Thomas Schippers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Schippers (9 March 1930 – 16 December 1977) was an American conductor. He was highly-regarded for his work in opera.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Of Dutch ancestry and son of a Westinghouse distributor, Schippers was born in Portage, Michigan.[1] He began playing piano at age four. After graduating from high school at age 13, he attended the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School.

Schippers made his debut at the New York City Opera at age twenty-one, and the Metropolitan Opera at twenty-three. He conducted world premieres of now well known music by Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber. He conducted in all the major opera houses of the United States and Europe, most notably the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala, and founded Italy's Spoleto festival with Menotti and once described his perfect orchestra as being composed of "One-third Italian musicians for their line, one-third Jewish for their sound, a sprinkling of Germans for solidity."[1]

Schippers was a regular conductor with the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and made recordings with them as well, but in 1970 he finally took a full time orchestral position with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, succeeding his predecessor at the Metropolitan Opera, Max Rudolf. After making several recordings with them and building the orchestra's international reputation, his career was cut short by his death from lung cancer at forty-seven in 1977 in New York City, New York.

During the 1970s, he also served as principal conductor of l'Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He made many opera recordings in his time, and live recordings of his performances are gradually being made available on CD.

[edit] Personal life

Although gay, Schippers married, in 1965, Elaine Lane "Nonie" Phipps (1939-1973).[2][3][4] An heiress to the Grace shipping fortune and a daughter of the noted American polo player Michael Grace Phipps, she died of cancer in 1973.[5] Schippers died of the same disease four years later.

According to the professor, writer, and opera scholar John Louis DiGaetani, Schippers had a lengthy romantic relationship with the composer Gian Carlo Menotti.[6] A biography of Leonard Bernstein states that Schippers and Bernstein also were intimately involved.[7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Oh! to Be 30 at Last", Time, 15 February 1960. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  2. ^ Thomas Mallon. "The Homintern", The New York Times, 11 November 2007, pp. 49. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  3. ^ Clum, John M. (May 1996). "Queer Music". Performing Arts Journal vol. 8 (no. 2): pp. 118-126. 
  4. ^ "Born", Time, 23 April 1965. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  5. ^ "Mrs. Nonie Phipps Schippers, Conductor's Wife, Grace Heiress Wed in '65 to Cincinnati Leader Dies", The New York Times, 8 January 1973. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. 
  6. ^ John Louis DiGaetani. Menotti, Gian Carlo (1911-2007). glbtq.com. Retrieved on 2008-01-12.
  7. ^ Burton, Humphrey (1995). Leonard Bernstein. New York: Anchor. ISBN 0385423527. 

[edit] External links


v • d • e
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Music Directors

Bernardino Molinari (1912) · Franco Ferrara (1944) · Fernando Previtali (1953) · Igor Markevitch (1973) · Thomas Schippers (1976) · Giuseppe Sinopoli (1983) · Uto Ughi (1987) · Daniele Gatti (1992) · Myung-Whun Chung (1997) · Antonio Pappano (2005)
v • d • e
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Music Directors

Frank Van der Stucken (1895) · Leopold Stokowski (1909) · Ernst Kunwald (1912) · Eugène Ysaÿe (1918) · Fritz Reiner (1922) · Eugène Goossens (1931) · Thor Johnson (1947) · Max Rudolf (1958) · Thomas Schippers (1970) · Walter Susskind (1978) · Michael Gielen (1980) · Jesús López-Cobos (1986) · Paavo Järvi (2001)