I jumped at the opportunity and the book, The San Francisco Opera 1922-78, was duly published. But this was several years before the great regime of Kurt Herbert Adler came to an end, … Read more

Here’s the latest in our series of Time Machine excursions back to the great days of opera in mid-20th century, the accent on conductors. Guest commentator is Arthur Bloomfield, drawing on material from his new e-book on the styles of the oldtime maestri available at morethanthenotes.com. Arthur as a young GI on leave from Army … Read more

This is the third in a series of guest commentaries by author and historian Arthur Bloomfield, whose new e-book on the styles of the great oldtime opera and symphony conductors is posted at www.morethanthenotes.com. At least one prominent historian of the Metropolitan Opera – and perhaps a few copycats too – dismissed the diminutive and … Read more

This is a continuation of Guest Commentator’s Arthur Bloomfield’s “time machine” journey back to the early and mid-20th century to explore the works of great conductors of the age. The journey began at Guest Commentator Arthur Bloomfield: “A Great Time Machine Trip”. The second part of his journey begins here: Now our Machine zips back … Read more

Here’s a guest article by our friend Arthur Bloomfield, whose new e-book on the styles of the great oldtime opera and symphony conductors has just been posted at www.morethanthenotes.com. Click on that link and you’ll find essays on 64 conductors (Furtwaengler, Knappertsbusch, Serafin, etc.), 36 illustrations, and four and a half hours of sound clips … Read more