John Mauceri | |
|---|---|
 John Mauceri, Glasgow, 2020 | |
| Born | John Francis Mauceri (1945-09-12)September 12, 1945 (age 80) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | East Meadow High School |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Occupation(s) | conductor, actor, producer, arranger, voice actor, educator, writer and music composer |
| Years active | 1966–present |
| Spouse | Betty |
| Website | johnmauceri |
John Francis Mauceri/maʊˈtʃɛri/[1] (born September 12, 1945) is an American conductor, actor, producer, arranger, voice actor, educator, writer and music composer. Since making his professional conducting debut almost half a century ago, he has appeared with most of the world's great orchestras, guest-conducted at the premier opera houses, produced and musically supervisedTony andOlivier Award-winningBroadway musicals, and served as university faculty and administrator. Through his varied career, he has taken the lead in the preservation and performance of many genres of music and supervised and conducted important premieres by composers as diverse asDebussy,Stockhausen,Korngold,Hindemith,Bernstein,Sibelius,Ives,Elfman andShore. He is also a leading performer ofmusic banned by theThird Reich and especially music of Hollywood's émigré composers.
Born in New York City, Mauceri attendedEast Meadow High School onLong Island[2][3] and studiedmusic theory andcomposition atYale University earning a BA in 1967 and aMaster of Philosophy in music theory in 1972.[4] His teachers includedWilliam G. Waite,Claude V. Palisca, Beekman Cannon,Leon Plantinga, and Robert Bailey in musicology;Mel Powell,Donald Martino,Allen Forte andPeter Sculthorpe in theory and composition; Donald Currier in piano; andGustav Meier in conducting. In addition he studied 20th-century architecture withVincent Scully, French literature withHenri Peyre, religion (Pelikan and Kuttner) and psychology (Logan and Childe).
In hissenior year he made his conducting debut (December 4, 1966,Branford College), composed the music for a production ofBrecht'sA Man Is a Man, guest conducted theYale Symphony Orchestra (YSO), and produced and music directedBenjamin Britten'sCurlew River at Yale's St. Thomas More Chapel (March 11 and 12, 1967) and then brought the production to New York City for its New York premiere, which took place at the Catholic Chapel of the United Nations (Holy Family church) on May 13 and 14, 1967. He graduatedcum laude, won the Wrexham Prize "for highest musical achievement", the Francis Vernan Prize for composition, and the Branford Arts Prize for his "devotion to the advancement of the arts".[citation needed]
Accepted with a full scholarship into Yale's Graduate School in music theory, he was soon appointed to the faculty as music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra (1968–1974) and continued on for a total of fifteen years as both a guest conductor and music director of the opera program at the Yale School of Music. Mauceri is credited for building the Yale Symphony Orchestra into one of the most respected student orchestras in the world. During his tenure with the YSO he brought the orchestra to Paris (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées) for Paris premieres of Ives'sSymphony No. 4, Debussy'sKhamma and Scriabin'sProméthée. He produced and conducted the YSO for the European premiere of Leonard Bernstein'sMass in Vienna (broadcast worldwide onPBS,BBC and theORF),[5] the world premiere of Charles Ives'sThree Places in New England in its original, large orchestra version, as well as the world premiere of the critical edition of Ives'sOrchestral Set No. 2. His programs drew capacity audiences for seven years and included the American premiere of Debussy's 1913 balletKhamma, the American premiere of Strauss'ssilent film (1926) ofDer Rosenkavalier, the world premiere of a completely staged pageant-version of Karlheinz Stockhausen'sHymnen involving 1000 performers on Yale's Cross Campus, the American premiere of Hindemith's orchestrated songsDas Marienleben and rare performances of Scriabin'sPrometheus: The Poem of Fire (with coordinated lasers),John Cage'sAtlas Eclipticalis, Wagner'sDas Rheingold, Schoenberg'sGurre-Lieder,Messiaen'sRéveil des oiseaux and Stravinsky'sAgon.
