Wonderful, my dearest Henkie !!!!!! It is a beautiful Christmas song, and I picture little choirs walking from house to house singing !!!!!!! Again a short number !!!!!!!!!! My sweetie, you are forever in my heart and soul !!!!!! Yours Jytte
Thank you my dearest Jytte that you like my record !!!! Make something beautiful of this weekend Jytte !!!! I keep thinking on you !!!! Yours forever, Henk !!!!
_We Wish You a Merry Christmas_ - Traditional - André Kostelanetz with Phyllis Curtin and the St. Kilian Boychoir - originally released on their album _Wishing You a Merry Christmas_ (1965) *"We Wish You a Merry Christmas"* is an English Christmas carol, listed as numbers 230 and 9681 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The famous version of the carol is from the English West Country. Popular version The Bristol-based composer, conductor and organist Arthur Warrell (1883-1939) is responsible for the popularity of the carol. Warrell, a lecturer at the University of Bristol from 1909, arranged the tune for his own University of Bristol Madrigal Singers as an elaborate four-part arrangement, which he performed with them in concert on December 6, 1935. His composition was published by Oxford University Press the same year under the title "A Merry Christmas: West Country traditional song". Warrell's arrangement is notable for using "I" instead of "we" in the words; the first line is "I wish you a Merry Christmas". It was subsequently republished in the collection _Carols for Choirs_ (1961) and remains widely performed. Many traditional versions of the song have been recorded, some of which replace the last line with "Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year". In 1971, Roy Palmer recorded George Dunn of Quarry Bank, Staffordshire singing a version close to the famous one, which had a familiar version of the chorus, but used the song "Christmas Is Coming" as the verses; this recording can be heard on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website. Amy Ford of Low Ham, Somerset sang a version called "The Singers Make Bold" to Bob and Jacqueline Patten in 1973 which again used a similar chorus to the famous version and can be heard via the British Library Sound Archive. There are several supposedly traditional recordings which follow the famous version exactly, but these are almost certainly derived from Arthur Warrell's arrangement. History The greeting "a merry Christmas and a happy New Year" is recorded from the early eighteenth century; however, the history of the carol itself is unclear. Its origin probably lies in the English tradition wherein wealthy people of the community gave Christmas treats to the carolers on Christmas Eve, such as "figgy pudding" that was very much like modern-day Christmas puddings; in the West Country of England, "figgy pudding" referred to a raisin or plum pudding, not necessarily one containing figs. In the famous version of the song, the singer demands figgy pudding from the audience, threatening to not "go until we get some". The song is absent from the collections of West-countrymen Davies Gilbert (1822 and 1823) and William Sandys (1833), as well as from the great anthologies of _Sylvester_ (1861) and _Husk_ (1864), and _The Oxford Book of Carols_ (1928). In the comprehensive _New Oxford Book of Carols_ (1992), editors Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott describe it as "English traditional" and "[t]he remnant of an envoie much used by wassailers and other luck visitors"; no source or date is given. The famous version of the song was completely unknown outside the West Country before Arthur Warrell popularised it. "Cellar full of beer" variant A closely related verse, dating from the 1830s, runs: _We wish you a merry Christmas_ _And a happy new year;_ _A pocket full of money,_ _And a cellar full of beer._ It was sung by mummers - townsfolk who would go about singing from door to door to request gifts. An example is given in the short story _The Christmas Mummers_ (1858) by Charlotte Yonge: When at last they were all ready, off they marched, with all the little boys and girls running behind them; and went straight to Farmer Buller’s door, where they knew they should find a welcome. They all stood in a row, and began to sing as loud as they were able: _I wish you a merry Christmas_ _And a happy New Year,_ _A pantryful of good roast-beef,_ _And barrels full of beer._ After they are allowed in and perform a Mummers play, the boys are served beer by the farmer's maid. Various sources place this version of the song in different parts of England during the nineteenth century. Several versions survived into the twentieth century and were recorded by folk song collectors in England, such as those of George Dunn and Mary Evans of Quarry Bank, Staffordshire (both recorded in 1971), as well as Miss J. Howman of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire (1966), all of which are publicly available online courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. These versions use completely different tunes to the now famous West Country variant.
