South African College of Music
South African College of Music (SACM) was founded by a group of musicians led by Madame Apolline Niay-Darroll, opened in 1910 in Strand Street, Cape Town, with six students. There were many financial difficulties as initially it was an unsubsidised institution. In 1910, however, it received a government subsidy that helped to secure its future. The High Commissioner of Cape Town was Honorary President and the College also had an impressive list of patrons, induding the Governor of Cape Town and W. Duncan Baxter (1869-1960), Mayor of Cape Town from 1907 to 1908.
In 1912 Mr William Henry Bell was appointed Principal and, in 1914, the SACM moved to larger premises in Stal Plein (at the former Stal Plein Hotel).
Bell was later succeeded by Erik Chisholm (1951-1965).
The SACM was incorporated into the University of Cape Town in 1923 and Professor Bell became Dean of the Faculty of Music. For many years Cape Town was the only centre in the country offering training in opera, having started at the SACM in 1926, managed by the Italian-born Guiseppe Paganelli.
In 1999 the Faculty of Music was absorbed into the Faculty of Humanities.
SACM offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree and diploma programmes specialising in African and World Music, Jazz Studies, Composition, Classical Music, Opera, Music Technology and Musicology.
Productions
From 1929, the South African College of Music regularly presented operas, doing so under its own banner and, from 1951, as the University of Cape Town Opera Company.
Productions included:
1929: Il barbiere di Siviglia
1930: Don Pasquale
1933: Il matrimonio segreto
1934: Le nozze di Figaro, Hatsuyuki
1935: The Wandering Scholar, The Pillow of Kantan
1950: Dido and Aeneas, Beatrice et Benedict
1951: La serva padrona, Suor Angelica
For productions after 1951, see University of Cape Town Opera Company.
Sources
https://humanities.uct.ac.za/college-music
Wayne Muller. 2018. A reception history of opera in Cape Town: Tracing the development of a distinctly South African operatic aesthetic (1985–2015). Unpublished PhD thesis.
“South African College of Music”. University of Cape Town. https://humanities.uct.ac.za/college-music/history
Hilde Roos. 2012. 'Indigenisation and history: how opera in South Africa became South African opera'. Acta Academica Supplementum. 2012(1).
Alexandra Xenia Sabina Mossolow. 2003. The career of South African soprano Nellie du Toit, born 1929. Unpublished Masters thesis. University of Stellenbosch.
Ingrid Gollom. 2000. The History of the Cape Town Orchestra, Unpublished Masters Dissertation, UNISA.
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