Isidore de Lara

After studying in Italy and France, he returned to England, where he taught for several years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and became a well known singer and composer of art songs.

In the early 1880s he began to compose music for the stage, eventually achieving his greatest successes with opera in Monte Carlo from the late 1890s through the outbreak of World War I.

His first opera, The Royal Word, premiered at the Gaiety Theatre, London on 17 April 1883 with de Lara portraying the role of Charles II of England.

A few years later the acclaimed French baritone Victor Maurel persuaded him to turn his cantata The Light of Asia, based on the life of Buddha, into an Italian opera, La luce dell'Asia, which was produced at Covent Garden in 1892.

It was followed in 1899 by his most famous work, Messaline, which featured the presence of the greatest Italian heroic tenor of the era, Francesco Tamagno, in the cast of the premiere performance.

At the close of the war, he strove to establish an English national opera throughout the 1920s, but was unable to get the financial support needed to maintain a permanent company.

[1] De Lara was a moderately prolific composer, producing a total of 13 operas, 67 vocal art songs, and a small amount of chamber music.