Giuseppe Sinopoli – conductor and composer

Maestro died while conducting Verdi’s Aida

Giuseppe Sinopoli conducted some of the world's 
most prestigious philharmonic orchestras

Musician Giuseppe Sinopoli, who became known for his intense and sometimes controversial interpretations of opera, was born on this day in 1946 in Venice. 

Sinopoli specialised in late 19th century and early 20th century music, especially works by the Italian composers of the period and the music of the German composer, Richard Strauss.

He was principal conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra in London between 1984 and 1994, succeeding Riccardo Muti, and he made many recordings while he was with them, including complete operas by Mahler and music by Elgar. 

His own most famous composition is his opera Lou Salomë, which was based on the life and intellectual circle of the Russian-born psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salomë, who was known for her relationships with figures such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Rainer Maria Rilke, which was staged for the first time in Munich in 1981, with the American soprano Karan Armstrong singing the title role.

Sinopoli began to be interested in music from the age of 12 and studied music at the Venice Conservatory under the Italian composer Ernesto Rubin de Cervin Albrizzi. From there he went to Darmstadt in Germany, where he was mentored in composition by the controversial German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others.  

While still studying music in his own time, Sinopoli enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Padua. He obtained a doctorate in medicine, with an emphasis on psychiatry, before completing a dissertation on criminal anthropology.

After making a name for himself as a composer, Sinopoli became professor of contemporary and electronic music at the Venice Conservatory, where he became a major proponent of the new movement in Venice for contemporary music. 

He studied orchestral conducting at the Vienna Academy of Music and in 1992 he became principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Saxon State Orchestra. He also joined the roster of conductors for the Bayreuth Festival, staged annually at the town of the same name in northern Bavaria.

Sinopoli was only 54 when he died
following a heart attack

He went on to conduct many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Wiener Philharmoniker, and the orchestras at Covent Garden Opera House, the New York Metropolitan, the New York Philharmonic and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Tragically, Sinopoli died at the age of just 54 following a heart attack, which he suffered while conducting Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in 2001. Following his collapse during the third act, he was taken from the opera house to the German Heart Centre in Berlin, but was pronounced dead the following day. 

By a sad coincidence, it was the same opera that he had conducted when he made his debut at the rostrum in Venice in 1978.

Two nights later, the Swiss conductor Marcello Viotti stepped in to conduct Aida and he dedicated his performance to Sinopoli’s memory.

The funeral of Sinopoli took place in Rome on April 23 and was attended  by the Italian President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and the Prime Minister, Giuliano Amato, as well as a large contingent of musicians and staff from La Scala opera house in Milan.

Sinopoli had previously been studying for a degree in archaeology and he had been due to make the defence of his thesis on the day that his funeral took place. His degree was subsequently awarded to him posthumously by the University of Padua.

An annual arts festival in Taormina in Sicily is now dedicated to the conductor and composer because Sinopoli had been the director of the music section of the Taormina festival  between 1989 and 1997.

Every October, since 2005, the Sinopoli Chamber Orchestra has performed works by Sinopoli at the festival, which is now named after him.

In all, the conductor composed more than 20 pieces of music, making a name for himself by producing what are known as serial works, using pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres and other musical elements in a series.

His conducting sometimes caused controversy, especially in the symphonic genre, with some critics highlighting the ‘eccentricity’ of his interpretations, while others praised his ‘intellectual approach’ to works of music.

Giuseppe Sinopoli also had an extensive collection of Greek antiquities and one of the books he wrote was Masterpieces of Greek Ceramics from the Sinopoli Collection.

