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San Carlo Opera Company

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The San Carlo Opera Company was the name of two different opera companies active in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.

Alice Nielsen, Nordica's San Carlo Opera with Henry Russell Jr.

The first company was founded by Alice Nielsen and Nordica using Alice's novice protege Henry Russell, Jr. as a convenient figurehead. There was never any official connection to the Teatro di San Carlo of Naples, Italy, although Nielsen sang there in 1904 and toured with the group to London's Covent Garden. 

   The bogus San Carlos opened in New Orleans where the French Opera House board had given Nielsen a financial guarantee for a full season. They toured North America with great success to LA, Chicago, and other towns, ending with a week at Boston's Park Theatre where Nielsen sang nine operas in seven days. Her La Boheme with the tenor Constantino in his American debut caused Eben Jordan Jr. to offer to build Boston Opera House for a permanent home for her Company. 
   Nielsen and Nordica toured their so-called San Carlo opera company fir several seasons until dissolving the group in spring before the fall 1909 opening of Boston Opera House.

With the opening of the Boston Opera House in 1909, the company became the newly formed Boston Opera Company with Jordan selecting Russell to manage who will soon notoriously go bankrupt by driving away the stars who allowed him to take the job. Notable singers to perform with the Nielsen-Nordica San Carlo Opera Company include sopranos Fély Dereyne, and Tarquinia Tarquini; tenors Florencio Constantino, Riccardo Martin, and Umberto Sacchetti; contralto Rosa Olitzka; and bass Andrés de Segurola. Many of the singers had links to Spain.

Fortune Gallo's San Carlo Opera

The second San Carlo Opera Company was a touring grand opera company founded by the Italian-American impresario Fortune Gallo. Taking over management of a touring opera company led by Mario Lombardi that was stranded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1910, Gallo brought them back to New York City, untangled their finances, and reorganized them as the San Carlo Opera Company, opening in December 1913 with a premier performance featuring “Carmen”. Until its disbandment in the mid-1950s, the company - 100 strong, including 30 instrumentalists - toured annually in the United States and Canada, visiting cities and towns poorly served by other companies, and often ventured as far afield as Europe, and South America.

Part of Gallo's success was his innovation of using local talent and heavily advertising their use to spur ticket sales. In addition, the company was led under the astute musical direction of conductor Carlo Peroni from 1921 until his death twenty-three years later. Under Peroni's leadership the company fared well, and in 1927 Gallo built the Gallo Opera House on West 54th Street in New York City. It would later become Studio 54. The San Carlo company holds the distinction of having performed in the very first sound film of a complete opera, "Pagliacci," in 1929. Gallo did not try to turn the opera into a "moving picture," rather this was a filmed stage production, with stage sets, framed by the proscenium arch. During the war years of 1943 and 1944, Gallo produced a full season of opera in Chicago, which had lacked a resident opera company for some years, under the name Chicago Opera Company, using both his San Carlo company and visiting artists. Upon Peroni's death in 1944, Nicola Rescigno assumed the role of music director. He was succeeded in 1947 by Carlo Moresco who served as the company's music director until its demise roughly ten years later.

References

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