Benjamin Lumley - Conflict With Costa

Conflict With Costa

First, Costa felt neglected by Lumley, who, wisely from an artistic point of view, was not keen to produce Costa’s own ballets and operas. Furthermore, Lumley refused to permit Costa to take up the appointment of chief conductor to the Royal Philharmonic Society, then the leading London symphonic orchestra. In 1846 Costa decamped to Covent Garden, with most of the orchestra and singers, and the support of some leading London critics, to establish there the second Royal Italian Opera Company in competition with Lumley.

Lumley swiftly fought back, showing all his skills as an opportunist. He engaged the composer Michael Balfe to replace Costa. In 1847, despite legal threats from the Covent Garden management, he brought Jenny Lind over for her sensational London debut, for which he had prepared with unprecedented levels of spin and publicity. Fortunately for him, things turned out well, and profitable. Lind appeared as Alice in Robert le diable by Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn, on his last London visit, who had encouraged her to take up Lumley’s offer, was in the audience despite his known distaste for Meyerbeer’s work.

Lumley had also extensively broadcast Mendelssohn’s Tempest opera as forthcoming. This was a bare-faced lie. Mendelssohn found the libretto by Eugene Scribe completely unacceptable and did not even begin to write the music for it. The death of Mendelssohn in 1847 however gave Lumley an escape from his fabrications, and he commissioned the French composer Fromental Halévy to take it on. But the premiere of La Tempesta in 1850 was, at most, a succès d’éstime.