Auguste Vianesi

His repertoire consisted mostly of French and Italian opera, in which he directed some of the world's great singers including Pauline Viardot, Christina Nilsson, Marcella Sembrich, the brothers Edouard and Jean de Reszke, and Feodor Chaliapin in the opera houses of London, Paris, Melbourne, St. Petersburg, Boston and New York.

[1] In 1857, he went to Paris to complete his musical training, armed with a letter of introduction to Rossini from the famed soprano Giuditta Pasta.

He conducted the first London performances of Lohengrin (1875), Tannhäuser (1876), Il Guarany (Antonio Gomes 1872), and Massenet's Le roi de Lahore in 1879.

In 1885 he became a naturalized French citizen, and two years later was appointed to succeed Ernest Altès as chief conductor of the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier (1887–91).

[1] He returned to New York in 1891/92 with Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau when they took over the Metropolitan Opera for the second time, including the US premiere of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (probably with Giulia and Sofia Ravogli).

Aged 20, he wrote a comic opera, Una fortuna in prigione (A Fortune in Prison), which was finished in London on 20 October 1858.