*Phyllis Curtin* (née Smith; December 3, 1921 - June 5, 2016) was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in _Susannah_ and Catherine Earnshaw in _Wuthering Heights._ She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from singing in 1984. She was named Boston University's Dean Emerita, College of Fine Arts in 1991. Education and early career Phyllis Smith was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and studied singing with Olga Averino at Wellesley College where she earned a bachelor's degree in political science. She pursued graduate studies in vocal performance under Boris Goldovsky at the New England Conservatory. In 1946 she made her professional opera debut with Goldovsky's opera company, the New England Opera Theater, as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. She took the surname Curtin from her first husband, whom she divorced after nine years. She performed several other roles with the company over the next seven years, including Countess Almaviva in Mozart's _The Marriage of Figaro_ (1947). In 1950, Curtin performed in the inaugural year of the _Peabody Mason Concerts_ in Boston. In 1953 she joined the roster of principal sopranos at the New York City Opera (NYCO) at the invitation of Joseph Rosenstock. She made her debut with the company on October 22, 1953, portraying three roles _(Fräulein Bürstner, Frau Grubach,_ and _Leni)_ in the U.S. premiere of Gottfried von Einem's _The Trial._ She remained committed to the NYCO through 1960, where her roles included Alice Ford in Verdi's _Falstaff,_ Antonia in Offenbach's _The Tales of Hoffmann, Countess Almaviva,_ Cressida in _Troilus and Cressida,_ Fiordiligi in Mozart's _Così fan tutte,_ Frau Fluth in Nicolai's _The Merry Wives of Windsor,_ Katharina in Vittorio Giannini's _The Taming of the Shrew,_ Konstanze in Mozart's _Die Entführung aus dem Serail,_ Mélisande in Debussy's _Pelléas et Mélisande,_ Norina in Donizetti's _Don Pasquale,_ Rosalinde in _Die Fledermaus_ by Johann Strauss, and the title roles in Verdi's _La traviata_ and in _Salome_ by Richard Strauss. She sang two roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd with the NYCO that she had previously created in their world premieres: the title role in _Susannah_ (which she sang at Florida State University for its 1955 world premiere) and Catherine Earnshaw in _Wuthering Heights_ (which she sang at the Santa Fe Opera for its 1958 premiere). She appeared as Thérèse in the American premiere of Poulenc's _Les mamelles de Tirésias_ at Brandeis University in 1953. She returned to Brandeis two years later to portray the title role in Milhaud's _Médée._ In 1956 she toured the U.S. with the NBC Opera Company as _Countess Almaviva_ with Walter Cassel as the Count, Adelaide Bishop as Sussana, and Frances Bible as Cherubino. In 1957 she appeared as Elena in Gluck's _Paride ed Elena_ with the American Opera Society. In 1958 she portrayed Floyd's _Susannah_ at the Brussels World's Fair. In the 1959-1960 season she sang two roles with the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company: Rosalinde and _Susannah._ In 1959 she made her debut at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She also made appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, the Cincinnati Opera, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and appeared in concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and The Little Orchestra Society during the 1950s. Later career After the close of the 1959-60 season, Curtin left the employ of the NYCO, although she would continue to perform as a guest artist with the company up through 1964; she returned for performances in 1975 and 1976. She sang _Fiordiligi_ for the NBC Television Opera Theatre in 1960. She sang several roles at the Vienna State Opera from 1960-61, including the title role of Puccini's _Madama Butterfly, Fiordiligi, Salome,_ and _Traviata._ In 1961 she made her debuts at the Oper Frankfurt, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, and the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi. She made her first appearance at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1965 and her debut at the Seattle Opera in 1969. In the same year she appeared as Donna Anna in Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ at the Glyndebourne Festival. Curtin appeared at the La Scala in Milan in 1962, in _Cosí fan tutte_ opposite