Hageman, Richard
Hageman, Richard
Hageman, Richard, distinguished Dutch-American pianist, conductor, and composer, son of Maurits (Leonard) Hageman; b. Leeuwarden, July 9, 1882;d. Beverly Hills, March 6, 1966. He studied music with his father, then took courses at the Brussels Cons, with Gevaert and Arthur de Greef. He held an auxiliary position as conductor at the Royal Opera in Amsterdam (1899–1903). After playing accompaniments for Mathilde Marchesi in Paris (1904–05), he went to the U.S. as accompanist for Yvette Guilbert in 1906. He was on the conducting roster of the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. (1908-10; 1911-21; 1935-37), the Chicago Civic Opera (1922–23), and the Los Angeles Grand Opera (1923). In 1938 he settled in Hollywood, where he was engaged as a composer of film music. He wrote 2 operas: Caponsacchi (1931; 1st perf. as Tragödie in Arezzo, Freiburg im Breisgau, Feb. 18, 1932; received the David Bispham Memorial Medal) and The Crucible (Los Angeles, Feb. 4, 1943). He achieved a lasting reputation mainly through his solo songs, of which Do Not Go My Love (to words by Rabindranath Tagore; 1917) and At the Well (1919) became extremely popular.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire