Emil Albertovich Cooper (Emil Cooper) |

Emil Cooper

He performed as a conductor from 1897 (Kyiv, “Fra Diavolo” by Aubert). He worked at the Zimin Opera House, where he participated in the world premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel (1909), the first Russian production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (1909). In 1910-19 he was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre. Here, together with Chaliapin and Shkaker, he staged Massenet’s Don Quixote (1910) for the first time in Russia. From 1909 he participated in Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons in Paris (until 1914). Here he conducted the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale (1914). In 1919-24 he was chief conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1924 he left Russia. He worked in Riga, Milan (La Scala), Paris, Buenos Aires, Chicago, where he staged many Russian operas.

In 1929, Cooper participated in the creation of the Russian Private Opera in Paris (see Kuznetsova). Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in 1944-50 (debut in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande), among other productions: American premieres of The Golden Cockerel (1945) and Britten’s Peter Grimes (1948); first production at the Metropolitan Opera of Mozart’s Abductions from the Seraglio (1946). Cooper’s last work was Khovanshchina (1950).

E. Tsodokov