Italo Campanini - Collapse of Mapleson's Company

Collapse of Mapleson's Company

On his return to England, Campanini found that the 1882 season was being disrupted by negotiations over the Royal Italian Opera Company, Covent Garden, Ltd—formed to seek the lease of the new Metropolitan Opera House, New York, which was then being built. Campanini was among the large team taken to New York that October by Mapleson, with Commander Herbert Gye as his treasurer, on its behalf. If the plan worked, the Academy (to which Mapleson was still tied by contract) would be closed and a monopoly achieved, in which he would have a share. Despite immense difficulties a successful tour was achieved, but in the process all Mapleson's resources were carved up between the American impresario, Henry Eugene Abbey, who actually obtained the lease, and the Royal Opera Company, which repudiated all its agreements with Mapleson, leaving him with a heavy liability. The best singers of his company, including Nilsson, Marcella Sembrich, Scalchi, Trebelli and Campanini, and all his orchestral and choral resources, were recruited by Abbey.

Campanini took the occasion to spend a season in Italy, where his younger brother Cleofonte Campanini was launching a significant career as an operatic conductor. In 1883, at Parma, Campanini sang in a series of performances conducted by his brother, so helping to establish him as conductor of the first rank. When he returned to America in the autumn it was to the completion of the Metropolitan Opera House, and there he sang in the performance of Faust on the opening night, 22 October 1883, with Christine Nilsson as Marguerite, Sofia Scalchi, Mme Lablache, Franco Novara and Ernesto del Puente. On December 5, 1883 he sang the other Faust (Boïto's) in Mefistofele, with Christine Nilsson, Zelia Trebelli and Mdlle Mirabella filling out the cast.