Vittorio Vanzo – conductor | Italy On This Day

Versatile musician was inspired by the operas of Wagner

Vanzo was a composer and pianist but
became best known as a conductor

Vittorio Maria Vanzo, who was passionate about the music of Wagner and introduced many of his works to Italian audiences, was born on this day in 1862 in Padua.

Vanzo toured both Italy and abroad as a piano accompanist and conductor and he also composed music himself.

His mother was from a noble family in Padua and his father was a doctor in literature and mathematics. Encouraged by his mother, Vanzo studied piano technique under the pianist and composer Melchiorre Balbi. He then went to the Conservatory of Milan, where he studied counterpoint with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti and composition with Antonio Bazzini.

After graduating in 1881, he became a piano accompanist in the school for singing headed by the baritone Felice Varesi, and he later performed in concerts throughout Italy and in other countries.

Vanzo is perhaps best known as a conductor and interpreter of the music of the German composer, Wilhelm Richard Wagner. He had become interested in Wagner’s music while studying at the Milan Conservatory and in order to further his studies of the works of the composer, he went to Bayreuth in northern Bavaria in 1883.

There he was able to listen to the music performed in the composer’s own theatre, the Teatro del Festival. Wagner lived in Bayreuth for the last 11 years of his life.

In the same year, Vanzo directed a production of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, which was first staged in Parma on Christmas Day.

In 1891, he married the Norwegian soprano, Anna Kriebel, who he had met while he was conducting, and she was performing, at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

She took part in Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tanhauser, and Vanzo also went on to be her piano accompanist when she performed in Lieder concerts.

The Teatro del Festival in Bayreuth, where Vanzo
travelled to listen to Wagner's music

Later that year, he conducted the first Italian performance of Wagner’s opera, La Valchiria (The Valkyrie) at the Teatro Regio in Turin, and in 1893 he revived the opera for the Teatro Comunale in Trieste.

Vanzo also conducted Giacomo Puccini’s Edgar at the Teatro Giglio in Lucca and at the Teatro Regio in Turin. In 1894 he conducted the orchestra of the Teatro Verdi in his home town of Padua during a run of performances of the opera, Edgar.

During his career, Vanzo conducted operas by the Italian composers Catalani, Boito, Leoncavallo, Pergolesi, and many others.

He met the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg in Norway in 1897. Grieg had heard his interpretations for orchestra and piano, and later said he had been impressed with the technical skill and virtuosity of the conductor and composer.

In 1906, Vanzo abandoned his conducting career to devote himself to composition. He composed music for voice with piano accompaniment, chamber music, a sonata for piano and mandolin, and an opera, whose score was never published. He also opened an opera singing school in Milan.

Vanzo had three children with Anna Kriebel, who died in Milan in 1926, where the conductor and composer also died in 1945.

Padua's Scrovegni Chapel, home to the beautiful
frescoes painted by the Florentine artist Giotto

Travel tip:

Padua, known in Italian as Padova, where Vittorio Vanzo was born, is well known as the city of Sant’Antonio (St Anthony), and is also one of the most important centres for art in Italy, and home to the country’s second oldest university. The enormous Basilica del Santo was built in the 13th century to preserve the mortal remains of Sant’Antonio, a Franciscan monk who became famous for his miracles. The church attracts pilgrims from all over the world and is rich with works of art by masters such as Titian and Tiepolo. Padova has become acknowledged as the birthplace of modern art because it is home to the Scrovegni Chapel, the inside of which is covered with frescoes by Giotto, the artist who was the first to paint people with realistic facial expressions showing different emotions. His scenes depicting the lives of Mary and Joseph, painted between 1303 and 1305, are one of the world’s most important works of art. At Palazzo Bo, Padova’s university founded in 1222, you can still see the original lectern where Galileo held his lessons. The Teatro Verdi, where Vanzo conducted the orchestra for a run of an opera in 1894, is a beautiful 18th century theatre named after the composer Giuseppe Verdi. It is located in Via del Livello in the centre of the city, close to Piazza dei Signori.

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The Conservatorio di Milano, which is now named
after the composer Giuseppe Verdi

Travel tip:

Milan’s Conservatory of Music (Conservatorio di Musica ‘Giuseppe Verdi’), where Vanzo studied music, is in Via Conservatorio, just off Via Pietro Mascagni, behind the Duomo and a short walk from Teatro alla Scala. It was established by a royal decree of 1807, when Milan was capital of the so-called Kingdom of Italy, under the rule of Napoleon at that time. The Conservatory of Music opened the following year with premises in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione in Via Conservatorio. It became the largest institute of musical education in Italy and its past students also include Giacomo Puccini, Amilcare Ponchielli, Arrigo Boito, Pietro Mascagni, Riccardo Muti and Ludovico Einaudi. Ironically, Giuseppe Verdi, after whom the conservatory is now named, was turned down when he applied to study there in 1832.