In 1973, Mauceri made both his professional orchestral debut with theLos Angeles Philharmonic and his operatic debut conducting Menotti'sThe Saint of Bleecker Street at theWolf Trap Festival.[6]
Committed to preserving two American art forms, the Broadway musical, and Hollywood film scores, he has edited and performed many restorations and first performances, including a full restoration of the original 1943 production of Rodgers & Hammerstein'sOklahoma!, performing editions of Gershwin'sPorgy and Bess,Girl Crazy andStrike up the Band, Bernstein'sCandide andA Quiet Place, and film scores byMiklós Rózsa,Franz Waxman,Erich Wolfgang Korngold,Max Steiner,Elmer Bernstein,Jerry Goldsmith,Danny Elfman andHoward Shore. As one of two conductors inDecca Records' award-winning seriesEntartete Musik, Mauceri made a number of historic first recordings of music banned by the Nazis asdegenerate music. The intersection of the "degenerate composers" of Europe and the refugee composers of Hollywood is the subject of much of his research and his writings. In addition, Mauceri has conducted significant premieres of works byVerdi,Debussy,Hindemith,Ives,Stockhausen, andWeill.
Mauceri made his Broadway debut on March 10, 1974, as music director ofHal Prince's production of Leonard Bernstein'sCandide which had begun as a limited run at theBrooklyn Academy of Music. This version of the show was given a SpecialTony Award for "The Advancement of the American Musical Theatre".[7] He subsequently served as music director for the "Opera House" version ofCandide (providing additional orchestrations and supervising the placement of the music within the text of Hugh Wheeler's book) that premiered at theNew York City Opera in 1982. Its 1986 recording won Mauceri aGrammy for "Best Opera Recording".[8] In 1988, as Music Director ofScottish Opera, Mauceri initiated a third version based on a reading of Voltaire adapted byJohn Wells and directed byJonathan Miller. Mauceri was able to make use of virtually all the music Bernstein had composed for various versions ofCandide between 1956 and 1971. This final version had its world premiere at theTheatre Royal, Glasgow, with Bernstein in attendance, and broadcast on BBC television.[9] It was transferred to theSadler's Wells Theatre in London where it won the 1988Olivier Award as "Musical of the Year." Bernstein subsequently recorded this version in London, and it won him a posthumous Grammy for "Best Classical Album" of 1990.[10]
Mauceri took a leadership role in reevaluating the American musical theater in hishistorically informed performances and recordings of classic American musicals, such as the Gershwins' 1930 score toGirl Crazy (Elektra Nonesuch 9 79250-2) in 1990 (winner of theEdison Klassiek Award), both the 1927 and 1930 versions of the Gershwins'Strike Up the Band (1991 – Elektra Nonesuch 79273-2 and PS Classics PS-1100 respectively) and most importantlyOn Your Toes (1936) byRodgers and Hart which he initiated and co-produced in 1983. Mauceri, representing theKennedy Center for the Performing Arts, hiredGeorge Abbott (then 96 years old),George Balanchine (his last assignment) and found the original orchestrator,Hans Spialek, to restore the score.On Your Toes ran 505 performances on Broadway and marked the first time a musical from the 1930s was seen and heard on Broadway with its original musical elements intact in over a generation. Its cast album, conducted by Mauceri, is the first fully digital Broadway cast album (TER Limited: CDTER 1063). The show was nominated for five Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Awards and won two: for Best Revival of a Musical and Best Actress in a Musical (Natalia Makarova). In addition,On Your Toes won fourDrama Desk Awards (Outstanding Revival; Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Outstanding Director of a Musical; Outstanding Orchestrations).[11] As a result of its success, the received wisdom of rewriting old musicals and adding new orchestrations and hit songs from other shows was challenged and has led to a proliferation of organizations that present classic American musicals with their original scores restored as written, though these performances are generally in a semi-staged format.[citation needed]
Andrew Lloyd Webber attended a performance ofLa bohème at theRoyal Opera House, Covent Garden, in the winter of 1984 that was conducted by Mauceri and as a result invited him to be the musical supervisor of the Broadway production of hisSong and Dance, which opened on September 18, 1985, and received eight Tony Award nominations, and one win forBernadette Peters. In October 1995, after the first recording session forthe soundtrack toEvita failed, "Andrew ... suggested we bring in the celebrated American conductor John Mauceri. ... By the end of the week, the maestro Mauceri had performed his magic with a brilliant catchment of the finest orchestral players in London and all thoughts of Black Monday were forgotten."[12] As gratitude for his work on the film, Mauceri was given something unheard of in film—a full screen credit, even though he had no contract for any billing whatsoever.
