April Fool's Day
April Fool's Day
1747 premiere of George Frideric Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabaeus at Covent Garden in London.
1866 Ferruccio Busoni – Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor (d.1924); early on he was advised by Brahms, later on he was a friend of Sibelius and taught for a while at the New England Conservatory; after hearing the Berlin premiere of Falstaff, he wrote a fan letter to Verdi but he never summoned the courage to send it; all in all, a fascinating figure.
1873 Sergei Rachmaninoff – Russian composer, pianist, and conductor (d.1943); one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.
1913 premiere of Manuel de Falla's opera La vida breve (Life is Short) at the Casino Municipal in Nice, France.
1937 premiere of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s opera Amelia Goes to the Ball (Amelia al ballo) at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; Menotti had written the work while still a student at Curtis; a year later, Amelia was presented by the Metropolitan Opera.
1946 first performance of Marc Blitzstein’s Airborne Symphony in New York City by the New York City Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein on April 1, 1946; renowned filmmaker Orson Welles served as narrator.
1954 premiere of Aaron Copland's opera The Tender Land at New York City Opera conducted by Thomas Schippers and directed by Jerome Robbins.