Silvio Varviso
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Silvio Varviso (26 February 1924 – 1 November 2006) was a Swiss conductor who spent most of his career devoted to conducting opera. He began his conducting career working in minor opera houses in Switzerland in the mid-1940s. He became the principal conductor of the opera house in Basel in 1956 where he served for six years. In the late 1950s he began appearing with major opera houses on the international stage as a guest conductor. During the 1960s, he became a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and at the Royal Opera House in London. In 1965 he became the music director of the Royal Swedish Opera, and later in his career served as the music director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart and the Paris Opera. During the early 1990s he became a permanent guest conductor at the Vlaamse Opera where he remained active up until his death.
Although Silvio Varviso's father was a voice teacher, Varviso avoided this art. While attending the Zurich Conservatory he studied the piano, violin, clarinet, trumpet and percussion instruments. He continued his study of conducting after graduating with the Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss in Vienna.[1]
Varviso made his conducting debut at age 20 leading Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Stadttheater in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Over the next several years he worked as a guest conductor with minor houses throughout Switzerland. He became principal conductor of the Theater Basel (1956–1962) where he led several productions of operas by Mozart and works from the bel canto repertory. He also conducted the first German-language performance of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel.
Early international success
During the late 1950s Varviso made a number or notable guest conducting debuts, including the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1958), Paris Opera (1958), and the San Francisco Opera (1959), the latter being his first conducting assignment in the United States. In 1958 he conducted the world premiere of Heinrich Sutermeister's Titus Feuerfuchs at the Brussels World Fair. On 10 October 1961 he returned to San Francisco to conduct the United States premiere of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He conducted The Marriage of Figaro for his first performance at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1962 followed by a production of Der Rosenkavalier for his debut with Covent Garden later that year. He returned often to the Royal Opera throughout the rest of his career, conducting a wide repertoire which ranged from standard works by Mozart, Puccini, Strauss, and Wagner, to less frequently performed operas like Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.