Teresa Berganza. In 1966 she appeared in the world premiere of Milhaud's _La mère coupable_ at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. In 1968 she appeared as Mimì in Puccini's _La Bohème_ at the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company with Richard Tucker as Rodolfo and Ron Bottcher as Marcello. Other guest appearances included performances at the Scottish Opera (as Marguerite in Gounod's _Faust_ and Ellen Orford in Britten's _Peter Grimes)_ at La Scala. Curtin made her Metropolitan Opera (Met) debut on November 4, 1961, as _Fiordiligi_ to the Ferrando of George Shirley, Dorabella of Rosalind Elias, Guglielmo of Theodor Uppman, Despina of Roberta Peters, and Don Alfonso of Frank Guarrera. She returned frequently as a guest artist at the Met, appearing in such roles as _Alice Ford, Countess Almaviva, Donna Anna, Ellen Orford,_ Eva in Wagner's _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Rosalinde, Salome,_ and _Violetta._ Her last Met appearance was on July 6, 1973, in the title role of Puccini's _Tosca_ with Enrico Di Giuseppe as Cavaradossi and Ignace Strasfogel conducting. Teaching Curtin was a professor of voice at the School of Music at Yale University from 1974-1983. She was Artistic Advisor at the Opera Institute at the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Music, where she held a Deanship of the Schools for the Arts, as well as Artist-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center where she taught voice for more than fifty years. From 1979-83 she was the master of Yale's Branford College, making her that college's first female master, despite Branford fellows asking Yale to choose a "real master" instead.[8] Curtin was dean of Boston University’s College of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1991, and founded its Opera Institute in 1987. As professor Emerita at Boston University's Opera Institute, Curtin taught a series of masterclasses at the school each semester. Personal life She married Philip Curtin, a history professor, in 1946. In April 1954 Life Magazine devoted three pages to pictures of her, describing her "long-limbed, lush-voiced and intense" account of the _Dance of the Seven Veils_ in Strauss's _Salome._ Soon afterwards her marriage was dissolved. In 1956 she married Gene Cook, a photographer with Life Magazine. He died in 1986. The couple had one child, Claudia Madeleine, born 1961. Curtin died at her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on June 5, 2016, aged 94, having suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and circulatory ailments. Video and audio recordings In 1995, VAI released, on compact discs, the 1962 performance of _Susannah,_ from New Orleans, which co-starred Norman Treigle and Richard Cassilly. VAI and other record companies have released other CDs featuring Curtin. In 1988, Kultur published a video cassette recording of the 1968 _The Bell Telephone Hour_ program, "Opera: Two to Six". She can be seen in staged excerpts from _Faust_ and _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg._ VAI later released several _Bell Telephone Hour_ DVDs featuring Curtin. In 2007 VAI released a DVD featuring Curtin in the soprano role (i.e., the Latin text) in Britten's _War Requiem._ This 1963 performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf at Tanglewood was the work's American premiere. Tributes In 1976, President Gerald Ford invited her to sing for a White House dinner honoring West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Curtin served on the National Council for the Arts, and in 1994 was designated a U.S. Ambassador for the Arts, a new honor given former council members. She received Wellesley College's Alumnae Achievement Award and BU's College of Fine Arts Distinguished Faculty Award. She also held a number of honorary degrees in music and the humanities, including an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from West Virginia Wesleyan College awarded in 1985. The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan showed the 1956 NBC-TV production of Così fan tutte on January 19, 2008, 50 years after its original 1958 airing. Curtin sang Fiordiligi in this production. The screening was followed by a conversation with the soprano and music critic Martin Bernheimer. In 2017, a portrait of her was unveiled at the dining hall in Branford College, which previously only had portraits of men.
