American poet and librettist (1921–1975)
Chester Simon Kallman (January 7, 1921 – January 18, 1975) was an American poet, librettist, and translator, best known for collaborating with W. H. Auden on opera librettos for Igor Stravinsky and other composers.
Life.
Kallman was born in Brooklyn of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. He received his B.A. at Brooklyn College and his M.A. at the University of Michigan. He published three collections of poems, "Storm at Castelfranco" (1956), "Absent and Present" (1963), and "The Sense of Occasion" (1971). He lived most of his adult life in New York, spending his summers in Italy from 1948 through 1957 and in Austria from 1958 through 1974.
In 1963 he moved his winter home from New York to Athens, Greece. He died there of a heart attack on January 18, 1975, eleven days after his 54th birthday. His funeral, in the third Jewish cemetery of Athens, was attended by some of his closest friends and colleagues, such as James Merrill, David Jackson, Tony Parigory, Nelly Liambey, Bernie Winebaum, Rachel Hadas and Alan Ansen.
Kallman had been the beneficiary of the entirety of Auden's estate, but himself died intestate, with the result that the estate was inherited by his next-of-kin, his father, Edward Kallman (1892–1986), a New York dentist in his eighties.
Career.
Together with his lifelong friend (and sometime lover) W. H. Auden, Kallman wrote the libretto for Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" (1951). They also collaborated on two librettos for Hans Werner Henze, "Elegy for Young Lovers" (1961) and "The Bassarids" (1966), and on the libretto of "Love's Labour's Lost" (based on Shakespeare's play) for Nicolas Nabokov (1973). Additionally, they wrote the libretto "Delia, or, A Masque of Night" (1953), intended for Stravinsky but never set to music. They were commissioned to write the lyrics for "Man of La Mancha", but Kallman did no work on the project, and the producers decided against using Auden's contributions.
Kallman was the sole author of the libretto of "The Tuscan Players" for Carlos Chávez (1953, first performed in 1957 as "Panfilo and Lauretta").
He and Auden collaborated on a number of libretto translations, notably "The Magic Flute" (1956) and "Don Giovanni" (1961). Kallman also translated Verdi's "Falstaff" (1954), Monteverdi's "The Coronation of Poppea" (1954) and many other operas.
References.
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Sources.
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