1934
April 25, the Juilliard Student Club met at Martha Graham’s Fifth Avenue studio for a discussion on “Music for the Modern Dance.” Louis Horst and Graham spoke, and Graham and her dancers illustrated with her “Song of Approach” from Part One of Ceremonials (1932), set to music by Lehman Engel, and Primitive Mysteries (1931) and Celebration (1934), with music by Horst. A full capacity audience of nearly 100 students attended. Graham and Horst joined the Juilliard faculty upon the establishment of the Dance Division in 1951.

1954
April 2, the Juilliard Opera Theater produced the U.S. premiere of Richard Strauss’s last complete operatic work, Capriccio, given in an English translation by Maria Massey that was commissioned for the occasion by the Juilliard Musical Foundation. Gloria Davy and Sarah Rhodes alternated in the role of Countess, and Robert Rue was cast as the Count.

1973
April 2, Pierre Boulez gave a master class devoted to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and the original large-orchestra version of Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6. Student conductors were Joseph Lyons and David Ramadanoff.

1981
April 7, the Juilliard Theater Center’s spring repertory season opened. Michael Kahn directed new adaptations of Euripides’s Electra and Orestes, with scripts by Adrienne Kennedy, commissioned by Juilliard through the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights program. The production featured music by Kirk Nurock and choreography by Randolyn Zinn. Also presented during the repertory season were Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, directed by Michael Langham and J. Ranelli, and Chekhov’s The Wood Demon, staged by guest director Frank Hauser.