page_title: Vladimir Rosing
section_title: Hollywood Bowl
hierarchical_section_title: Vladimir Rosing / Return to America / Hollywood Bowl
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of set design drawing by Nicola Benois for Chicago Lyric Opera production of Borodin's 'Prince Igor', October 1962.
context_page_description: Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing, aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States. In his formative years he experienced the last years of the "golden age" of opera, and he dedicated himself through his singing and directing into breathing new life into opera's outworn mannerisms and methods.
  Rosing was considered by many to rank as a singer and performer of the quality of Feodor Chaliapin. In The Perfect Wagnerite, George Bernard Shaw called Chaliapin and Vladimir Rosing "the two most extraordinary singers of the 20th century".
  Vladimir Rosing's best known recordings are his performances of Russian art songs by composers such as Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Tcherepnin, Alexander Gretchaninov, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He was the first singer to record a song by Igor Stravinsky: Akahito from Three Japanese Songs.
  As a stage director, Rosing championed opera in English, and he attempted to build permanent national opera companies in the United States and England.
context_section_description: In 1950, as California was celebrating one hundred years of statehood, Rosing directed a new production of Faust with Nadine Conner, Jerome Hines and Richard Tucker, which opened the Hollywood Bowl's summer season.  Rosing's work was noticed by the producers of the upcoming The California Story, the official state centennial production to be mounted in the Bowl that fall, and he was asked to direct it. Meredith Willson supervised the music. The California Story ran for five performances in September 1950. A chorus of 200 and hundreds of actors were employed. The shell of the bowl was removed and the stage was enlarged. The action was expanded to include the surrounding hillsides. Lionel Barrymore provided the dramatic narration.
  The California Story's success opened a new avenue for Rosing: the historical spectacular, The Air Power Pageant in the Bowl in 1951 and The Elks Story in 1954. In 1956 Rosing directed a similarly lavish production of The California Story in San Diego as the main production of a newly created civic festival, Fiesta del Pacifico.
  Rosing also directed three more operas at the Hollywood Bowl: Die Fledermaus in 1951, Madama Butterfly with Dorothy Kirsten in 1960, and The Student Prince with Igor Gorin in 1962.
caption: One of the set designs by Nicola Benois for Prince Igor, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1962.
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