page_title: Charles Santley
section_title: With Carl Rosa's company
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Santley / Operatic career 1857–1876 / With Carl Rosa's company
context_page_description: Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravura technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era. His has been called 'the longest, most distinguished and most versatile vocal career which history records.'
  Santley appeared in many major opera and oratorio productions in Great Britain and North America, giving numerous recitals as well. Having made his debut in Italy in 1857 after undertaking vocal studies in that country, he elected to base himself in England for the remainder of his life, apart from occasional trips overseas. One of the highlights of his stage career occurred in 1870 when he led the cast in the first Wagner opera to be performed in London, Der fliegende Holländer, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Santley retired from opera during the 1870s in order to concentrate on the lucrative concert circuit.
  Santley also wrote books on vocal technique and two sets of memoirs.
context_section_description: The concert tour itself was not a financial success. Santley therefore entered into an agreement with Carl Rosa to join his Italian season in New York City in March 1872; but he joined them first for the English season to play Zampa and Fra Diavolo, at Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark and elsewhere. He played Valentin in Faust at Philadelphia. In the Italian season, from mid-March to the end of April, he was with Mme Parepa-Rosa, Adelaide Phillips and the tenor Theodore Wachtel (1823–1893), and with Karl Formes, who sang Marcel in Les Huguenots with Santley (Saint-Bris), at the Academy of Music in New York under Adolph Neuendorff. Santley was also particularly proud to have sung once in that season with his friend and idol, Giorgio Ronconi, who was Leporello to Santley's Don Giovanni. The company also played Il trovatore, Rigoletto, Lucrezia Borgia, Martha and Guglielmo Tell. The houses and receipts were enormous, and they sailed to England well pleased in early May 1872.
  In 1873 Carl Rosa invited Santley to appear as Telramund in a planned English Lohengrin at Drury Lane. Santley accepted, but the project failed with the untimely death of Mme Parepa-Rosa. (Lohengrin was not heard in London until 1875). Santley's wish to play Wolfram in Tannhäuser also remained unrealised.  He disliked the prominence of the Wagnerian orchestra and regretted the innovation which saw orchestral players being relegated to a pit beneath the opera stage.
  However, in 1875 Carl Rosa tempted him back to the stage for a season at the Princess's Theatre, London, in which he played in Le nozze di Figaro, Il trovatore, The Siege of Rochelle (as Michel), Cherubini's The Water Carrier (Mikelì) and The Porter of Havre (Martin). In Figaro he was cast as Almaviva, but was transferred to the role of Figaro, singing with Sig. Campobello (Almaviva), Aynsley Cook (Bartolo), Charles Lyall (Basilio), Ostava Torriani (Contessa), Rose Hersee (Susanna), Josephine York (Cherubino) and Mrs Aynsley Cook (Marcellina). This received a special performance for the Prince and Princess of Wales. There was a provincial tour in the autumn.
  In autumn 1876 at the Lyceum Theatre, again with Carl Rosa, Santley revived his Flying Dutchman, this time in English, with Ostava Torriani as Senta. Between the London season and the provincial tour which followed they performed it 50 times. Among the cities visited were Edinburgh (four performances) and Glasgow (two performances).
  In the same season they undertook a work new to him, Nicolo's Joconde, and he played Zampa and The Porter of Havre again.  The final work was a new opera with a role (Claude Melnotte) written especially for him, the Pauline of F. H. Cowen: the work was not successful.  The tour took them to Dublin, Sheffield, Hanley and Birmingham. That, apart from two appearances as Sir Harry in The School for Scandal at Drury Lane benefits, and his eventual farewell appearance at Covent Garden in 1911, was the end of his stage career.
caption: Charles Santley (ca. 1875)
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