Jeremy Commons

Jeremy Paul Axford Commons (born 17 December 1933) is a New Zealand opera historian, scholar, impresario and librettist. He is an authority on nineteenth-century Italian opera and has published major works on the composers Gaetano Donizetti and Nicola Vaccaj.

Commons was born in Auckland in 1933. After graduating MA in English from Auckland University and Merton College, Oxford, he spent a year in Italy as an Italian Government scholarship-holder studying early nineteenth century opera.

He returned to New Zealand in 1959 and worked for the Department of External Affairs as a junior diplomat, with postings at New Zealand's Embassy in Paris and the High Commission in London.

He joined the English Department at Victoria University Wellington in 1967 as a Reader and taught English literature, specialising in the Augustan period. Since retiring in 1989, he has devoted his attention full-time to opera-related projects.

In 2006, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Victoria University for his revival of, and research into, nineteenth-century Italian operas.

He has spent many years in Italian libraries and archives, uncovering not only neglected opera composers and their scores, but also collections of their letters and papers, contemporary accounts and reviews, thus building up an invaluable picture of their lives and productions.

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