*Andre Kostelanetz* (December 22, 1901 - January 13, 1980) was a Russian-American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music. Biography Abram Naumovich Kostelyanetz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia to a prominent Jewish family. He was a cousin of physicist Lew Kowarski. His father, Nachman Yokhelevich (Naum Ignatyevich) Kostelyanetz, was active on the St. Petersburg stock exchange; his maternal grandfather, Aizik Yevelevich Dymshitz, was a wealthy merchant and industrialist, engaged in timber production. Kostelanetz began playing the piano at four and a half years old. He studied composition and orchestration at the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. When he was 19, the Grand Petrograd Opera Company held a competition to select a chorusmaster and assistant conductor, in which he was selected despite being the youngest applicant. Kostelanetz continued there until leaving Russia in March 1922 after the Russian Revolution, when he stayed in Paris for a time before moving on to the United States. He arrived in the United States that year, and in the 1920s, conducted concerts for radio. In the 1930s, he began his own weekly show on CBS, Andre Kostelanetz Presents. Kostelanetz was known for arranging and recording light classical music pieces for mass audiences, as well as orchestral versions of songs and Broadway show tunes. He made numerous recordings over the course of his career, which had sales of over 50 million. For many years, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in pops concerts and recordings, in which they were billed as Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra. Kostelanetz may be best known to modern audiences for a series of easy listening instrumental albums on Columbia Records from the 1940s until 1980. Kostelanetz actually started making this music before there was a genre called "easy listening". He continued until after some of his contemporaries, including Mantovani, had stopped recording. Outside the United States, one of his best-known works was an orchestral arrangement of the tune "With a Song in my Heart", which was the signature tune of a long-running BBC radio program, at first called _Forces Favourites,_ then _Family Favourites,_ and finally _Two Way Family Favourites._ He commissioned many works, including Aaron Copland's _Lincoln Portrait,_ Jerome Kern's _Portrait of Mark Twain,_ William Schuman's _New England Triptych,_ Paul Creston's _Frontiers,_ Ferde Grofé's _Hudson River Suite,_ Virgil Thomson's musical portraits of _Fiorello La Guardia_ and _Dorothy Thompson,_ Alan Hovhaness's _Floating World,_ and Ezra Laderman's _Magic Prison._ William Walton dedicated his _Capriccio burlesco_ to Kostelanetz, who conducted the first performance and made the first recording, both with the New York Philharmonic. His last concert was A Night in Old Vienna with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at that city's War Memorial Opera House on December 31, 1979. Personal life His first wife was soprano Lily Pons from 1938 to 1958, when they divorced. They owned a home in Palm Springs, California which was built in 1955. In 1960 he married Sara Gene Orcutt; the marriage lasted several years. Both unions were childless. His brother, Boris Kostelanetz (1911-2006), was a prominent tax defense lawyer. After the December 31, 1979, concert with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Andre Kostelanetz left for a vacation in Haiti. While in Haiti, he contracted pneumonia and died on January 13, 1980, aged 78.
@@henridelagardere264 Dear Henri, thank you for telling about André Kostelanetz !!! I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year !!! Your friend Jytte
Wonderful, my dearest Henkie !!!!!! It is a beautiful Christmas song, and I picture little choirs walking from house to house singing !!!!!!! Again a short number !!!!!!!!!! My sweetie, you are forever in my heart and soul !!!!!! Yours Jytte
Thank you my dearest Jytte that you like my record !!!! Make something beautiful of this weekend Jytte !!!! I keep thinking on you !!!! Yours forever, Henk !!!!
_We Wish You a Merry Christmas_ - Traditional - André Kostelanetz with Phyllis Curtin and the St. Kilian Boychoir - originally released on their album _Wishing You a Merry Christmas_ (1965)
*"We Wish You a Merry Christmas"* is an English Christmas carol, listed as numbers 230 and 9681 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The famous version of the carol is from the English West Country.
Popular version
The Bristol-based composer, conductor and organist Arthur Warrell (1883-1939) is responsible for the popularity of the carol. Warrell, a lecturer at the University of Bristol from 1909, arranged the tune for his own University of Bristol Madrigal Singers as an elaborate four-part arrangement, which he performed with them in concert on December 6, 1935. His composition was published by Oxford University Press the same year under the title "A Merry Christmas: West Country traditional song".
Warrell's arrangement is notable for using "I" instead of "we" in the words; the first line is "I wish you a Merry Christmas". It was subsequently republished in the collection _Carols for Choirs_ (1961) and remains widely performed.
Many traditional versions of the song have been recorded, some of which replace the last line with "Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year". In 1971, Roy Palmer recorded George Dunn of Quarry Bank, Staffordshire singing a version close to the famous one, which had a familiar version of the chorus, but used the song "Christmas Is Coming" as the verses; this recording can be heard on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website. Amy Ford of Low Ham, Somerset sang a version called "The Singers Make Bold" to Bob and Jacqueline Patten in 1973 which again used a similar chorus to the famous version and can be heard via the British Library Sound Archive. There are several supposedly traditional recordings which follow the famous version exactly, but these are almost certainly derived from Arthur Warrell's arrangement.
History
The greeting "a merry Christmas and a happy New Year" is recorded from the early eighteenth century; however, the history of the carol itself is unclear. Its origin probably lies in the English tradition wherein wealthy people of the community gave Christmas treats to the carolers on Christmas Eve, such as "figgy pudding" that was very much like modern-day Christmas puddings; in the West Country of England, "figgy pudding" referred to a raisin or plum pudding, not necessarily one containing figs. In the famous version of the song, the singer demands figgy pudding from the audience, threatening to not "go until we get some".
