THE D'OYLY CARTE OPERA COMPANY

Anthony Reiff, Jr. in Australia

Anthony Reiff (m.d., 1880)

[Born New York c.1835, died New York 6 Oct 1916]

Anthony (or Antoine) Reiff had an extensive career in America as a conductor and composer that extended from at least 1861 (when, as Anthony Reiff, Jr., his patriotic song "An American Star!" was published in New York) to 1914 (when his opera Under the Greenwood Tree was written). He traveled to Australia in March 1861, working there as musical director for W. S. Lyster's Opera Company, and as a composer, until September 1863. His most significant composition there was a "Funeral ode: in memory of the deceased explorers of Australia: Burke and Wills," sung in January 1863.

Reiff's only engagement with the D'Oyly Carte organization was as musical director for Carte's Second American Pirates of Penzance Company in Philadelphia and Baltimore from March to May 1880. Reiff later conducted several productions in New York, including the J. C. Duff pirate production of The Mikado at the Fifth Avenue and Standard Theatres in 1885-86.

His compositions included the score to the American pantomime Humpty Dumpty (1868), the comic operas Zozina (1888) and Brides of San Marco (1893), and several separate songs and orchestral works. Reiff's father, also named Anthony, was one of the founders of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

R Index  |  "Who Was Who" Homepage