Pollini, Bernhard

Bernhard Pollini ( German Bernhard Pollini , real name Baruch Paul , German Baruch Pohl ; December 16, 1838 , Cologne - November 27, 1897 , Hamburg ) - German opera singer (tenor) and impresario.

He made his debut on stage in 1857 in the party of Arturo ( "Puritans" by Bellini ). He toured with an opera company performing the Italian repertoire, then became its impresario; traveled through Milan , Paris and London to Havana , Mexico City and New York , then back to Europe, from there to Constantinople , Budapest and Vienna. In 1867 he led the Italian troupe in Lviv , then led the teams in St. Petersburg and Moscow .

For the most part, the name Pollini is associated with the Hamburg Opera House , whose director he became in 1873 and remained in office for the rest of his life. Pollini saved the opera house from financial collapse, managing to attract loans. He significantly raised the level of performance, having invited Hans von Bülow ( 1887 - 1890 ) and then Gustav Mahler (since 1891 ) as chief conductors. In 1878 , Richard Wagner 's The Ring of the Nibelung was fully staged, German premieres of Othello Verdi and Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky took place in 1892 , and in 1893 the first performance of Iolanta was performed outside of Russia (in both cases in the presence of Tchaikovsky). Shortly before his death, he married the singer Bianca Bianchi , whose career in the early 1870s. started not without his participation.

The New York Times obituary characterized Pollini as one of Europe’s most prominent opera managers ^[2] . At the same time, modern music critic Norman Lebrecht, in his scandalous pamphlet entitled “Who Killed Classical Music”, states: “Sly and assertive <...> Pollini (nee Baruch Paul) paid well to his stars, but kept the rest of the troupe on a beggarly salary. <...> In the Grove dictionary he was called the “international class quartermaster”. In fact, he was a slave owner and a fraudster ” ^[3] .