The song is absent from the collections of West-countrymen Davies Gilbert (1822 and 1823) and William Sandys (1833), as well as from the great anthologies of _Sylvester_ (1861) and _Husk_ (1864), and _The Oxford Book of Carols_ (1928). In the comprehensive _New Oxford Book of Carols_ (1992), editors Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott describe it as "English traditional" and "[t]he remnant of an envoie much used by wassailers and other luck visitors"; no source or date is given. The famous version of the song was completely unknown outside the West Country before Arthur Warrell popularised it.
"Cellar full of beer" variant
A closely related verse, dating from the 1830s, runs:
_We wish you a merry Christmas_
_And a happy new year;_
_A pocket full of money,_
_And a cellar full of beer._
It was sung by mummers - townsfolk who would go about singing from door to door to request gifts. An example is given in the short story _The Christmas Mummers_ (1858) by Charlotte Yonge:
When at last they were all ready, off they marched, with all the little boys and girls running behind them; and went straight to Farmer Buller’s door, where they knew they should find a welcome. They all stood in a row, and began to sing as loud as they were able:
_I wish you a merry Christmas_
_And a happy New Year,_
_A pantryful of good roast-beef,_
_And barrels full of beer._
After they are allowed in and perform a Mummers play, the boys are served beer by the farmer's maid.
Various sources place this version of the song in different parts of England during the nineteenth century. Several versions survived into the twentieth century and were recorded by folk song collectors in England, such as those of George Dunn and Mary Evans of Quarry Bank, Staffordshire (both recorded in 1971), as well as Miss J. Howman of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire (1966), all of which are publicly available online courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. These versions use completely different tunes to the now famous West Country variant.
*Phyllis Curtin* (née Smith; December 3, 1921 - June 5, 2016) was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in _Susannah_ and Catherine Earnshaw in _Wuthering Heights._ She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from singing in 1984. She was named Boston University's Dean Emerita, College of Fine Arts in 1991.
Education and early career
Phyllis Smith was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and studied singing with Olga Averino at Wellesley College where she earned a bachelor's degree in political science. She pursued graduate studies in vocal performance under Boris Goldovsky at the New England Conservatory. In 1946 she made her professional opera debut with Goldovsky's opera company, the New England Opera Theater, as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. She took the surname Curtin from her first husband, whom she divorced after nine years.
She performed several other roles with the company over the next seven years, including Countess Almaviva in Mozart's _The Marriage of Figaro_ (1947). In 1950, Curtin performed in the inaugural year of the _Peabody Mason Concerts_ in Boston. In 1953 she joined the roster of principal sopranos at the New York City Opera (NYCO) at the invitation of Joseph Rosenstock. She made her debut with the company on October 22, 1953, portraying three roles _(Fräulein Bürstner, Frau Grubach,_ and _Leni)_ in the U.S. premiere of Gottfried von Einem's _The Trial._
She remained committed to the NYCO through 1960, where her roles included Alice Ford in Verdi's _Falstaff,_ Antonia in Offenbach's _The Tales of Hoffmann, Countess Almaviva,_ Cressida in _Troilus and Cressida,_ Fiordiligi in Mozart's _Così fan tutte,_ Frau Fluth in Nicolai's _The Merry Wives of Windsor,_ Katharina in Vittorio Giannini's _The Taming of the Shrew,_ Konstanze in Mozart's _Die Entführung aus dem Serail,_ Mélisande in Debussy's _Pelléas et Mélisande,_ Norina in Donizetti's _Don Pasquale,_ Rosalinde in _Die Fledermaus_ by Johann Strauss, and the title roles in Verdi's _La traviata_ and in _Salome_ by Richard Strauss. She sang two roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd with the NYCO that she had previously created in their world premieres: the title role in _Susannah_ (which she sang at Florida State University for its 1955 world premiere) and Catherine Earnshaw in _Wuthering Heights_ (which she sang at the Santa Fe Opera for its 1958 premiere).
