1875 - Music

Music

The Paris Opéra opens with a concert 1/5 and presents its first opera (Fromental Halévy's La Juive) 1/8 on the largest stage of its kind in the world. Designed in Beaux-Arts style by Paris-born architect (Jean-Louis) Charles Garnier, 49, whose design won a competition 15 years ago, the building has been completed at a cost of 50 million francs and is occupied mostly by foyers, galleries, and staircases that provide settings for tête-à-têtes (its huge stage takes up less than one-third of its interior space). Garnier calls acoustics a "bizarre science" and writes, "Nowhere did I find a positive rule to guide me. I must explain that I have adopted no principle, that my plan has been based on no theory, and that I leave success or failure to chance alone." Paris hails his structure as a worldly counterpart to the 530-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral.

Opera: Carmen 3/3 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Georges Bizet, libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac. Girls from a cigarette factory smoke on stage in Act I and the heroine sings the "Habanera"; Trial by Jury 3/5 at London's Royalty Theatre begins a 21-year series of comic Gilbert & Sullivan operettas with librettos by W. S. Gilbert, music by Arthur S. Sullivan, 300 perfs.

A new Vienna Opera House opens with a performance of the 1814 Beethoven opera Fidelio.

Composer Georges Bizet dies of heart disease and a throat ailment at Bougival, near Paris, June 3 at age 36.

First performances: Danse Macabre (symphonic poem) by Camille Saint-Säens 1/24 at Paris; Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra by French composer Edouard (-Victor-Antoine) Lalo, 52, 2/7 at Paris with violinist Pablo Sarasate; The Moldau (Vltava) (symphonic poem) by Bedrich Smetana 4/4 at Prague; Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 10/25 at Boston's Music Hall with Hans von Bülow as soloist; Concerto No. 4 in C minor by Camille Saint-Säens 10/31 at Paris; Symphony No. 3 in D major by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 11/19 at Moscow.

The Boston Symphony has its genesis in the Boston Philharmonic Club founded by German-born conductor Bernhard Listemann, 34 (see 1881).