Augusto Vianesi

Auguste Charles Léonard François Vianesi (2 November 1837 – 4 November 1908) northern Italy. His father was probably named either Giovanni or Augusto. He studied music on the advice of Giovanni Pacini and Theodor Döhler. He also toured Britain with Pauline Viardot, including Verdi's Macbeth in Manchester with some locally engaged women for the role of the witches who had only acted in Shakespeare's play with music, and knew not a word of Italian or a note of Verdi's music. They were dismissed at the rehearsal and replaced by the (heavily disguised) prompter and a couple of orchestral musicians.

Vianesi held further conducting positions in New York the same year (1858–9), Moscow (1863–4) and St Petersburg (1867–9). The second night featured Marcella Sembrich in Lucia. The season was a critical success but a financial disaster.

In 1885 he became a naturalized French citizen, and two years later was appointed to succeed Ernest Altès as chief conductor of the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier (1887–91). He conducted Messiah (in the Mozart arrangement) at the 1889 Paris World's Fair, with Fauré at the organ. This performance was not particularly well-reviewed. He also directed first performances of Saint-Saëns's Ascanio (1890) and Jules Massenet's Le mage (1891). In Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre on 9 November 1891 with Abbey and Grau's Opera company from the Met and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he directed the American debuts of Emma Eames, Gulia Ravogli, Édouard de Reszke, and his brother Jean in the title role of Lohengrin.

He taught singing in New York from 1892 onwards, and directed a season of opera in New Orleans in 1899/1900. An index card from the Italian National Catalogue of Manuscripts indicates the libretto was by A. Codebò. It may be based on a translation of the 2-act comedy of the same name by Jean-François Bayard and Charles Lafont (1809–1864). (A manuscript score of Vianesi's opera (probably autograph), signed London, 20 October 1858, was listed in Liepmannssohn's catalogue 185, no.1236.)