Joan Ingpen 1916-2007
Legendary opera administrator Joan Ingpen died on December 29 at the age of 91. The Telegraph has an appreciation of her life and career that includes this observation: "She had wonderful teeth that sparkled like diamonds when they caught the light."
Labels: obit
POSTED at
10:10 AM
10 Comments:
What a remarkable career. And by the sound of it, a remarkable person too.
Given the general state of dentition in Britain, that's quite a compliment!
I knew her from childhood. She was a colleague of my parents and a quite remarkable and intelligent woman.
The Tamerlane of Opera, moving on and leaving behind her a heap of skulls where once a civilization had flourished. The Met never entirely recovered from her ministrations.
Right on, Hans Lick.
"Muori... muori dannata... muori!"
No need for sentimentality over this hyena.
Crudeli! Hans and Nerva - but she obviously made a lot of enemies
Joan Ingpen's big contribution worldwide was casting three or four years in advance - now it is six to ten years in advance in some cases... By the time the singers show up the voices are already shot.
The casting level at the Met started to decline when Schuyler Chapin came in. Luckily there were enough of the established old guard from the Bing era still in their prime to keep the standards up. However, the Met in the fifties had some of the best casting in the world. Only Chicago and Vienna could compete. Compare with Covent Garden in the fifties - they didn't have the money and had to import one international star and then it was Edith Coates, Jess Walters, Sylvia Fisher, Charles Craig and Otakar Kraus.
Yet now Brits are all over the place in artistic administration posts at opera houses worldwide including the Met. Was the casting at the Royal Opera so good in the sixties and seventies and was Ingpen really that much of a mover and shaker that the Met had to have her?
Any specific malfeasances that Ingpen did - Mrs. John Claggart has often inveighed against her.
Gualtier Maldè
Thank you Hand Lick, even Mme Claggart, for your truthfulness on Frau Ingpen. She is just about the worst thing that even happpened to opera, especially at the Met, though it necessarily trickled down everywhere. The influence of her ill-directed efforts will be felt for many years to come -- in fact, I cannot imagine what dire circumstances might reverse her efforts. She is the kind of English person who proved why the idea of Empire was never going to work -- between Queen Victoria and Joan Ingpen it was a lost cause from day one.
May God rest her sould, but may He also keep her out of the Heavenly Opera House.
MrM/stl-sfe
My apology, that was meant
to be Hans Lick. Also 'soul' for
'sold.' Cold weather fingers.
Oh, and I am just reading
'Indian Summer,' the brilliant new history of the final year or two of British rule in India, and the turn-over to the Indians, and if you want an example of British ineptitude, there it is, in a well written and interesting book. [sub title: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, by Alex von Tunzelmann, Henry Holt]. We wont talk about Iraq and Israel and all the other wonderful things that originated from the people who brought us Joan Ingpen. Am I anti-Anglo? Hah!
Cheerio, Ta Ta
MrM/formerly Univ London
J.
Ingpen hired her undistinguished friend Jocelyne Taillon for many performances oF GIOCONDA and SUOR ANGELICA in which Bianca Berini or Mignon Dunn or Bruna Baglioni would have been preferable-- most damagingly the telecast ANGELICA of 1981, when the far superior and more idiomatic Berini was relegated to Frugola in TABARRO. Taillon wasn't any good as Berlioz' Anna- a wonderful role- either. She was certainly acceptable as Genevieve in PELLEAS.
Just FYI, Gualtier: Jess Walters, though a Garden regular, was actually an American.
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