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City of New York-born Frederick Swartwout Cozzens (father of the marine artist Fred Cozzens) was a wine merchant who between 1854 and 1861 edited Cozzens’ Wine Press, a professional magazine on the culture of wine and the promotion of American wines. Cozzens was also a humorist (sometimes using the pseudonym Richard Haywarde).
In 1867, he published The Sayings of Dr Bushwacker and Other Learned Men which contains this intriguing passage: “My old friend, Dominick Lynch, sir, the wine-merchant, the only great wine merchant we ever had, sir, imported the finest oil, sir, from Lucca, known even to this day as ‘Lynch’s Oil’. He it was who made Château Margaux and the Italian opera popular, sir, in this great metropolis.”
Who was this refined spirit who brought the delights of Bordeaux wine, Tuscan olive oil and Italian opera to Manhattan?
Faith & Wine
Dominick Lynch was born in Galway in 1754 into a prominent Catholic family. Well-educated, he married at a young age and moved to Bruges, Flanders, where he opened a branch of his father’s firm.
Commercial success enabled him and his family to live in style. They traveled extensively throughout Europe and lived in London, before moving to the city of New York in late summer 1785. He took up residence on Broadway near the Battery where he became acquainted with George Washington who resided nearby.
Soon after his arrival, Lynch took an active interest in advancing the Catholic faith in the metropolis. He joined a small group of mainly French and Spanish worshipers in Warren Street and was a driving force behind the foundation of the original St Peter’s Church at Barclay and Church Streets, then outside the city limits. The first Mass was celebrated there in 1786.
Lynch became a prominent New Yorker. In 1790, he was one of five citizens who, on behalf of the Catholics of America, signed the “Address of Congratulation” to George Washington on his inauguration as the nation’s first President. In the meantime, he continued to increase his wealth by investing in the China trade and through dealing in real estate.
In 1796 he acquired the abandoned Fort Stanwix and its surrounding swamps in Oneida County, NY, which he eventually turned into the thriving town of Lynchville. In 1819, residents voted to rename the town Rome, NY. Converted to a city by the New York State Legislature in February 1870, Rome was built by an Irishman.
Dominick Lynch Jr. attended Georgetown College (later Georgetown University), America’s oldest Catholic academic institution, in the late 1790s. By 1809 he had returned to his native Manhattan and started a successful career as a fine wine merchant.
In November 1824 Dominick II disembarked at Le Havre on his first-ever European sojourn. The thirty-seven-year-old widower and father of five, bon vivant and socialite, aimed at combining pleasure with business. He had traveled to France to connect with his suppliers of quality Bordeaux wines sold at his classy establishment at 40 William Street, eight blocks south of Park Theatre.
A special reason to visit Paris was to meet up again with his author friend Washington Irving who since 1815 had been living abroad. As a music lover, Lynch planned to seek out the delights of Parisian entertainment. Irving introduced him to Italian opera at the small but elegant Salle Louvois (Gioachino Rossini was appointed Director of Music there on December 1, 1824).
For Lynch the operatic experience was a revelation. Irving coached him on the art of “bel canto” singing and its repertory. The expressive artistry and natural elegance of the Italian soprano Giuditta Pasta, the star of the Parisian stage at the time, enchanted him. He decided there and then to transplant Italian opera to Manhattan – whatever the cost.
Irving introduced Lynch to the diva. His attempt to induce Giuditta to move to New York flattered her, but she was not willing to sacrifice a glittering career in Europe for the uncertain prospect of a city without a dedicated opera house. Pasta suggested that he should try to recruit the Spanish García family of opera singers instead.
On April 16, 1825, Lynch penned a letter from Paris to John Jacob Astor, co-proprietor of Manhattan’s Park Theatre, and proposed to replace the routine of dramatic performances on Tuesdays and Saturday nights by introducing the sensational novel experience of Italian opera.
