John Crosby

Founder of the Santa Fe Opera

John O'Hea Crosby, conductor and opera administrator: born New York 12 July 1926; died Palm Springs, California 15 December 2002.

John Crosby, the founder and, until 2000, general director and chief conductor of the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico, was a musician who, at the age of 30, discovered his mission in life and pursued it single-mindedly for the next four decades.

Santa Fe had had long connections with artists and authors, but little with music and none with opera when Crosby inaugurated his summer festival in July 1957. For the first few years, audiences came mainly from Santa Fe and nearby Albuquerque, but soon the word spread and people began arriving from all over the United States, and from Europe as well.

Realising that opera-lovers were not going to travel to such an inaccessible place just to hear popular works, Crosby devised a very special repertory from the beginning. This included a large proportion of 20th-century operas, both American and foreign, mixed with the classics – mainly Mozart – and a few well-known works by Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi. He also included nearly all the operas of Richard Strauss, his own favourite composer, a number of them American premieres. As a result, Crosby could boast that he had performed the astonishing total of more than 50 world and US premieres during his years at Santa Fe.

John Crosby was born in New York City, the son of an attorney. Because he suffered from asthma, at the age of 13 he was sent to Los Alamos Boys Ranch School, and fell permanently in love with the spectacular scenery and pure air of New Mexico. Drafted into the army towards the end of the Second World War, he played in his infantry regiment's dance band. After the war he studied at Yale University with Paul Hindemith, the German composer, and then at Columbia, during which period he worked as a musical arranger for Broadway shows and, as a regular standee at the Metropolitan, conceived a passion for opera.

Borrowing $200,000 from his father, Crosby bought an old ranch seven miles north of Santa Fe in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where he constructed a 480-seat wooden theatre. For the first season he collected a company of 65, which included singers and orchestral players. He had already inaugurated the apprentice programme which became such a feature of Santa Fe. The apprentices were auditioned during the months prior to the festival in July and August. They provided the chorus and small roles, while covering the major roles. This gave work to young singers who, until then, had had to go to Europe (usually Germany) to obtain experience.

The season opened on 3 July 1957 with Madam Butterfly, followed by Cosí fan tutte, The Barber of Seville, Ariadne auf Naxos, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and the world premiere of Marvin David Levy's The Tower, in a double bill with Pergolesi's La serva padrona. Most of the seats were open to the sky, and the audience wore ski clothes, covered by blankets or ponchos. It rained frequently and, even if it stayed dry, the evenings were extremely cold, more than 7,000 feet up in the mountains. One compensation was the staggering view when the back of the stage was removed, disclosing the faraway lights of Los Alamos twinkling below.

Subsequent seasons usually contained five works. In 1958 the world premiere was Carlisle Floyd's Wuthering Heights, while the Strauss opera was Capriccio, conducted of course by Crosby. In 1959 Stravinsky, who had attended the rehearsals of The Rake's Progress in the first season, returned to Santa Fe, and during the next four years built up two programmes of five of his own works to celebrate his 80th birthday in 1962. He conducted Oedipus Rex and the US stage premiere of Persephone, while Robert Craft conducted Mavra, Renard and The Nightingale.

Other events during those years included Mark Blitzstein's Regina, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi with the actor Jose Ferrers in the title role, Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, the US premiere of Hindemith's Neues vom Tage, conducted by the composer, Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake, and two more Strauss operas, conducted by Crosby, Der Rosenkavalier and Capriccio. The US premiere of the two-act version of Berg's Lulu was the major event of 1963, while the following year the US stage premiere of Daphne added to the tally of Strauss operas, joining Rigoletto and Carmen in the repertory.

In 1965 there were two US premieres, Shostakovich's The Nose and Henze's King Stag, while Berg's Wozzeck was the novelty for 1966. Then tragedy struck. After the first performance of Hindemith's Cardillac on 26 July 1967, the theatre was destroyed by fire, along with scenery, costumes and scores. Crosby refused to accept defeat, and moved the company to a local high-school gymnasium. The season went ahead with The Barber of Seville and La Bohème, while new orchestral parts for Henze's Boulevard Solitude were obtained from Germany, allowing that US premiere to go ahead as planned.

Immediately the season was over, building started on a new, enlarged theatre, seating 1,366, and this opened on schedule on 2 July 1968. Henze came to conduct his opera The Bassarids, while Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter was paired with Stravinsky's Persephone. The following year Penderecki's The Devils was not popular, but Menotti's Help! Help! the Globolinks together with The Nightingale attracted large audiences. Neither Berio's Opera (1970) nor the world premiere of Yerma, the posthumous work by Villa-Lobos (1971), were much liked, but Offenbach's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, conducted by Crosby, scored a great hit.

Reimann's Melusine (1972) and Britten's Owen Wingrave (1973) were balanced by Pelléas et Mélisande and The Merry Widow, while Cavalli's L'egisto (1974) and Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen (1976) both pleased their audiences, as did Verdi's Falstaff. Virgil Thomson's version of Gertrude Stein's The Mother of Us All celebrated the 1776 bicentenary. In 1977 Crosby conducted a very popular production of Nino Rota's The Italian Straw Hat, followed by a surprisingly successful account of Giordano's Fedora. Stephen Oliver's The Duchess of Malfi (1978) was found too tragic but the US premiere of the three-act version of Lulu (1979) was a real triumph.

Throughout the 1980s Crosby continued his exploration of Richard Strauss. Elektra in 1980 was followed by a new production of Daphne in 1981. This latter staging opened the back wall to spectacular effect in the final scene when Daphne becomes a tree. The following year Die Liebe der Danaë also gained many admirers, as did Arabelle in 1983, Intermezzo in 1984, Die ägyptische Helena in 1986 and Die schweigsame Frau in 1987. Crosby's Strauss series reached its apogee in 1988 when both Feuersnot and Friedenstag were staged. Premieres thereafter included Penderecki's The Black Mask, Judith Weir's A Night at the Chinese Opera and her Blond Eckbert, Siegfried Matthus' Judith, Rihm's Oedipus, H.J. von Bose's The Sorrows of Young Werther, David Lang's Modern Painters, Tobias Picker's Emmeline and Peter Lieberson's Ashoka's Dream.

In 1998 a new theatre was unveiled. All 2,126 seats were protected from the elements, but the back of the stage still opened, as the new production of Madam Butterfly disclosed. The repertory also included the US premiere of Ingvar Lidholm's A Dream Play. In 2000 Crosby conducted Elektra, then stepped down as general director, being succeeded by his long-time associate Richard Gaddes.

Over the years Crosby had conducted over 560 performances at Santa Fe, including 171 by Richard Strauss.

Elizabeth Forbes