Mauceri led the charge in reassessing the American works ofKurt Weill, which had been generally viewed as inferior to his German works. In 1978, he conducted Weill's 1947 operaStreet Scene at the New York City Opera, which was so successful, it was broadcast in the subsequent season on PBS'Live from Lincoln Center. Beginning with Weill'sLady in the Dark at theEdinburgh Festival in 1988, and followed by the first professional production ofStreet Scene in the UK,[13] Mauceri argued that the American works were equal to and continued directly out of the German works. His recording ofStreet Scene (Decca 433 371–2) released in 1991, is the first complete recording of any American theater work of Kurt Weill. Mauceri broughtStreet Scene for its country premieres in Portugal (Lisbon Opera), and Italy (Teatro Regio, Turin). In addition, he brought Weill's music back to Berlin, where it had been mostly forgotten. Two recordings withUte Lemper (Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill Volumes 1 and 2) represented Weill's music with texts in German, French and English, demonstrating the composer's continuity of style and ideas. In addition, his Berlin recordings include Weill'sThe Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden) with Lemper, theLittle Mahagonny (Mahagonny-Songspiel) and the first German language recording ofThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) made in over forty years (Decca 430 075-2 LH) released in 1989. In 2000, he led a series of performances of Kurt Weill's 1933 bible play,The Eternal Road (Der Weg der Verheissung) in which he and musicologist Ed Harsh restored the complete score which had never been heard with its complete fourth act and never in Europe. These performances were co-productions of theNew Israeli Opera, theChemnitz Opera in Germany and theBrooklyn Academy of Music. The work was performed in its original German text by fellow refugeeFranz Werfel and televised in Europe from its Chemnitz performances. In 2001, Mauceri led the world premiere recording of Weill's early operatic success,Der Protagonist from 1926 (Capriccio 60 086) which was also broadcast on German radio in a concert performance in theBerliner Philharmonie.
After making his operatic debut at theWolf Trap Festival in 1973, Mauceri continued to build his operatic repertoire conducting at theMetropolitan Opera,La Scala, theRoyal Opera House, theDeutsche Oper Berlin, and numerous others around the world.[14] AtSan Francisco Opera he conducted the premiere ofAndrew Imbrie'sAngle of Repose in 1976.[15] AtWashington Opera and La Scala, Mauceri had the privilege of conducting the American and European premieres of Leonard Bernstein'sA Quiet Place in 1984. In 1972 Mauceri was invited to be Bernstein's assistant for a new production ofCarmen at the Met. This began an association between the two that would span the next eighteen years. During this time Mauceri edited, supervised and conducted numerous Bernstein works throughout the world, including many premieres, at the composers request. In addition to his guest appearances at the world's great opera houses, Mauceri also served as music director of the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center as well asPittsburgh Opera, and wasdirettore stabile of theTeatro Regio in Turin, Italy, for three years. His time in Italy was preceded by the seven years where he served as music director ofScottish Opera where he helmed 22 productions and three recordings. Mauceri is the first American ever to have held the post of music director of an opera house in either Great Britain or Italy.[16] Through hissedulously researched renditions of the nineteenth century's pre-eminent operas, Mauceri solidified his reputation "as a musicologist and theorist" as he was "the first to demonstrate, in print and in performance, that the use of metronomic tempos were a structural element in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi".[17] He has spoken about and written numerous articles expounding his fidelity to the composer's intent and the necessity of fully understanding it in performance.
