| BIOGRAPHY VINCENT LA SELVA Conductor |
| "The production …had a fiercely idiomatic conductor in La Selva. This was
Verdi 101, stripped of directorial brainstorms and interpretive ego trips. By the end, I
had fallen under Verdi's spell." --Alex Ross, The New Yorker, September 24, 2001 Vincent La Selva, conductor, has been a New York institution for almost fifty years. Founder of the New York Grand Opera Company in 1973, he is unique in the world for presenting fully-staged grand opera productions that are free to the public. Since 1974, Maestro La Selva has chosen New York's Central Park and outlying boroughs for his grand opera productions, which, over the years, have been attended by a total of more than three million people. Maestro La Selva has earned special renown for leading performances that cut to the musical essence of these scores with a directness, lyricism, and passion that has often evoked the conducting style of the late Arturo Toscanini. The New York opera company, led by Mr. La Selva, is synonymous with grand opera, idiomatically performed -- and accessible to all. The 2001 - 2002 season highlights for Maestro La Selva will include three productions of Puccini operas (Manon Lescaut, Le Villi and Tosca) in New York's Central Park in July as well as an all-Beethoven symphonic program (Coriolan Overture, "Sanctus" from Missa Solemnis, and Symphony No. 9) at Carnegie Hall on March 26, 2002. Maestro La Selva's most recent achievement is the completion, in the summer of 2001, of "Viva Verdi!," devoted to the performance in chronological order of all twenty-eight operas of Giuseppe Verdi. Begun in 1994 with a performance of the little-known "Oberto," at Central Park's Summerstage Pavillion, this grand but daunting project was completed eight years later with acclaimed renditions of three of Verdi's greatest operas, "Aida," "Otello," and "Falstaff." It is estimated that at least 300,000 people attended the performances over the entire eight-year period. Mr. La Selva's contribution to the cultural life of New York was commended by President Bill Clinton, New York Governor George E. Pataki, and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, an avid opera lover, who awarded La Selva the coveted Handel Medallion, New York City's highest distinction for achievement in culture and the arts. As Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times: Taken in context, these productions have been a great gift to the city and an important artistic venture. . . Mr. La Selva is an insightful Verdian , with a sure grasp of style and a special sympathy for the music. Whenever the music threatened to break down, there was Mr. La Selva , confident in his sure knowledge of every page of every score, rallying his forces and holding it all together. (August 4, 2001) The concept of providing free concerts for New Yorkers has its origin early in Mr. La Selva's career when he founded, in 1954, the all-volunteer Xavier Symphony Society, which offered free symphonic concerts, then opera at the magnificent auditorium of St. Francis Xavier High school on West 16th Street. It was here that a notable low-cost revival of his opera production of Menotti's "The Saint of Bleeker Street" came to the favorable attention of the composer, who was so impressed with what La Selva could do with limited resources, that he arranged to have La Selva lead a revival production of the "The Saint" at New York's City Opera. This led to Mr. La Selva's appointment to New York City Opera where he would also conduct productions of "Tosca," "Nabucco," "Mefistofele," "Cavalleria Rusticana," "Madama Butterfly," "La Fanciulla del West," "La Boh�me," "I Pagliacci," and Menotti's "The Consul." After his appointment to City Opera, La Selva directed a series of Italian operas and was hailed for his passion, respect for the composer's intentions, and clarity of baton technique. He was compared favorably to Arturo Toscanini by no less an authority than critic B.H. Haggin, who credited La Selva with "what Bernard Shaw has called the highest faculty of a conductor, the magnetic influence under which an orchestra becomes as amenable to the baton as a pianoforte to the fingers." And the Verdi scholar George Martin in the British journal Opera wrote that "La Selva is probably the best conductor of Verdi, and perhaps of Puccini, currently at work in New York." In addition, during this period Maestro La Selva conducted performances of "La Boh�me" at the Opera Company of Boston with Renata Tebaldi and Placido Domingo, and many other important regional companies with casts including Franco Corelli, Mirella Freni, Sherrill Milnes, and Samuel Ramey. Maestro La Selva is an accomplished conductor of symphonic music, whose love of Beethoven's symphonic scores predates his involvement with opera. In 1966, he was appointed Music Director of the Greater Trenton Symphony, and he has also conducted concerts with the New Jersey Symphony, the Symphony of the Air, the Juilliard Symphony, the Brno State Philharmonic in the Czech Republic, and the Bern Symphony in Switzerland. He numbers among his collaborators such soloists as Leonard Rose, Ruggiero Ricci, Zinka Milanov, Rudolf Firkusny, Murray Perahia, and Peter Serkin. Since 1969 Mr. La Selva has been a member of the Juilliard School faculty, teaching courses in symphonic and operatic conducting, and opera appreciation. Newport Classics recently released a highly praised recording of Maestro La Selva conducting Verdi's complete overtures with the Bern Symphony Orchestra, including the overture composed for the La Scala premiere of Aida which was never performed in the opera house. In naming this disk "Hot Pick of the Week," New York's classical music station WQXR stated that "La Selva clearly owns this repertoire" and has referred to him as "the greatest conductor of Verdi in the world today." A native of Cleveland, Maestro La Selva began his musical career at the age of eight, when he began learning the trumpet. By the age of 12, he was already conducting student ensembles. Later, the young La Selva attended the Juilliard School, where he studied conducting under Jean Morel. After graduation from Juilliard, he entered military service and was a conductor of the First Army band at Fort Jay on Governor's Island. Mr. La Selva has been a faculty member of The Juilliard School Evening Division since 1969. He teaches courses on Italian opera and often showcases young and promising singers. In October 2001, Mr. La Selva received from New York Governor George E. Pataki the Governor's Award for Excellence. In 1995 the President of Italy knighted Mr. La Selva as a "Cavaliere" in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his distinguished service to Italian music. Mr. La Selva divides his time between his studio at Carnegie Hall in New York and his home in Montclair, New Jersey, where he lives with his wife Danny. |