Silvio Varviso

[1] Varviso made his conducting debut at age 20 leading Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Stadttheater in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

He became principal conductor of the Theater Basel (1956–1962) where he led several productions of operas by Mozart and works from the bel canto repertory.

He conducted The Marriage of Figaro for his first performance at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1962 followed by a production of Der Rosenkavalier for his debut with Covent Garden later that year.

On 26 November 1961, Varviso made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in a production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

The evening also marked the occasion of Dame Joan Sutherland's debut at the house, portraying Lucia opposite Richard Tucker's Edgardo.

The operas he conducted at the Met included Puccini's Madama Butterfly with Dorothy Kirsten as Cio-Cio-San, Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus with Theodor Uppman as Eisenstein and Jeanette Scovotti as Adele, Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur with Renata Tebaldi in the title role and Franco Corelli as Maurizio, La sonnambula with Sutherland as Amina and Nicolai Gedda as Elvino, Tosca with Gabriella Tucci in the title role and Anselmo Colzani as Scarpia, The Magic Flute with Anna Moffo as Pamina and Gianna D'Angelo as the Queen of the Night, Ariadne auf Naxos with Gladys Kuchta in the title role and Roberta Peters as Zerbinetta, Aida with Birgit Nilsson in the title role, Don Pasquale with Fernando Corena in the title role, The Tales of Hoffmann with William Dooley playing the four villains, The Barber of Seville with Reri Grist in her house debut as Rosina opposite George Shirley's Count Almaviva, Don Giovanni with Cesare Siepi in the title role and Martina Arroyo as Donna Anna, and Faust with Pilar Lorengar as Marguerite.

Up until this point he had conducted no Wagner and in 1969 he embarked on an ambitious campaign to add several core Wagnerian works, beginning with The Flying Dutchman at the Bayreuth Festival.

He conducted his final and 147th performance at the house on 2 April 1983 with a production of Wagner's Die Walküre with Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde and Manfred Jung as Siegmund.