Auguste Vianesi

Auguste Charles Léonard François Vianesi (2 November 1837 – 4 November 1908) was an opera conductor, born in Italy and later naturalised French. His repertoire consisted mostly of French and Italian opera, in which he directed some of the world's great singers including Pauline Viardot, Christina Nilsson, Marcella Sembrich, the brothers Edouard and Jean de Reszke, and Feodor Chaliapin in the opera houses of London, Paris, Melbourne, St. Petersburg, Boston and New York. He retired around the time when sound recording became commercially available, and he seems not to have left any recorded legacy.

He was born in Legnano, northern Italy. His father was probably named either Giovanni or Augusto. He studied music on the advice of Giovanni Pacini and Theodor Döhler. In 1857, he went to Paris to complete his musical training, armed with a letter of introduction to Gioachino Rossini from the famed soprano Giuditta Pasta. His first professional engagement was in London at the Theatre Royal (1858–9). 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). Returning to London, he conducted the Italian Opera for ten years at the Covent Garden Royal Opera House from 1870 to 1880 under Frederick Gye, with a season at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in 1873. He conducted the first London performances of Lohengrin (1875), Tannhäuser (1876), Il Guarany (Antonio Gomes 1872), and Jules Massenet's Le roi de Lahore in 1879. He toured widely in Britain with the Covent Garden Italian Opera company.

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