She appeared as Thérèse in the American premiere of Poulenc's _Les mamelles de Tirésias_ at Brandeis University in 1953. She returned to Brandeis two years later to portray the title role in Milhaud's _Médée._
In 1956 she toured the U.S. with the NBC Opera Company as _Countess Almaviva_ with Walter Cassel as the Count, Adelaide Bishop as Sussana, and Frances Bible as Cherubino. In 1957 she appeared as Elena in Gluck's _Paride ed Elena_ with the American Opera Society. In 1958 she portrayed Floyd's _Susannah_ at the Brussels World's Fair. In the 1959-1960 season she sang two roles with the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company: Rosalinde and _Susannah._ In 1959 she made her debut at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She also made appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, the Cincinnati Opera, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and appeared in concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and The Little Orchestra Society during the 1950s.
Later career
After the close of the 1959-60 season, Curtin left the employ of the NYCO, although she would continue to perform as a guest artist with the company up through 1964; she returned for performances in 1975 and 1976. She sang _Fiordiligi_ for the NBC Television Opera Theatre in 1960. She sang several roles at the Vienna State Opera from 1960-61, including the title role of Puccini's _Madama Butterfly, Fiordiligi, Salome,_ and _Traviata._ In 1961 she made her debuts at the Oper Frankfurt, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, and the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi. She made her first appearance at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1965 and her debut at the Seattle Opera in 1969. In the same year she appeared as Donna Anna in Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ at the Glyndebourne Festival.
Curtin appeared at the La Scala in Milan in 1962, in _Cosí fan tutte_ opposite Teresa Berganza. In 1966 she appeared in the world premiere of Milhaud's _La mère coupable_ at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. In 1968 she appeared as Mimì in Puccini's _La Bohème_ at the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company with Richard Tucker as Rodolfo and Ron Bottcher as Marcello. Other guest appearances included performances at the Scottish Opera (as Marguerite in Gounod's _Faust_ and Ellen Orford in Britten's _Peter Grimes)_ at La Scala.
Curtin made her Metropolitan Opera (Met) debut on November 4, 1961, as _Fiordiligi_ to the Ferrando of George Shirley, Dorabella of Rosalind Elias, Guglielmo of Theodor Uppman, Despina of Roberta Peters, and Don Alfonso of Frank Guarrera. She returned frequently as a guest artist at the Met, appearing in such roles as _Alice Ford, Countess Almaviva, Donna Anna, Ellen Orford,_ Eva in Wagner's _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Rosalinde, Salome,_ and _Violetta._ Her last Met appearance was on July 6, 1973, in the title role of Puccini's _Tosca_ with Enrico Di Giuseppe as Cavaradossi and Ignace Strasfogel conducting.
Teaching
Curtin was a professor of voice at the School of Music at Yale University from 1974-1983. She was Artistic Advisor at the Opera Institute at the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Music, where she held a Deanship of the Schools for the Arts, as well as Artist-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center where she taught voice for more than fifty years.
From 1979-83 she was the master of Yale's Branford College, making her that college's first female master, despite Branford fellows asking Yale to choose a "real master" instead.[8] Curtin was dean of Boston University’s College of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1991, and founded its Opera Institute in 1987. As professor Emerita at Boston University's Opera Institute, Curtin taught a series of masterclasses at the school each semester.
Personal life
She married Philip Curtin, a history professor, in 1946. In April 1954 Life Magazine devoted three pages to pictures of her, describing her "long-limbed, lush-voiced and intense" account of the _Dance of the Seven Veils_ in Strauss's _Salome._ Soon afterwards her marriage was dissolved. In 1956 she married Gene Cook, a photographer with Life Magazine. He died in 1986. The couple had one child, Claudia Madeleine, born 1961.
Curtin died at her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on June 5, 2016, aged 94, having suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and circulatory ailments.
Video and audio recordings
In 1995, VAI released, on compact discs, the 1962 performance of _Susannah,_ from New Orleans, which co-starred Norman Treigle and Richard Cassilly. VAI and other record companies have released other CDs featuring Curtin. In 1988, Kultur published a video cassette recording of the 1968 _The Bell Telephone Hour_ program, "Opera: Two to Six".
She can be seen in staged excerpts from _Faust_ and _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg._ VAI later released several _Bell Telephone Hour_ DVDs featuring Curtin. In 2007 VAI released a DVD featuring Curtin in the soprano role (i.e., the Latin text) in Britten's _War Requiem._ This 1963 performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf at Tanglewood was the work's American premiere.
