Alberto Erede

Alberto Erede earned widespread recognition as an opera conductor across Europe and the United States, with his most prominent activity spanning the 1930s through the 1960s. His early training centered on piano and cello, after which he pursued composition studies at the Milan Conservatory; he later shifted his focus entirely to conducting. He first worked with Felix Weingartner in Basle and subsequently trained under Fritz Busch in Dresden. Erede launched his professional career in 1930 by leading the Accademia di St. Cecilia in Rome. Four years later he joined the conducting roster for the inaugural Glyndebourne Festival season, remaining on staff through 1939. During the same years he also served as musical director of the Salzburg Opera Guild and brought that ensemble to the United States on tour in 1937. That same year he made his first appearance before an American orchestra when he conducted Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra, an engagement that produced additional NBC assignments; among them was the 1939 broadcast premiere of Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief. Erede spent the World War II years in Italy, where he directed both operatic and symphonic concerts. Between 1945 and 1946 he held the chief conductorship of the RAI Symphony Orchestra, Turin. After the war he concentrated much of his activity in Britain and Germany. In 1946 he became musical director of the New London Opera Company at the Cambridge Theatre, a position he retained for two seasons. From 1950 to 1955 he appeared regularly at the Metropolitan Opera, including the 1952 performance of Gluck’s Alceste that marked Kirsten Flagstad’s farewell. In 1958 he was appointed general music director of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, becoming the first Italian to occupy that post. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he maintained a busy guest schedule that featured frequent appearances at Covent Garden and the Edinburgh Festival. In 1968 he conducted Wagner’s Lohengrin at Bayreuth, the third Italian—after Toscanini and de Sabata—to do so. He assumed the chief conductorship of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in 1961. Even in 1988 he was still leading performances at the Rome Opera. His recorded output encompasses fourteen complete operas together with recital discs featuring arias sung by artists such as Tebaldi and Gobbi.