Carl Rosa

Cartoon of Carl Rosa from the Entr'acte, 1887

Carl August Nicholas Rosa, born Karl August Nikolaus Rose (22 March 1842, Hamburg – 30 April 1889, Paris), was a German-born musical impresario best remembered for founding an English opera company known as the Carl Rosa Opera Company.

Early life and career

Rosa was the son of Ludwig Rose, a Hamburg businessman, and Sophie Becker. A child violin prodigy, Rosa studied at the Conservatorium at Leipzig (where he met and became lifelong friends with Arthur Sullivan) and, in 1862, in Paris. In 1863 he was appointed Konzertmeister at Hamburg. Three years later he visited England, appearing as a soloist at the Crystal Palace. He had considerable success as a conductor both in England and America. He travelled to America in 1866 as a member of a concert troupe promoted by the Baltimore impresario Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman that also included the Scottish operatic soprano Euphrosyne Parepa. During this tour, on February 26 1867 in New York, he married Parepa, who became known as Madame Parepa-Rosa.[1]

In 1869, in collaboration with the Chicago impresario C. D. Hess, the couple formed the Parepa Rosa English Opera Company in New York and toured in America for three seasons, with Parepa as the star and Carl as the conductor. It brought grand opera to places in America that had never seen any, performing Italian operas in English, which made them more accessible to American audiences. In 1872, the Rosas returned to England and also visited Europe and Egypt.[2]

Carl Rosa Opera Company

In 1873 they started the Carl Rosa Opera Company (the change in name reflecting her pregnancy) with a performance of William Vincent Wallace's Maritana and then toured England and Ireland, producing operas in English versions. Later in 1873, dramatist W. S. Gilbert approached Rosa about writing the music for a comic opera based on one of Gilbert's Bab Ballads, Trial by Jury: An Operetta. Parepa was to play the soprano lead, as part of Rosa's planned season of English opera at the Drury Lane Theatre. Parepa died in childbirth in 1874, and the project was temporarily dropped (until a competing manager, Richard D'Oyly Carte, produced Trial by Jury in 1875, with music by Arthur Sullivan). Rosa later endowed a Parepa-Rosa scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Carl Rosa married a second time in 1881.

Carl Rosa startled by the bogey of Italian Opera in an 1886 cartoon by Alfred Bryan

In 1874, Rosa staged a second London season at the Lyceum Theatre, which became an annual event. For the next fifteen years, with Rosa at the helm, the company prospered and earned good notices, with provincial tours and London seasons, frequently in conjunction with Augustus Harris at the Drury Lane Theatre. From 1879 to 1885, Alberto Randegger served as musical director. In 1880, Sir George Grove wrote: "The careful way in which the pieces are put on the stage, the number of rehearsals, the eminence of the performers and the excellence of the performers have begun to bear their legitimate fruit, and the Carl Rosa Opera Company bids fair to become a permanent English institution."[3]

Rosa introduced many works of important opera repertoire to England for the first time, performing some 150 different operas over the years.[4] Rosa Hersee, Minnie Hauk, Georgina Burns, Charles Santley, Joseph Maas, Barton McGuckin, Giulia Warwick, Zélie de Lussan and William Ludwig were some of the famous singers associated with the company during its early years. Later famous members of the company included Eva Turner, Joan Hammond, Heddle Nash, Gwen Catley, Krystyna Granowska and Charles Craig. In addition to Randegger, well-known conductors included Sir Edward Downes, Eugène Goossens (all three), Sir Henry Wood, Sir Hamilton Harty, Sir Thomas Beecham, Vilem Tausky CBE, John Matheson, and John Bell.[5]

Rosa also encouraged and supported new works by English composers. Pauline in 1876 (Frederic Hymen Cowen), Esmeralda in 1883 (Arthur Goring Thomas), Colomba in 1883 (Alexander Mackenzie), and The Canterbury Pilgrims in 1884 (Charles Villiers Stanford) were but four of the operas commissioned by the company. When Rosa died suddenly in 1889, he had demonstrated that English opera could be an artistic and financial success. Both during his life and after his death, his company had much to do with popularizing good music in England, encouraging native composers and training a number of excellent singers.

Rosa's legacy

Tomb of Carl Rosa, his second wife Josephine and daughter Violet, Highgate Cemetery, London.

The company was later permitted to use the royal title, becoming the "Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company". Unlike many other opera companies, the Carl Rosa survived the First World War, but financial difficulties forced liquidation in 1920. Four years later, control had passed to H. B. Phillips, whose own opera company had merged with the Carl Rosa a few years earlier. Another financial crisis in 1951 prompted the Arts Council subsidy to support further tours in an uneasy alliance with the Carl Rosa Trust. In 1958, the Arts Council controversially withdrew its subsidy, and Carl Rosa merged with Sadlers' Wells Opera.

The revived Carl Rosa Opera Company

The new Carl Rosa Opera Limited was revived in 1997 under the artistic direction of Peter Mulloy.[6] Since then, it and has toured the UK and internationally, offering a new repertoire of light operas, including Gilbert and Sullivan,[7] continental operettas and even grand opera, such as La Bohème. Recent conductors have included David Russell Hulme and Martin Handley.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• History of Carl Rosa Opera Company
• 1955 article about the company
• More history of the Company
• Article on the revived Company
• Article on Rosa's wife, Madame Parepa Rosa

External links

• New Carl Rosa website
• Information about the Company's 2001 recording of The Mikado
• Photos of the Rosas
• Rosa's The Mikado at the G&S Archive