Chester Simon Kallman (January 7, 1921 – January 18, 1975) was an Americanpoet, librettist, and translator, best known for his collaborations with W. H. Auden and Igor Stravinsky.
Life
Kallman was born in Brooklyn of 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, and died there at the age of 54. 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, 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 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). They also wrote a 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.
The first council had 62 members and was elected as a shadow authority (known as Chester District Council) on 7 June 1973. The council came into its powers on 1 April 1974, on which date a royal charter and letters patent came into force with the authority becoming Chester City Council and the chairman of the council having the title of mayor. An election of the whole council was held again in 1976.
The number of councillors was reduced to 60 at the next council election in 1979. Thereafter the city council elections were "by thirds": with 20 councillors retiring in three out of every four years. In the fourth year, elections to Cheshire County Council took place.
Chester is a historic home located near Homeville, Sussex County, Virginia. It was built in 1773, and is a two-story, three bay, frame dwelling with side gable roof. It features two exterior chimney stacks, joined on both the first and second floor levels
by pent closets. Attached to the main section is a two-story wing with an exterior chimney and a shallow gable roof added in the 1820s.
The Chester Transportation Center is a SEPTAbus and train station in Chester, Pennsylvania. The outside portion of the ground level serves SEPTA City Transit Division Route 37, and Suburban Transit Division Routes 109, 113, 114, 117, 118, and 119.
Above the building of the transportation center is the train station. The tracks run over the building. The station is served by the Wilmington/Newark Line. The line offers southbound service to Wilmington and Newark, Delaware and northbound service to Philadelphia. This station is located at 6th and Welsh Streets, Chester, PA 19013.
History
Chester station was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1903. In the 1940s lots of NY-Washington trains stopped there; in 1970 one Philadelphia-Washington train stopped, and in 1978-83 Amtrak's Chesapeake stopped both ways between Philadelphia and Washington. PRR/PC/Conrail local trains to Marcus Hook/Wilmington/Newark continued until SEPTA took them over in 1983.
But RosieAldridge’s Baba the Turk, especially, and a strong young cast made for a memorable evening ...It’s a scene that epitomises the knowingness of this neoclassical collaboration between Stravinsky, WH Auden and Chester Kallman ... ....
... with the young poet Chester Kallman, like that of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, shape-shifted from friend to lover and back again over the last quarter century of Auden’s life.
There, Auden met his lifelong companion Chester Kallman, an opera librettist who was 14 years his junior. Kallman seduced Auden by sitting in the front row at one of his readings and winking at him as he recited his verse.
H ...W.H ...Chester Kallman was Auden’s junior by 14 years and Auden viewed their love as a true marriage. But in 1941 Kallman refused his demand for mutual fidelity, causing Auden to feel ‘stripped of selfcontrol and self-respect’ — and dangerously angry ... .
Margaret loved Michael with unassailable devotion, not unlike the kind that marked Auden’s relationship with Chester Kallman and inspired his eternal poem “The MoreLoving One.” At ...
You can find yourself in terrific seats for $25! ...Stravinsky’s neo-classicist and ironizing score, always an odd but charming fit with the libretto by lovers WH Auden and Chester Kallman, proved unusually moving in her reading ... .
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Brainpickings
11 Feb 2024
Brainpickings
11 Feb 2024