Auguste Charles Léonard François Vianesi

Auguste Charles Léonard François Vianesi was born in Legnano on 2 November 1837 and died in New York on 4 November 1908. An Italian conductor who became a naturalised French citizen, he trained with Giovanni Pacini and Theodor Döhler and, in 1857, travelled to Paris with a letter of introduction for Rossini.

After working at the Drury Lane in London between 1858 and 1859, he moved to New York and conducted at the Imperial Theatre in Moscow and St Petersburg. He returned to London in 1870 and for a decade conducted at Covent Garden, where he presented the first London performances of Wagner's Lohengrin (1875) and Tannhäuser (1876). Klein criticised this version. He also conducted Italian and French works, such as Cherubini's Médée and Meyerbeer's L'Africaine.

In 1883 he conducted the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and returned in 1891-1892 to premiere Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice there. In 1887 he succeeded Altès as musical director of the Paris Opera, where he premiered Saint-Saëns's Ascanio (1890) and Massenet's Le mage (1891).

A manuscript score of the opera Una fortuna in prigione, probably autograph and signed in London on 20 October 1858, survives.