Time Capsule From the Juilliard Archives

A 1936 Ravel Premiere

As we get ready to wind up the year and celebrate commencement with an all-Ravel Juilliard Orchestra concert (conducted by Matthias Pintscher), we thought we’d look back to an important Juilliard-Ravel moment from the past. In March 1936, the opera department gave the New York premiere of the English-language version of Ravel’s 1904 opéra comique L’heure espagnole. Albert Stoessel, who headed the Juilliard Graduate School orchestra and opera departments from 1931 until his death, in 1943, conducted this “delectable masterpiece,” as critic Olin Downes wrote in the New York Times.

The one-act opera was double-billed with the world premiere of a ballet, Joseph and His Brethren, by Werner Josten. It was choreographed by Arthur Mahoney, who also played the lead—it was, after all, 15 years before Juilliard created its dance division. In his Times review, Downes said the works were “performed with a degree of vitality and significance which made the interpretations, given in a place unhappily remote from the musical center of the city, worth the journey.” (At the time, Juilliard was located at Claremont Avenue and 123rd Street, site of the current Manhattan School of Music.) And he noted that overall, “This production is one of the best, if not the best, stage achievements of the opera department of the Juilliard School.”