T

he Newport Music Festival was founded in 1969 as an attempt by the Metropolitan Opera to establish a summer season in Newport, much like the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.  However, outdoor opera is not a natural for Newport—the fog rolled in, the sopranos couldn’t sing, and an instrument literally fell apart on stage.

What did happen, however, is that a few far-sighted, creative persons visited Newport’s extraordinary mansions and realized the possibility of performing chamber music in the kind of grand rooms for which that music had originally been written.  The early Festival utilized many members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and was the forerunner of the Romantic revival, so popular now worldwide.

Approaching its 37^th season, the Newport Music Festival still offers music of the Romantic era—roughly 1825-1900—but in recent years it has expanded the dates and now presents a wide spectrum, from Bach to Berio.  The Festival has had dozens of world premieres of contemporary composers as well as rare discoveries of forgotten minor masterpieces.  For instance, the Festival presented the world premiere of a four-hand Andante Cantabile by Claude Debussy, found in manuscript at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and an unknown Prelude of Rachmaninoff found at the Library of Congress in Washington.  To date the Festival has presented over 1,600 concerts and 800 artists.

General Director Dr. Mark P. Malkovich, III enters his thirty-first season with the Festival.  Under his leadership, the Festival has become world renowned for presenting young international artists in their North American debuts, and for providing the showcase for emerging American artists.  Over one hundred North American debuts have placed the Newport Music Festival in the forefront of international presenting organizations—the list is an impressive one, indeed.  Andrei Gavrilov, gold medallist of the famed Tchaikovsky Competition has been called the successor to Horowitz; his first appearance in America was in Newport in 1976 and then not again for nine years.  Pianist Bella Davidovich was heard in Newport before her heralded Carnegie Hall debut in 1979; her renowned son, violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky, was also first heard in Newport.  In 1992, Russian violinist Ilya Kaler, gold medallist of the three most prestigious competitions, made his North American debut.  Valery Afanassiev and Ekaterina Novitskaya, both gold medallists of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, had their first American appearances in Newport.  The young Greek pianist Dimitris Sgouros made his North American recital debut here in 1982 at the age of twelve.  Italian pianists Andrea Lucchesini and Pietro De Maria, French violinists Augustin Dumay and Raphael Oleg, and pianists Jean-Philippe Collard, François-René Duchable and Alain Jacquon all had their starts in Newport.  And most recently, Latvian soprano Inessa Galante made her American debut to rave reviews.  The long list of American artists is equally as impressive, with over one hundred fifty young emerging artists making their debuts in Newport.

The Newport Music Festival presents sixty-four concerts each season for seventeen days in mid-July and remains, as headlined by Bernard Levin of the London Times, “Newport—the most festive of festivals.”  Dates for Festival 2005 are July 8-24, with two North American debuts and several Festival debuts scheduled, a star-studded return of former debut artists, and many unique offerings, including the “Victor Borge Composer Series,” featuring the chamber music of French composer Claude Debussy and Austrian Joseph Haydn.