Tributes
In 1976, President Gerald Ford invited her to sing for a White House dinner honoring West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
Curtin served on the National Council for the Arts, and in 1994 was designated a U.S. Ambassador for the Arts, a new honor given former council members.
She received Wellesley College's Alumnae Achievement Award and BU's College of Fine Arts Distinguished Faculty Award. She also held a number of honorary degrees in music and the humanities, including an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from West Virginia Wesleyan College awarded in 1985.
The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan showed the 1956 NBC-TV production of Così fan tutte on January 19, 2008, 50 years after its original 1958 airing. Curtin sang Fiordiligi in this production. The screening was followed by a conversation with the soprano and music critic Martin Bernheimer.
In 2017, a portrait of her was unveiled at the dining hall in Branford College, which previously only had portraits of men.
*Andre Kostelanetz* (December 22, 1901 - January 13, 1980) was a Russian-American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music.
Biography
Abram Naumovich Kostelyanetz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia to a prominent Jewish family. He was a cousin of physicist Lew Kowarski.
His father, Nachman Yokhelevich (Naum Ignatyevich) Kostelyanetz, was active on the St. Petersburg stock exchange; his maternal grandfather, Aizik Yevelevich Dymshitz, was a wealthy merchant and industrialist, engaged in timber production. Kostelanetz began playing the piano at four and a half years old. He studied composition and orchestration at the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. When he was 19, the Grand Petrograd Opera Company held a competition to select a chorusmaster and assistant conductor, in which he was selected despite being the youngest applicant. Kostelanetz continued there until leaving Russia in March 1922 after the Russian Revolution, when he stayed in Paris for a time before moving on to the United States.
He arrived in the United States that year, and in the 1920s, conducted concerts for radio. In the 1930s, he began his own weekly show on CBS, Andre Kostelanetz Presents. Kostelanetz was known for arranging and recording light classical music pieces for mass audiences, as well as orchestral versions of songs and Broadway show tunes. He made numerous recordings over the course of his career, which had sales of over 50 million. For many years, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in pops concerts and recordings, in which they were billed as Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra.
Kostelanetz may be best known to modern audiences for a series of easy listening instrumental albums on Columbia Records from the 1940s until 1980. Kostelanetz actually started making this music before there was a genre called "easy listening". He continued until after some of his contemporaries, including Mantovani, had stopped recording. Outside the United States, one of his best-known works was an orchestral arrangement of the tune "With a Song in my Heart", which was the signature tune of a long-running BBC radio program, at first called _Forces Favourites,_ then _Family Favourites,_ and finally _Two Way Family Favourites._
He commissioned many works, including Aaron Copland's _Lincoln Portrait,_ Jerome Kern's _Portrait of Mark Twain,_ William Schuman's _New England Triptych,_ Paul Creston's _Frontiers,_ Ferde Grofé's _Hudson River Suite,_ Virgil Thomson's musical portraits of _Fiorello La Guardia_ and _Dorothy Thompson,_ Alan Hovhaness's _Floating World,_ and Ezra Laderman's _Magic Prison._ William Walton dedicated his _Capriccio burlesco_ to Kostelanetz, who conducted the first performance and made the first recording, both with the New York Philharmonic.
His last concert was A Night in Old Vienna with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at that city's War Memorial Opera House on December 31, 1979.
Personal life
His first wife was soprano Lily Pons from 1938 to 1958, when they divorced. They owned a home in Palm Springs, California which was built in 1955. In 1960 he married Sara Gene Orcutt; the marriage lasted several years. Both unions were childless.
His brother, Boris Kostelanetz (1911-2006), was a prominent tax defense lawyer.
After the December 31, 1979, concert with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Andre Kostelanetz left for a vacation in Haiti. While in Haiti, he contracted pneumonia and died on January 13, 1980, aged 78.
@@henridelagardere264 Dear Henri, thank you for telling about André Kostelanetz !!! I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year !!! Your friend Jytte
Goedemiddag Henri !!!! Dank voor dit prachtige verhaal over deze populaire song !!!! Je bent AMAZING !!!!!
Dank voor deze prachtige en zeer uitgebreide biografie van Phyllis Curtin !!! het was een genot om het te lezen !!!! Dankbare groeten van Henk !!!!!