Park Theatre
French-born engineer Marc-Isambard Brunel was a naval cadet serving abroad when the French Revolution broke out. On his return, he lived with relatives in Rouen. A Royalist sympathiser, he got in trouble for his opinions. Fearing for his safety, he fled to Le Havre and boarded the American ship Liberty, bound for New York.
Having arrived on September 6, 1793, he was involved in various projects showing his design skills. In 1796, after taking American citizenship, Brunel was appointed chief engineer of the city of New York. He designed various houses, docks, commercial buildings, an arsenal and a cannon factory. In 1799 he was lured to London where he established a lasting reputation with the construction of the Thames Tunnel.
In the late eighteenth century, New York’s only playhouse was the decaying John Street Theatre (“Birthplace of American Theatre”) which had opened in December 1767. Although George Washington attended a few performances there, its repertoire was mainly lowbrow, its facilities poor and its attendees rough and rowdy.
Tired of such poor quality, in 1795 a group of wealthy New Yorkers in cooperation with the actor-managers Thomas Hallam and John Hodgkinson proposed the construction of a new playhouse at Manhattan’s Park Row. They commissioned Brunel to come up with a suitable design.
Collaborating with fellow émigré Joseph-François Mangin, he designed a three-story stone structure that seated an audience of 2,000. Originally called the New Theatre, it was renamed the Park Theatre as it faced the open area later named City Hall Park. The house opened its doors to the public on January 29, 1798, with a performance of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
After a few difficult first years, the owners sold the establishment to John Jacob Astor and John Beekman in 1805. English-born architect John Joseph Holland remodeled the theatre’s interior and added gas lighting.
In 1808, Stephen Price was appointed the new manager. Under his leadership the theatre enjoyed its best years in the 1810s and 1820s. Price was able to attract high-class actors and entertainers. The theatre introduced Italian opera to its Manhattan audience.
Manuel García
At Giuditta Pasta’s urging, Lynch crossed to London in mid-July 1825 to call upon Seville-born Manuel García. The latter was a charismatic tenor who excelled in Rossini’s operas. At age fifty he was past his prime, but still capable of delivering thrilling performances.
All members of his family were accomplished singers. Manuel’s second wife Joaquina Sitchez possessed a warm mezzo-soprano voice and was a member of the chorus. His twenty-year-old son Manuel Patricio (“Manolito”) also appeared in the family concerts.
From the moment of Lynch’s arrival in London, he was struck to hear on everyone’s lips the name of Mademoiselle García. Born María Felicia García Sitchez in Paris in 1808, the seventeen-year-old mezzo-soprano had just débuted at the capital’s Italian opera house.
On June 11, a sudden cancellation had her rushed on stage and perform (without rehearsals) the role of Rosina to her father’s Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. It was a teenage triumph.
Her name soon became the talk of London’s social season (running from May to August, the “Season” was an annual series of social, artistic and sporting events during which aristocratic families exchanged their country estates for London residencies).
Lynch was completely taken in by María’s stage presence. A lucrative offer was made to Manuel’s Troupe to perform in Manhattan. On October 1, 1825, Dominick II and thirteen members of the opera company boarded the packet ship New-York.
Except for the youngest daughter who was only four years old (she would later make a splendid singing career under the name Pauline “La Viardot”), all the family members were to play leading roles. They began rehearsing on board immediately after departure.
At one moment, Manuel was reprimanded by the ship’s captain for violently striking his son during a rehearsal. Manuel García may have a spectacular singer and a demanding teacher, but he was also a brutal character. A strict authoritarian, he ruled his household with an iron fist. He made his children suffer for their talent.
After enduring a five-and-a-half-week voyage they stepped ashore in New York. Manuel managed to prepare a local chorus and orchestra in only ten days for their first performance. Italian opera was about to conquer the United States. Dominick Lynch lived at 1 Greenwich Street and it was in this fashionable residential neighborhood that María García, the “prima donna” of the opera company, first sang on American soil.
