Lawson Taitte

Dallas Opera co-founder Nicola Rescigno died in a hospital in Viterbo, Italy, on Monday. He was 92.

The conductor had fallen and was awaiting surgery for a broken leg. He had maintained a residence in a Roman suburb for most of his adult life and had lived there full time since his gradual retirement in the 1990s.

"It's the end of an era. He meant so much to the arts in Dallas and to me personally, that it's hard to come to grips with it," Dallas Opera director of artistic administration Jonathan Pell said Monday evening. "There would have been no Dallas Opera if it weren't for Nicola Rescigno."

Mr. Rescigno and the late Lawrence V. Kelly began what was then called the Dallas Civic Opera in 1957, after they left the Chicago Lyric Opera (which they also had founded, together with Carol Fox). The new Texas company made headlines around the world from its earliest days because of its association with diva Maria Callas. It presented the American debuts of many other famous international singers as well, from Joan Sutherland to Montserrat Caballé.

"He and Larry Kelly were polar opposites, from what I understand, but they worked together to generate so much excitement. There were things going on here from the beginning that were the envy of the opera world," Mr. Pell said.

Born in New York on May 16, 1916, Mr. Rescigno was the son of a trumpeter in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. Although his father discouraged him from a musical career and sent him to school in Italy to get a law degree, the young man returned to study music at the Juilliard School.

Eventually he became one of that rare breed, the American opera conductor. After working in small companies, he built a career in major houses around the world. His association with Ms. Callas was an important one: He is the conductor on many of her live recordings. He made a belated debut at the Metropolitan in 1978 and conducted three productions there.

But for more than three decades Mr. Rescigno centered his artistic life in Dallas. He conducted the vast majority of Dallas Opera productions during the company's first two decades. During that glamorous era, directors such as Franco Zeffirelli, John Houseman, José Ferrer and Ellis Rabb staged productions – though other productions could be stodgy and old-fashioned. Jon Vickers and Alfredo Kraus, tenors of exalted rank, were virtually house singers. Mr. Rescigno also discovered Plácido Domingo and gave him his American debut at the age of 20.

After Mr. Kelly's untimely death in 1974, Mr. Rescigno held the artistic reins single-handed for a while, keeping the same emphasis on mainstream Italian and French repertoire and continuing to explore baroque opera years before it became fashionable.

After Plato Karayanis became the company's general director, though, Mr. Rescigno became increasingly frustrated with the changes in the organization. The conductor left the Dallas Opera in 1990, saying to The Dallas Morning News, "I have been thwarted in my efforts to give Dallas the best opera possible."

Many opera patrons in Dallas (not to speak of the out-of-town fans who flocked to Mr. Rescigno's performances) mourned his leaving the company. But the trends toward more modern, theatrical productions – and the increasing scarcity of the high-powered vocal stars Mr. Rescigno liked to work with – were against him.

Mr. Pell worked under Mr. Rescigno during his last five years with the company and counts the conductor as his mentor.

"He was an inspiration to everyone. He was not an easy man sometimes, because he was so lost in the music," Mr. Pell said. "The things he loved most in the world were food, music and gossip. He had an unending source of stories, some of them quite bawdy, and he loved to invite people over and cook pasta."

One thing is certain: Mr. Rescigno and Mr. Kelly – along with their theatrical colleagues Margo Jones and Paul Baker, now the one surviving giant of that era – put Dallas on the national and international artistic map in the 1950s. It is impossible to imagine the Dallas of today without their contributions to the city.

Mr. Rescigno is survived by his companion of 40 years, Aldo Marcoaldi, and also by his two sisters, Rita Pignatelli and Dolly Di Napoli (both of New York), 10 nieces and nephews (including Joseph Rescigno, the well-known opera conductor and artistic adviser of the Florentine Opera Company of Milwaukee), and six grandnieces and grandnephews.