Giuseppe Carboni

Carboni, Giuseppe

Giuseppe (Angelo) Carboni. Teacher, composer, b Venice 1866 (1857 according to Towers' Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas and Operettas ) d Toronto 9 Feb 1934. After study in Vienna and Paris Carboni conducted opera in Germany and Austria and then served six years as a coach at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. In 1915 he settled in Toronto, where he became voice director at the Hambourg Conservatory, and also the choirmaster at Our Lady of Lourdes Church and at St Joseph's College; he held the latter two positions until his death. In 1915, too, he presented the first of many amateur operatic productions, among them such rarely heard works as Paer's Le Maître de Chapelle, Adam's Le Chalet, and Gounod's Philémon et Baucis. In certain lean years these student performances provided the only opera to be heard in Toronto. After leaving the Hambourg Cons Carboni opened his own studio; among his many pupils were Jeanne Dusseau, J. Elcho Fiddes, Redferne Hollinshead, Ivy Dale, Kenneth Sakos, Mabel Manley Pickard, and Jeanne Pengelly. Stieger's Opernlexikon: Komponisten (vol 1, 1977) lists two operettas by Carboni: Don Decubito premiered in 1887, and Il cameriere astuto, premiered in 1888, both in Venice.