The courtyard of the Palazzo Pisani
has twice featured in James Bond films

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, commonly known as the Venice Conservatory, is a musical education institution located within the historic Palazzo Pisani in the San Marco district of Venice. Founded privately in 1876 as a music high school and society, it permanently relocated to its current home in 1899, later achieving prestigious state conservatory status in 1940.  Renowned Italian composers who helped shape the institution’s legacy as directors or faculty members include Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and the avant-garde pioneer Bruno Maderna. The conservatory preserves invaluable archives, housing rare, historic manuscripts by the great Venetian late Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi. Visitors are welcomed to attend regular public concerts, masterclasses, and recitals in its very grand rooms. There is also a specialised music museum featuring rare instruments, Richard Wagner relics, and an extensive library housing 50,000 documents. The conservatory has acquired fame of a different kind through its appearance in two James Bond movies. In the 1979 film Moonraker, Roger Moore’s Bond arrives by gondola and uses a skeleton key to sneak into the conservatory's 17th century columned courtyard. The courtyard and its adjoining alleyways doubled as the exterior of a high-tech Venetian glass museum owned by the villainous industrialist Hugo Drax.  Some 27 years later, Daniel Craig’s Bond returns to the exact same courtyard in Casino Royale (2006), one of the most tense, emotional sequences of which sees Bond stalk the double agent Vesper Lynd as she passes beneath the stone arches and columns of the courtyard to hand over poker winnings to the villainous Mr. Gettler. 

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Taormina's Ancient Greek Theatre, which dates back
to the third century BC, still stages performances

Travel tip:

Taormina, which commemorates Giuseppe Sinopoli via its annual arts festival, is an historic hilltop resort town on the east coast of Sicily, known for its dramatic cliffside views of the Ionian Sea and of nearby Mount Etna. Celebrated as the ‘Pearl of the Mediterranean’, it was once an unmissable stop of the Grand Tour, the journey of the 19th century European aristocracy, it remains a popular destination for international tourism,  particularly at the luxury end of the market. beauty.  Originally established as the ancient Greek fortress of Tauromenion prior to 735 BC, its crown jewel is the Ancient Greek Theatre - Teatro Antico - a remarkably preserved third century BC amphitheatre carved directly out of the rockface. It still acts as an active, open-air performance venue framed by a backdrop of Mount Etna. In the global tourism space, Taormina sits firmly at the pinnacle of the luxury and cultural market. It initially rose to prominence in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an exclusive winter refuge for European royalty, avant-garde intellectuals, and literary figures such as Truman Capote. By the mid-20th century, it became a playground for the Hollywood elite, famously hosting stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Greta Garbo. The town’s main thoroughfare, Corso Umberto, is lined with designer stores, Michelin-starred restaurants, and five-star hotels. Taormina’s artistic prestige is anchored heavily by the Giuseppe Sinopoli Festival, which has been held annually since 2005. Prestigious international orchestras often feature at the festival, along with the Sinopoli Chamber Orchestra, a talented collective formed in collaboration with the Messina Conservatory that focuses on performing Sinopoli's own avant-garde compositions. 

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More reading:

Carlo Maria Giulini, the boy violinist who became a maestro of the baton

The brilliant Arturo Toscanini, the cellist who became an orchestra leader by chance

The celebrated career of Riccardo Muti

Also on this day:

293: The death of San Giusto of Trieste

1418: The birth of builder and diarist Gaspare Nadi

1475: The death of condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni

1889: The birth of publishing giant Arnoldo Mondadori

1893: The birth of car designer Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina

1906: The birth of aristocratic film director Luchino Visconti

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Nino Sanzogno – conductor

Orchestra leader introduced audiences to new composers

Nino Sanzogno in 1951,
during his time at La Scala

The talented conductor and composer Nino Sanzogno, who was much admired for his elegance and the precision of his conducting, was born Giovanni Giuseppe Luigi Sanzogno on this day in 1911 in Venice.

He led the premieres of many important operas at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and also became well known for championing new music.

Sanzogno learnt the violin and developed a love of music from a young age. He went on to study under musicians such as Hermann Scherchen and Gian Francesco Malipiero and later went to Vienna to learn more about conducting from Scherchen.

His career took off when he was given the opportunity to lead the Gruppo Strumentale Italiano, who performed at concerts in Italy and abroad.

In 1937, Sanzogno became the main conductor at the opera house Teatro La Fenice in Venice. He then went on to work with the Rai Milan Symphony Orchestra and, in 1939, he began conducting at La Scala. 

There, he led the first performances of many operas, including David by Darius Milhaud, Dialogues des Carmelites by Francis Poulenc, and Troilus and Cressida by William Walton.

He also introduced Italian audiences to works such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Dmitri Shostakovich.

In Britain and in other countries he introduced new Italian composers such as Malpiero, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Ildebrando Pizzetti.

In 1955, Sanzogno helped to open the Piccola Scala theatre, which he inaugurated with a performance of Domenico Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto. This was a smaller theatre where he brought back works from the 1700s by composers such as Niccolò Piccinni, Giovanni Paisiello and Cimarosa.

He took the Piccola Scala company to perform at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957.

Sanzogno inside the Piccola Scala theatre in Milan,
where he would play a major role

Sanzogno was married to the harpist Zeffira Galeati, with whom he had a son, Giampaolo, who also went on to become a highly regarded conductor. After his first wife’s death, Sanzogno married the soprano, Giannina Buniato.

He also composed his own music, writing symphonic poems, concertos and music for solo instruments and small groups of instruments. At the age of just 23, he wrote the soundtrack for the film Il canale degli angeli, a 1934 production directed by Francesco Pasinetti and filmed in Venice.

In 1961 Sanzogno conducted the first full studio recording of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, featuring the soprano Joan Sutherland, for Decca Records.

During his career Sanzogno was widely respected for his perfect timing and the discipline and precision of his conducting.  He was admired for the clarity, economy and poise of his conducting style. His movements were unfussy, projecting calm authority rather than theatricality, which often contrasted with the more flamboyant Italian conductors of his generation.

He died in Milan in 1983 at the age of 72. 

A typical street in the Castello district,
which is known as working-class Venice

Travel tip:

Nino Sanzogno was born in the Castello district of Venice, which is the largest and most diverse of the city’s six sestieri, stretching across the entire eastern portion of Venice, from the edge of San Marco to the green spaces of Sant’Elena. It encompasses monumental architecture near San Marco to laundry‑lined alleys further east.  Unlike the heavily-tourist areas around Rialto and San Marco, Castello remains largely residential. Locals outnumber tourists in many parts and it is often described as the area of the city where Venice still lives, day to day. Castello grew around the Arsenale, once one of Europe’s largest naval complexes and the industrial heart of the Venetian Republic. This history still shapes the district’s identity, which shows in its functional architecture, wider streets, and a sense of purposeful design rather than ornamentation. The eastern section is characterised by working‑class residential zones, quiet canals, and dilapidated but picturesque buildings, but also contains some of Venice’s rare greenery, including the Giardini Pubblici and the leafy island of Sant’Elena.

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The final scene from the Piccola Scala's 1956-57
production of Mozart's opera Così fan tutte

Travel tip:

The Piccola Scala, where Sanzogno led the opening night performance of Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto, was a 600‑seat opera house built between 1949 and 1955. It stood on Via Filodrammatici, directly beside the main Teatro alla Scala, and was designed by Piero Portaluppi and Marcello Zavellani Rossi.  It was conceived during the post‑war reconstruction of La Scala, which had been heavily damaged in the 1943 bombings. The idea was to create a second, more intimate hall within the theatre complex - one suited to smaller‑scale works and experimental programming. Its initial focus was on Baroque and late‑18th‑century operas that were too small in scale for the main house, or chamber‑sized productions requiring reduced orchestras or minimalist staging.  Notable productions included Mozart’s Così fan tutte (1956), conducted and directed by Guido Cantelli, and Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1972), conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.  Despite its artistic successes, the theatre had an unexpectedly short life. In October 1983, regular programming was suspended due to changes in safety regulations for public venues and it was officially closed in 1985. The building itself was demolished in 2002.

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More reading:

How Arturo Toscanini became a great conductor by chance

Bruno Bartoletti, the Italian who led Lyric Opera Chicago for more than 50 years

The celebrated career of maestro Riccardo Muti

Also on this day:

1519: The birth of Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France

1808: The birth of engineer and inventor Antonio Meucci

1920: The birth of ill-fated banker Roberto Calvi

1928: The birth of racing driver Giannino Marzotto

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Antonio Buzzolla - composer, choirmaster and conductor

Output included operas, religious music and Venetian dialect songs

An illustration of Antonio Buzzolla, thought
to show him at the age of 25 in 1840

Antonio Buzzolla, a composer who was at various times a musician, conductor and choirmaster, was born on this day in 1815 in Adria, a town in the southern part of the Veneto region, situated between the mouths of the Po and Adige rivers.

Buzzolla, who was once a student of the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti, composed five operas of his own, as well as producing a substantial catalogue of religious music while serving as maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

Yet during his life he was best known for composing ariette and canzonette - brief songs of a melodic, playful or sometimes sentimental nature - written in Venetian dialect. These songs became popular in the city, both for the light-hearted entertainment they provided and for the contribution they made to Venice’s musical identity.

It was a sign of the respect in which Buzzolla was held among his peers that he was invited by Giuseppe Verdi to contribute to a requiem mass he was organising for his fellow opera giant Gioachino Rossini following the latter’s death in 1869.

Buzzolla was born into a musical family. His father, Angelo Buzzolla, was maestro di cappella - choirmaster - at what was then Adria's cathedral. Angelo, who was also an accomplished violinist, provided his son with a well-rounded musical education that saw him become proficient on a range of instruments, including violin, flute, organ, piano and piccolo, by the age of 16. 

At this point, he left Adria to live in Venice, a city rich in opportunities to further his career. He had not been studying there long when he was invited to play in the orchestra at the Gran Teatro La Fenice, the city’s principal opera house, at first as a flautist before being promoted to second violin.

At the same time, he began to try his hand at composition, leading him to write his first opera, Il Ferramondo, which premiered at the Teatro Gallo, formerly the Teatro San Benedetto, in Venice in December, 1836, and was also performed in Trieste and Mantua.

The reception for Il Ferramondo was positive enough to persuade Buzzolla to go to Naples to study composition at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Maiella. His teachers included Donizetti and, later, Saverio Mercadante. His output there included a cantata for the Neapolitan court and vocal pieces performed at the Teatro San Carlo. 

Teatro La Fenice in Venice, where 
Buzzolla was an orchestra member

On returning to Venice, Teatro La Fenice premiered both of Buzzolla’s second and third operas, Mastini I della Scala in 1841 and Gli avventurieri the following year, which also saw his first works of sacred music performed. 

With his reputation now extending beyond Italy, Buzzolla took up a position as director of Italian Opera at the Berlin court of Frederick William IV of Prussia, to whose children he became tutor. From Berlin he toured Russia, Poland and France before being appointed director of the Théâtre de la comédie italienne in Paris, in 1846.

He returned to Venice again in 1848, directing two more operas, Amleto and Elisabetta di Valois, at Teatro la Fenice. He also conducted his own Requiem for four voices and large orchestra at the Basilica di San Marco.

In 1848, Venice briefly became an independent state following the uprising against the occupying army of Austria, and Buzzolla demonstrated his commitment to the cause by co-directing a patriotic concert at La Fenice in November of that year, featuring excerpts from Verdi's Macbeth and Attila alongside works by Rossini and Donizetti. 

Buzzolla’s operas were respected by his fellow composers and well received by audiences, yet his output was small. It was dwarfed, in fact, by his catalogue of short songs, which were mostly performed in Venice’s salons or at domestic gatherings in middle-class homes.

Written in the tradition of bel canto opera, which emphasises the beauty of the voice, these lyrical pieces had light-hearted themes based on everyday life in Venice, highlighting romance and nature in particular.

Buzzolla’s Canzonette Veneziane, a collection of 12 light-hearted songs in Venetian dialect, was published by Ricordi in 1852.

After the successful staging of Elisabetta di Valois in 1850, Buzzolla announced it would be his last opera. Where other composers of the mid-19th century, such as Giovanni Pacini and Errico Petrella, relentlessly exploited the popularity of opera by composing literally dozens of them, Buzzolla was less commercially driven and decided to devote himself to sacred music, the culmination of which was his appointment in 1855 as maestro of the Cappella Marciana, the choral and instrumental ensemble that provides musical service at Basilica di San Marco.

He held the prestigious position until his death in 1871, after which his body was interred in a tomb on the Isola di San Michele, the island in the Venetian Lagoon that houses the city’s main cemetery.

Adria in the Veneto, once a thriving seaport on
the Adriatic coast, is now several miles inland

Travel tip:

Adria, where Antonio Buzzolla was born and grew up, is a town in the Veneto about 23km (14 miles) east of Rovigo and just over 60km (36 miles) south of Venice. It is situated between the lower courses of the Adige and Po rivers. Today it lies inland, but in antiquity it was a major port on the Adriatic Sea, so influential that the sea itself took its name from the town. It thrived in particular during the Etruscan and Greek civilisations but fell into decline during the Roman era as the Po and Adige progressively silted up, pushing the coastline further east and robbing Adria of its direct maritime access. Over time it was absorbed into the territories of Ravenna and Venice before coming under French and Austrian rule. After incorporation in the new Kingdom of Italy in 1867, the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought land reclamation, new road networks and agricultural expansion. The Adria of today, with a population of around 19,500, is a relatively modern town with an economy based on agriculture, commerce, and light manufacturing. As a town boasting one of the longest continuous settlements in the whole of Italy, going back perhaps to the 12th century BC, it is home to the huge collection of relics preserved at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Adria. The Conservatorio Statale di Musica Antonio Buzzolla was established in Adria in 1975, and named in his honour. 

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The cemetery island of San Michele, with the
neighbouring island of Burano in the distance

Travel Tip:

The Isola di San Michele, where Buzzolla was buried, has been the home of Venice’s principal cemetery since the early 19th century. Situated between Venice and the island of Murano, it had previously been home to a Camaldolese monastery, built in the 13th century, and the Chiesa di San Michele in Isola, which was designed by the architect Mauro Codussi and built in 1469 as the first Renaissance church in Venice. The island was also used as a prison at one time. In 1807, when Venice was occupied by the French under Napoleon, the neighbouring island of San Cristoforo was designated as the city’s cemetery, only for it to become clear after only a few years that it was not big enough. In 1835, work began to fill in the narrow canal between the two islands to create one much larger island. Annibale Forcellini, an architect and engineer, was given the task of designing the cemetery complex, which retains the Chiesa di San Michele near the entrance and includes a domed chapel built in memory of the ancient Chiesa di San Cristoforo, which had been demolished during the construction of the original cemetery. As well as housing the remains of ordinary Venetian citizens, the cemetery has a sufficient number of illustrious occupants to have become a tourist attraction. In addition to Buzzolla, the remains of the poet Ezra Pound, the entrepreneur and Venice Film Festival founder Giuseppe Volpi, the psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, the writers Carlo and Gasparo Gozzi, the football manager Helenio Herrera, the avant-garde composer Luigi Nono, and others, are buried there.

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More reading:

How the overlooked work of Giovanni Pacini has enjoyed a revival

Nabucco - the Verdi opera that became a symbol of the Risorgimento

The Venetian lawyer who led fight to drive out the Austrians

Also on this day:

1603: The birth of Sicilian painter and architect Pietro Novelli

1886: The birth of football manager Vittorio Pozzo

1939: The election of wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII

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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

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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 

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