“Signorina”
By eight o’clock on the historic evening of November 29, 1825, Manhattan’s cultural elite gathered at the Park Theatre to witness the first production in America of an opera sung entirely in Italian. Amongst the opening night audience were novelist James Fenimore Cooper, poet Fitz-Greene Halleck and the exiled Joseph Bonaparte.
The performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia was an overwhelming success. Rossini was an instant hero for those present and Dominick Lynch celebrated as a trend-setter. But it was María who stole the show for a ‘bewitching’ impersonation of the opera’s heroine Rosina. Fondly dubbed the “Signorina,” she became the darling of New York.
Over the next ten months, the García Troupe would present seventy-nine performances of nine operas (Rossini, Mozart and two of Manuel Garcia’s own works). New York audiences venerated María. She was a huge draw. The taste of fame offered her a chance to get away from an egocentric and oppressive father once and for all.
In March 1826 the “Signorina” dropped a bombshell when announcing the news that she was to marry wealthy French-born banker Eugene Malibran and retire from the stage within six months. He was twenty-eight years her senior and a New York resident (there were suggestions that Manuel pressured his daughter to accept the 100,000 francs offered by her suitor). María García and Eugene Malibran married at St Peter’s Church on March 25, 1826. Dominick Lynch acted as one of the witnesses in his “father’s church.”
The other musicians of the García Troupe traveled to Mexico to continue their tour, leaving Manhattan in shock. María’s retirement might have been the end of her career, but when Eugene’s business affairs were about to collapse, she returned to the stage and concert room.
Unable and not prepared to cover her husband’s spiraling debts, she decided to go back to Europe. Her “farewell benefit and last appearance” took place at the new Bowery Theatre on October 29, 1827, three days before her ship to Le Havre would set sail.
La Malibran
Billing herself simply as La Malibran and engaged at the Théâtre Italien in Paris, she became Europe’s first diva (the “diva of all divas”) who was adored by the leading lights of the early Romantic Movement.
Stendhal, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas and Lamartine all worshiped her, as did composers such as Rossini and Franz Liszt. Chopin hailed her the “Queen of Europe.” Her triumphs in Britain and Italy were the stuff of legend.
In 1828/9, she began a relationship with the acclaimed Belgian violinist Charles de Bériot that was to last the rest of her life. The couple occupied a villa at Ixelles, a suburb of Brussels once visited frequently by the Brontë sisters (and later the birthplace of Audrey Hepburn), although they were unable to marry legally until she obtained an annulment of her marriage to Eugene in 1836.
That same year she returned to London for another highly successful season, but a riding accident in Regent’s Park on July 5 left her with a head injury. Though severely shaken and in pain, she continued her punishing schedule.
Having performed at the Music Festival at Manchester’s Collegiate Church, she collapsed and died on September 23 in the city’s Mosley Arms Hotel. She was twenty-eight.
Fifty-thousand people followed her cortege as it made its way to her funeral in what is now Manchester Cathedral. Shortly afterwards the body was exhumed and reinterred at Laeken Cemetery, near Brussels, where she rests under the shielding branches of a centuries-old weeping beech.
Although it would take over half a century before the first Metropolitan Opera House opened its doors on October 22, 1883, at 1411 Broadway with a performance of Charles Gounod’s Faust, there can be no doubt that the efforts of an Irish wine merchant and the extraordinary talent of a Spanish diva inspired Manhattan’s lasting passion for (Italian) opera.
Illustrations, from above: Luciano Pavarotti (far left) performing in Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 2001; Dominick Lynch II, wine merchant, bon vivant and opera lover; Anonymous, Giuditta Pasta as Desdemone in Rossini’s Othello; Interior of Manhattan’s Park Theatre in 1822 (Performing Arts Archive); Henri Decaisne, Portrait of Maria Malibran, 1831 (Musée Carnavalet, Paris).
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