Savage, Henry W(ilson)

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Savage, Henry W(ilson)

Savage, Henry W(ilson), American impresario; b. New Durham, N.H., March 21, 1859; d. Boston, Nov. 29, 1927. He started in business as a real estate operator in Boston, where he took control of the Castle Square Opera House by default in 1894. He founded his own company there to present opera in English in 1895, and subsequently gave performances in Chicago, N.Y., and other cities; with Maurice Grau, he produced opera in English at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. (1900). His Henry Savage Grand Opera Co. toured throughout the U.S. with an English-language production of Parsifal in 1904–05; subsequently made successful tours with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1906) and La fanciulla del West (1911), and Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe (1907).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire