Bruno Bartoletti – operatic conductor

Florentine maestro conquered hearts in Chicago

Bruno Bartoletti spent more than 50 years at Lyric
Opera Chicago as conductor and artistic director  

Internationally acclaimed operatic conductor Bruno Bartoletti, who conducted and served as an artistic director at Lyric Opera Chicago for more than 50 years, was born on this day in 1926 in Sesto Fiorentino in Tuscany.

Bartoletti is recognised as having shaped the excellent reputation of Lyric Opera Chicago for staging great productions of Italian opera masterpieces, as well as modern works. He also directed Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and was principal conductor at the Danish Royal Opera.

His father, Umberto, was a blacksmith who played the clarinet in a band, and as a young boy Bruno Bartoletti played the piccolo. One of his teachers recognised his musical talent, and her husband, who was the sculptor Antonio Berti, recommended him to the Cherubini conservatory, where he studied the flute and the piano.

Bartoletti went on to play in the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and then became a pianist on the staff of Teatro Comunale in Florence.

He assisted conductors such as Artur Rodzinski, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Vittorio Gui and Tullio Serafin, who was the one who encouraged Bartoletti to study conducting.

Bartoletti made his professional debut as
a conductor in Florence in 1953

In 1953, Bartoletti made his professional conducting debut at Teatro Comunale in Florence with Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto.

Bartoletti made his debut as a conductor in the United States in 1956 with Lyric Opera Chicago when he conducted Verdi’s Il trovatore, after Tullio Serafin had been taken ill. He had been recommended to the theatre by the Italian baritone, Tito Gobbi. 

He subsequently became principal conductor of the Royal Danish Opera between 1957 and 1960.

From 1956 until 2007, Bartoletti conducted 600 performances of 55 different operas for Lyric Opera of Chicago. He became their principal conductor in 1964 and continued in that role until his retirement in 1999. 

He also became co-artistic director at Lyric Opera and was later named sole artistic director. He worked with many famous opera singers, including Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Tebaldi. 

His final appearance at Lyric Opera was in 2007 when he conducted Verdi’s La traviata.

Bartoletti died the day before
his 87th birthday in 2013

After his retirement, Bartoletti was given the title of artistic director emeritus by Lyric Opera for the rest of his life.

Bartoletti was awarded the title of Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana by the Italian Government, and he was made a member of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest and most prestigious musical institutions in the world. In his later years, he taught at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. Bartoletti conducted his final opera, Manon Lescaut, in 2011.

With his wife, Rosanna, he had two daughters and five grandchildren.  He died in Florence the day before his 87th birthday in 2013.

He has been acknowledged as a superb interpreter of 19th century and early 20th century Italian opera, but Bartoletti also embraced modern music and Slavic works, such as Bedrich Smetana’s Bartered Bride and Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, during his career, although he is said to have rarely conducted symphonies.

Sesto Fiorentino's historic Palazzo Pretorio was
built at the end of the 15th century

Travel tip:

Bartoletti’s home town, Sesto Fiorentino, known locally as simply Sesto, is a town within the metropolitan area of Florence in Tuscany, situated about 12km (7.5 miles) to the northwest. With a population of around 49,000. It is famous above all for its tradition of ceramics. Once an ancient Etruscan settlement, it began to flourish at the time of ancient Romans, thanks to its position along the Via Cassia. Today, there are more than 100 pottery producers in Sesto Fiorentino, the first having been founded there in 1735 by Marquis Carlo Ginori. Now under the name Richard-Ginori, the company is still located in Sesto, which also hosts a state school for teaching pottery, L'Istituto Statale d'Arte. Notable buildings in Sesto Fiorentino include the beautiful Romanesque parish church of San Martino and the Palazzo Pretorio, built at the end of the 15th century as the seat of the podestà, the local representative of Florentine authority. The 15th century façade is still decorated with the coats of arms of the families who exercised power over the town between the 15th and 16th centuries.

The new Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
has been the home of the festival since 2014

Travel tip:

The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is an annual festival in Florence that has been held since 1933. It was started by Luigi Ridolfi Vay da Verrazzano, a politician and entrepreneur who also founded the AC Fiorentina football club, in conjunction with the conductor Vittorio Gui and another politician, Carlo Delcroix, who was its first president. It usually takes place from the end of April to the beginning of July and includes operas, concerts, ballets and prose performances. It has its origins in the ancient tradition of the musical festivals of May, called maggiolate. Originally, the festival was staged at the Teatro Comunale in Corso Italia, on the edge of the city’s historic centre, about 1.5km (1 mile) from the Ponte Vecchio along the Arno river.  Since 2014, the festival has had its own base at the new Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, situated less than a kilometre away on land opposite the public park known as Le Cascine. Designed by Paolo Desideri, it was inaugurated in 2011 with a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony conducted by Zubin Mehta. The square in front of the theatre is named Piazza Vittorio Gui in honour of the festival’s founder.

Also on this day:

1465: The birth of statesman and political adviser Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara

1918: The death of opera composer and librettist Arrigo Boito

1940: Italy enters World War Two

1959: The birth of football manager Carlo Ancelotti

Home

Arturo Toscanini - conductor

Cellist who became orchestra leader by chance

Arturo Toscanini is remembered as one of the 
most influential figures in 20th century music

The brilliant conductor Arturo Toscanini was born on this day in 1867 in Oltretorrente, a working-class neighbourhood of Parma, now part of Emilia-Romagna.

Toscanini came to be recognised as one of the most influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century. An intense individual who was a perfectionist in everything he did, as well as having a brilliant ear for detail in orchestral performances, he also had the gift of being able to remember complete musical scores after only one reading. 

At various times, he was the music director at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and at the New York Philharmonic. He became particularly well known in the United States after he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. 

Toscanini had the privilege of conducting the world premieres of many of the greatest operas of his lifetime, including Pagliacci, La bohème, La fanciulla del West and Turandot, as well as Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Salome, Pelléas et Mélisande and Euryanthe. 

The son of a tailor, Toscanini developed an interest in music at an early age and won a scholarship to Parma Conservatory, where he studied the cello. 

Toscanini (right) and the composer Giacomo Puccini
enjoyed a close professional relationship

He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with whom he toured Brazil. It was there, in Rio de Janeiro, that the young Arturo picked up the conductor’s baton for the first time, although entirely through circumstance.

Prior to a presentation of Verdi’s Aida, the singers refused to work with the locally hired conductor, Leopoldo Miguez, who abruptly resigned. His replacement was subjected to booing from the audience, who were unhappy with his performance, and also resigned, leaving the orchestra without a conductor and the next performance only hours away.

Aware of his ability to remember whole scores, a member of the orchestra suggested giving the baton to Toscanini. Only 19 years old and with no conducting experience, Toscanini was reluctant at first but was eventually persuaded to accept the invitation, aware that the whole tour was at risk of being cancelled if he did not.

In the event, he led the two-and-a-half hour performance flawlessly, and entirely from memory. He found he had a natural talent for the job. The audience warmed to his charisma and intensity and applauded his musicianship. He kept the baton for another 18 operas as the tour unfolded with great success.

Toscanini became one of the
most sought-after conductors

Word spread of his ability and he soon found himself in demand. He continued to play the cello, but his talent as a conductor brought so much work that opportunities to take his seat in the orchestra became fewer and fewer.

He made his conducting debut in Italy at the Teatro Carignano in Turin in November, 1886, leading the premiere of a revised version of Alfredo Catalani’s Edmea. He soon broadened his repertoire to symphonic concerts, his reputation growing so fast that in 1898 he was named principal conductor at La Scala, at the age of just 31.

He remained at the Milan theatre, Italy’s principal opera house, for 10 years before he was lured away to America for the first time by Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the former general manager at La Scala, who had taken the same role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and persuaded Toscanini to join him there. 

Toscanini spent seven seasons at the Met, returning to Europe in 1915. He was due to leave New York on the British liner RMS Lusitania on May 7 but decided at the last moment to depart a week earlier on the Italian liner Duca degli Abruzzi. It proved a mightily fortuitous decision: the Lusitania never made it to its intended destination, sinking off the coast of Ireland after being torpedoed by a German u-boat. A total of 1,197 passengers and crew perished.

He maintained his transatlantic lifestyle, conducting around Europe and in the United States, leading the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra between 1928 and 1936. He ceased working in his native Italy, however, after falling foul of the Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini was keen to attach himself to Toscanini, whom he described as ‘the greatest conductor in the world’ and wished to promote as a symbol of Italian excellence. But Toscanini had little truck with Fascism, defying Mussolini by refusing to conduct the party’s official hymn, Giovinezza.

Toscanini's tomb at the Cimitero Monumentale
in Milan, where he was buried after his death at 89

Eventually, though, his defiance rebounded on him when he refused to lead a rendition of Giovinezza at a concert in Bologna in 1931, in spite of the presence in the audience of a leading Fascist official. Afterwards, Toscanini was set upon by Blackshirts and badly beaten. His passport was confiscated and he was put under surveillance. The passport was eventually returned following a public outcry and as Italy entered World War Two he left the country.

Prior to that, he had considered retirement. Instead, he embarked on a new chapter of his career, leading the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra. When Toscanini did finally retire, in 1954, he was 87 years old.

Although he reportedly had numerous affairs, notably with the American soprano, Geraldine Farrar, Toscanini was married only once, to Carla De Martini, who was a teenager when they met. They remained together from their wedding in 1897 to her death in 1951. They had three children, a son, Walter, and daughters Wally and Wanda.

Toscanini died on January 16, 1957, having suffered a stroke on New Year's Day at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City. He was 89. His body was returned to Italy and buried at the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan. His tomb carries an epitaph based on a remark he is said to have made at the end of the 1926 premiere of Puccini's unfinished Turandot.

"Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto - Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died".

The house where Toscanini was
born is now a museum of his life

Travel tip:

The house in Borgo Rodolfo Tanzi, in the Oltretorrente district of Parma, where Arturo Toscanini was born, is now a museum of his life, open to the public between 10am and 6pm from Wednesday to Sunday, closing on Monday and Tuesday. A 15-minute walk from the city centre and close to the sprawling green space of the Parco Ducale, the house was one shared by the Toscaninis and three other families. His father, a tailor who fought in Garibaldi’s army in the campaign to unite Italy, used the downstairs room as a workshop. Among the exhibits on display are photographs, theatre programmes and posters, letters to and from composers with whom he worked, such as Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss, and some of the clothes he wore to conduct. There is a letter from Albert Einstein, the German physicist and noted campaigner against racism, praising Toscanini for standing up to the Fascists.

Parma's 12th century baptistery
is among the city's main sights

Travel tip:

Parma is an historic city, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, Alessandro Farnese, whose descendants ruled Parma till 1731. As well as Toscanini, the city’s musical heritage includes the composer, Giuseppe Verdi, who was born near Parma at Bussetto. The city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio, and a Conservatory named in honour of Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretti for many of Verdi’s operas.  An elegant city with an air of prosperity common to much of Emilia-Romagna, Parma’s outstanding architecture includes an 11th century Romanesque cathedral and the octagonal 12th century baptistery that adjoins it, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, which has a beautiful late Mannerist facade and bell tower, and the Palazzo della Pilotta, which houses the Academy of Fine Arts, the Palatine Library, the National Gallery and an archaeological museum.

Also on this day:

1347: The birth of Saint Catherine of Siena

1541: The birth of Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany

1546: The birth of poet and courtesan Veronica Franco

1625: The death of poet Giambattista Marino

1927: The birth of politician Tina Anselmi

1940: The birth of record-breaking pop star Mina 

Home