John Crosby (conductor)

John O’Hea Crosby (12 July 1926, Bronxville, New York – 15 December 2002, Rancho Mirage, California) was an American musician, conductor and arts administrator. He is most celebrated as the founding general director of The Santa Fe Opera, a company he oversaw for 43 years.

A bout of asthma interrupted Crosby’s early studies in Connecticut; this caused him to attend the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico for a year. It was Crosby’s first introduction to the West and, specifically, to the Santa Fe area. After graduating from The Hotchkiss School, Crosby served in the US Army for two years between 1944 and 1946, with time spent in Europe and some with the 18th Regimental Band handling piano, violin, trombone and double bass.

Attending Yale as an undergraduate soon followed; with it came consideration of several future professions, including law and becoming an airline pilot. But at Yale he studied composition with Paul Hindemith and created musical arrangements for musical productions. He graduated with a degree in music in 1950.

Having decided that music was to be his life, Crosby spent a few months as an assistant arranger for Broadway musicals before returning to graduate studies at Columbia University between 1951 and 1955. During these years, he became an opera lover, attending the Met regularly and working as the piano accompanist assistant to Dr. Leopold Sachse, the former artistic director of the Hamburg State Opera, and teacher of opera classes at Columbia.

In 1951, during a period of regular attendance at the Met as a standee, Crosby saw the Alfred Lunt production of Cosi fan tutte, which influenced him greatly in developing a concept for the future Santa Fe Opera.

During the three years preceding Santa Fe’s first season in 1957, Crosby meticulously planned for its creation, helped and encouraged by Dr. Sachse. Asked in a 1991 interview why he founded the company, Crosby responded: "Because of Rudolf Bing" and he went on to explain that Bing's influential productions at the Met in the 1950s had caused him to regard opera "as a serious art form".

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