Julian Sturgis
[1] When Julian was seven months old, the family moved to England, where Russell Sturgis joined Baring Brothers in London.
[5][7] He also played for the Old Etonians, and in the FA Cup semi-final against Oxford University at The Oval on 19 February 1876, he scored the only goal for the public school old boys to take them to their second consecutive final, against the Wanderers.
[4] His first novel was John-a-Dreams (1878), followed the next year by An Accomplished Gentleman, of which The Times said: It may be described as an Idyll of Anglo-Italian life under the sunny skies of Venetia.
But with all its poetical refinement of tone and inspirations of cultivation and art worship there is a great deal of fun in the book in one shape or another.
[9]Sturgis's biographer Elizabeth Lee writes that he specialised in "light comedies, mostly set at Eton or Oxford.
[10] In 1885, Sturgis wrote the libretto for Arthur Goring Thomas's opera, Nadeshda, which was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 16 April 1885.
Bernard Shaw was an exception, accusing Sturgis of "wanton debasement of a literary masterpiece", turning "Scott's noble dialogue" into "fustian".
"[22] Sullivan's friend the critic Herman Klein called the libretto "a skilful and fairly dramatic adaptation of Scott's novel and a polished example of poetic lyric-writing".
[24] It was, Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!
[4] Among his poems, three were set to music by Hubert Parry, an old friend from Eton days:[25] "Sleep" ("Beautiful up from the deeps of the solemn sea"),[26] "Through the ivory gate" ("I had a dream last night"),[27] and "Whence".
[28] In 1901, Sturgis wrote the libretto for Charles Villiers Stanford's opera, Much Ado About Nothing, based on the play by Shakespeare.
[29] The Manchester Guardian commented, "Not even in the Falstaff of Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi have the characteristic charm, the ripe and pungent individuality of the original comedy been more sedulously preserved.
It may have been because the composer and the Carl Rosa Opera Company could not agree on terms,[31] or because another adaptation by Karl Goldmark had been successfully presented too recently for another version to be viable.
It was given under the composer's baton by students of the Royal Academy of Music in 1914, with future stars of different operatic genres in the cast: Darrell Fancourt and Eva Turner.
[4] Sturgis was cremated at Woking Crematorium and his ashes were buried in Compton Cemetery, near his country house in Surrey.