After forty years of dormancy theHollywood Bowl Orchestra was re-created for Mauceri by theLos Angeles Philharmonic Association in 1991. "During his sixteen-season tenure, Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra toured Japan four times and, in November 1996, performed two public concerts in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, representing the first time an American orchestra was invited to Brazil specifically to perform the great music of the American cinema."[18] Breaking all records at the Bowl, he conducted over 300 concerts at the 18,000-seat amphitheater with a total audience of four million people.[19] In addition to being inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame alongsidePlácido Domingo in 2007, Mauceri received a Treasure of Los Angeles Award, a Young Musicians Foundation Award, and even his own day, "John Mauceri Day", by the state of California.[20]
Mauceri was appointed chancellor of theUniversity of North Carolina School of the Arts by President Erskine Bowles on May 2, 2006. During his seven-year tenure he lobbied and secured to have "University" added to the school's name to distinguish it from the growing number of arts magnet high schools and to affirm the school's relationship with the UNC system. He implemented a two-semester calendar and conceived and implemented the school's first full summer school. Under his leadership the school's retention within the system ranked second only to UNC Chapel Hill. Mauceri increased UNCSA's endowment by 60% and successfully lobbied the NC General Assembly to grant recurring millions of dollars of appropriations to the school and secured significant private funds during the economic downturn that threatened the very existence of the school. At the time of his retirement from the post the school had $55 million worth of capital projects in the works, including a new library, and a film school animation building.[21] For the first time in the school's history, the faculty agreed to having a ranking system, Kiplinger's ranked the school for the first time in its history as one of the "100 top Values in Public Education", and Mauceri raised the monies to support a television series of student performances which he also produced. These includedThe Nutcracker, a complete restoration of the original 1943 production of Rodgers & Hammerstein'sOklahoma! (winner of a National Educational Television Award), and the American premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score in a fully staged production of Shakespeare'sMuch Ado About Nothing (regional Emmy for Best Arts Program, 2013).[22] As chancellor, Mauceri brought his students to perform, assist, and observe productions at the Hollywood Bowl, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Danish National Orchestra (Copenhagen), the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, the opera of Bilbao, Spain, the Aspen Music Festival, the 50th Anniversary Grammy Award Ceremony, the Ravinia Festival, the Washington National Opera, as well as the opening of the North Carolina Museum of Art and the 2013 Rite at 100 Festival at Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall.
Prior to his time at UNCSA, Mauceri served on the faculty of his alma mater, Yale University for 15 years where he "taught orchestration, conducting, gave guest lectures in the German and Italian Departments and, with the Yale Symphony, developed the concept of thematic programming built on his studies of information theory, linguistics, and psychoacoustics". Mauceri left the faculty of Yale in 1982 as Associate Professor, and in 1985 was awarded Yale's first Arts Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement. He returned to his alma mater in 2001 to teach a course in 20th century aesthetic history and the effects of World War II on current perceptions of classical music. In addition, he conducted both the Yale Symphony and Yale Philharmonia in a concert celebrating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Yale College on April 19, 2001.[23]
Mauceri is one of the world's most accomplished recording artists, having released over 75 audio CDs and is the recipient of aGrammy, aTony, anOlivier, aDrama Desk, anEdison Klassiek, 3Emmy Awards, 2Diapasons d'Or, a Cannes Classique, anECHO Klassik, aBillboard, and fourDeutsche Schallplatten awards. In 1999, Mauceri was chosen as a "Standard-bearer of the Twentieth Century" forWQXR. According to WQXR, "These are a select number of musical artists who have already established themselves as forces to be reckoned with and who will be the Standard Bearers of the 21st Century's music scene." The recipients were chosen for "their visionary talent and technical virtuosity". In addition,CNN andCNN International chose Mauceri as a "Voice of the Millennium".[24]
In other media, Mauceri had a small role as the character Claude Maginot in 2002'sGrand Theft Auto: Vice City. He appeared briefly as himself in the second episode of theStudio 60 on the Sunset Strip TV series, conducting the fictional "West Coast Philharmonic".[citation needed] Mauceri served as consultant onTodd Field's script for the 2022 filmTár, helping to inform the tenor and accuracy of Lydia Tár's comments on classical music and musicians.[25]
Mauceri lives in New York City with his wife, Betty.
| Preceded by | Music director,Scottish Opera 1987–1993 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by none | Principal conductor,Hollywood Bowl Orchestra 1991–2006 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by (not known) | Music director,Pittsburgh Opera 2000–2006 | Succeeded by |
