Eduard Nápravník

Eduard Nápravník - Czech conductor and composer

Person from Czechia

Genres: opera, classical music, romantic, Classical, composer, Czech, classical composers

Similar artists via Last.fm

Ignaz Moscheles Henri Herz Alexander Mackenzie Ignaz Brüll Henry Charles Litolff

About Eduard Nápravník

Eduard Frantsovitch Nápravník (Russian: Эдуард Францович Направник, August 24, 1839 – November 23, 1916) was a Czech conductor and composer, who settled in Russia and is best known for his leading role in Russian musical life as the principal conductor of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg for many decades. In that capacity, he conducted the premieres of many operas by Russian composers, including those by Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Nápravník was born in Býšť, Bohemia, in 1839. His studies of music were precariously uneven as a child, being the son of a poor teacher. Being orphaned in 1853 at age of 14, to earn a living Nápravník started his career by playing the organ in a local church. In 1854 he entered the Prague Organ School, where he studied under Jan Bedřich Kittl and others, and became an assistant teacher. The generosity of his teacher allowed him to continue studies. In 1861 he received an offer from Russia: the post of conductor of the private orchestra of prince Yusupov in St. Petersburg. Nápravník became organist and assistant conductor at the Imperial theatres in 1863, second conductor in 1867, and chief conductor, succeeding Liadov, in 1869, holding the post until his death. He gave the first performances of Boris Godunov in 1874, five operas by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, including The Maid of Orleans, Mazepa, and The Queen of Spades, and five by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, including May Night, The Snow Maiden, and Christmas Eve. He also conducted concerts of the Russian Music Society. In 1914, after a productive career in the service of Russian opera, he was forced to discontinue further work due to ill health. Nápravník is also known for leading the second -- and overwhelmingly persuasive -- performance of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony on 15 November 1893, nine days after the composer's death. The premiere, under the composer's baton, had not fared so well, partly due to the audience's and the orchestra's unfamiliarity with a work that contained so many novelties, compositionally speaking, and partly due to Tchaikovsky's conducting. Under Nápravník's baton, however, and in light of Tchaikovsky's passing, the work was seen as a masterpiece with an overwhelming emotional message. It included some minor corrections that Tchaikovsky had made after the premiere, and was thus the first performance of the work in the form in which it is known today. Of Nápravník's own four operas the most successful was Dubrovsky (1894, staged 1895) written to a Russian libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky after the story by Alexander Pushkin. He died in Petrograd in 1916. In May 1917, his family went abroad and eventually settled in Belgium.

Taken from Last.fm

107 listeners  ·  647 plays via Last.fm