page_title: The Royal Opera
section_title: 1970 to 1986
hierarchical_section_title: The Royal Opera / History / 1970 to 1986
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Grand Gala du Disque Klassiek . Collin Davis 6 oktober 1967
context_page_description: The Royal Opera is an opera company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968. It brought a long annual season and consistent management to a house that had previously hosted short seasons under a series of impresarios. Since its inception, it has shared the Royal Opera House with the dance company now known as The Royal Ballet.
  When the company was formed, its policy was to perform all works in English, but since the late 1950s most operas have been performed in their original language. From the outset, performers have comprised a mixture of British and Commonwealth singers and international guest stars, but fostering the careers of singers from within the company was a consistent policy of the early years. Among the many guest performers have been Maria Callas, Plácido Domingo, Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Birgit Nilsson, Luciano Pavarotti and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.
context_section_description: Webster retired in June 1970. The music critic Charles Osborne wrote, "When he retired, he handed over to his successor an organization of which any opera house in the world might be proud. No memorial could be more appropriate". The successor was Webster's former assistant, John Tooley. One of Webster's last important decisions had been to recommend to the board that Colin Davis should be invited to take over as musical director when Solti left in 1971. It was announced in advance that Davis would work in tandem with Peter Hall, appointed director of productions. Peter Brook had briefly held that title in the company's early days, but in general the managerial structure of the opera company differed markedly from that of the ballet. The latter had always had its own director, subordinate to the chief executive of the opera house but with, in practice, a great degree of autonomy. The chief executive of the opera house and the musical director exercised considerably more day-to-day control over the opera company Appointing a substantial theatrical figure such as Hall was an important departure. Hall, however, changed his mind, and did not take up the appointment, going instead to run the National Theatre. His defection, and the departure to Australian Opera of the staff conductor Edward Downes, a noted Verdi expert, left the company weakened on both production and musical sides.
  Like his predecessors, Davis experienced hostility from sections of the audience in his early days in charge. His first production after taking over was a well-received Le nozze di Figaro, in which Kiri Te Kanawa achieved immediate stardom, but booing was heard at a "disastrous" Nabucco in 1971, and his conducting of Wagner's Ring was at first compared unfavourably with that of his predecessor. The Covent Garden board briefly considered replacing him, but was dissuaded by its chairman, Lord Drogheda. Davis's Mozart was generally admired; he received much praise for reviving the little-known La clemenza di Tito in 1974. Among his other successes were The Trojans and Benvenuto Cellini.
  Under Davis, the opera house introduced promenade performances, giving, as Bernard Levin wrote, "an opportunity for those (particularly the young, of course) who could not normally afford the price of stalls tickets to sample the view from the posher quarters at the trifling cost of £3 and a willingness to sit on the floor". Davis conducted more than 30 operas during his 15-year tenure, but, he said, "people like [Lorin] Maazel, Abbado and [Riccardo] Muti would only come for new productions". Unlike Rankl, and like Solti, Davis wanted the world's best conductors to come to Covent Garden. He ceded the baton to guests for new productions including Der Rosenkavalier, Rigoletto and Aida. In The Times, John Higgins wrote, "One of the hallmarks of the Davis regime was the flood of international conductors who suddenly arrived at Covent Garden. While Davis has been in control perhaps only three big names have been missing from the roster: Karajan, Bernstein and Barenboim". Among the high-profile guests conducting Davis's company were Carlos Kleiber for performances of Der Rosenkavalier (1974), Elektra (1977), La bohème (1979) and Otello (1980), and Abbado conducting Un ballo in maschera (1975), starring Plácido Domingo and Katia Ricciarelli.
  In addition to the standard repertoire, Davis conducted such operas as Berg's Lulu and Wozzeck, Tippett's The Knot Garden and The Ice Break, and Alexander Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg and Eine florentinische Tragödie.
  Among the star guest singers during the Davis years were the sopranos Montserrat Caballé and Leontyne Price, the tenors Carlo Bergonzi, Nicolai Gedda and Luciano Pavarotti and the bass Gottlob Frick. British singers appearing with the company included Janet Baker, Heather Harper, John Tomlinson and Richard Van Allan. Davis's tenure, at that time the longest in The Royal Opera's history, closed in July 1986 not with a gala, but, at his insistence, with a promenade performance of Fidelio with cheap admission prices.
caption: Colin Davis, musical director, 1971–86, photographed in 1967
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Grand Gala du Disque Klassiek . Collin Davis\n*6 oktober 1967", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:08:14 11:31:56", "Image Artist": "Ron Kroon / Anefo", "Image Copyright": "http://proxy.handle.net/10648/ab297d46-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84", "Image ExifOffset": "344", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "482", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3998", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2360", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3147"}