What is the last name of the person who promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company?
In 1960 Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962. Even before he took the post the Philharmonic's autocratic president, Dorothy Chandler, breached his contract by appointing a deputy music director without Solti's approval. Although he admired the chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta, Solti felt he could not have his authority undermined from the outset, and he withdrew from his appointment. He accepted an offer to become musical director of Covent Garden Opera Company, London. When first sounded out about the post he had declined it. After 14 years of experience at Munich and Frankfurt he was uncertain that he wanted a third successive operatic post. Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe. Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take Covent Garden on.The biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti seized the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext to abandon the Philharmonic in favour of Covent Garden. However, in his memoirs Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed. He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged that he had had a lucky escape, as he could have done justice to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.Solti took up the musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961. The press gave him a cautious welcome, but there was some concern that under him there might be a drift away from the company's original policy of opera in English. Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular, and he promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists. He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of L'heure espagnole, Erwartung and Gianni Schicchi. As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars.
Solti