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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9 June

The Maestà of Duccio

Masterpiece influenced the course of Italian art history

A magnificent altarpiece by the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna was unveiled in the cathedral in Siena on this day in 1311.  Duccio’s Maestà was to set Italian painting on a new course, leading away from Byzantine art towards using more realistic representations of people in pictures.  The altarpiece was commissioned by the city of Siena from the artist and was composed of many individual paintings.  The front panels made up a large picture of an enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels.  At the base of the panels was an inscription, which translated into English means: ‘Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace for Siena and life to Duccio because he painted thee thus.’  When the painting was installed in the cathedral on June 9, 1311, one witness to the event wrote: ‘…on that day when it was brought into the cathedral, all workshops remained closed and the bishop commanded a great host of devoted priests and monks to file past in solemn procession.  This was accompanied by all the high officers of the commune and by all the people; all honourable citizens of Siena surrounded said panel with candles held in their hands, and women and children followed humbly behind’. Read more…

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The death of Nero

Brutal emperor killed himself with help of aide

The Roman emperor Nero, whose rule was associated with extravagance and brutality, died on this day in 68 AD in what would now be described as an assisted suicide.  Effectively deposed as emperor when simultaneous revolts in the Gallic and Spanish legions coincided with the Praetorian Guard rising against him, with Galba named as his successor, Nero fled Rome, seeking refuge from one of his few remaining loyalists.  Phaon, an imperial freedman, gave him the use of a villa four miles outside Rome along Via Salaria, where he hastened, under disguise, along with Phaon and three other freedmen, Epaphroditos, Neophytus, and Sporus.  Nero had hoped to escape to Egypt but realised there was no one left to provide the means and asked the four freedmen to begin digging his grave, in readiness for his death by suicide.  In the meantime, the Senate had declared Nero a public enemy. As well as ordering the executions of numerous rivals, real or perceived, and even having his mother and two wives killed, Nero made many enemies through unpopular policies and confiscation of property.  Read more…

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Nedo Nadi - Olympic record-breaker

Five-medal haul at 1920 Antwerp Games included unique treble

Nedo Nadi, the Italian fencer regarded as among the greatest of all time, was born on this day in 1894 in Livorno, the port on the Tuscan coast. Born into a fencing family - his father, Giuseppe, was a renowned fencing master - Nadi won five gold medals at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, which remained the most by any athlete at a single Games until Mark Spitz won seven swimming titles in 1972.  Nadi’s own distinction is that he was and still is the only fencer to have won a gold medal with all three weapons, winning the individual championship in both foil and sabre and a team gold in the épée. His quintuple of medals was completed with team golds in both the sabre and foil.  His younger brother, Aldo, was also part of the winning Italian team in the épée and sabre events.  Their total of seven golds is the most won by members of the same family at a single Games.  Nedo’s historic achievement might never have happened if his father had had his way. Giuseppe believed the épée to be a “crude and undisciplined" weapon and refused to teach it, limiting the two brothers’ tuition to foil and sabre, to which they were introduced as children. Read more…

Luigi Cagnola - architect

Designer of Milan’s neoclassical Arch of Peace

The architect Luigi Cagnola, among whose most notable work the monumental Arco della Pace - Arch of Peace - in Milan stands out, was born in Milan on this day in 1762.  The Arco della Pace, commissioned when Milan was under Napoleonic rule in 1807, can be found at Porta Sempione, the point at which the historic Strada del Sempione enters the city, about 2km (1.2 miles) northwest of the Duomo. Cagnola’s original commission a year earlier was for a triumphal arch for the marriage of Eugenio de Beauharnais, viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, with Princess Amalia of Bavaria. The arch was made of wood, and not intended as a permanent structure, but Cagnola’s design was of such beauty that the Milan authorities asked him to reconstruct it in marble. His other major works include the Porta Ticinese, another of the main gates into Milan, the campanile - bell tower - of the church of Santi Nazario e Celso in Urgnano, a small town just outside Bergamo in Lombardy, the chapel of Santa Marcellina in Milan, the staircase of the Villa Saporiti in Como, and his own villa just outside Inverigo, the town to the southwest of Lake Como where Cagnola spent his final days. Read more…

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Luigi Fagioli - racing driver

Man from Le Marche is Formula One's oldest winner

Racing driver Luigi Fagioli, who remains the oldest driver to win a Formula One Grand Prix, was born on this day in 1898 at Osimo, an historic hill town in the Marche region.  Fagioli was a highly skilled driver but one who was also renowned for his fiery temperament, frequently clashing with rivals, team-mates and his bosses.  It was typical of his behaviour after recording his historic triumph at the F1 French Grand Prix at Reims in 1951 he announced in high dudgeon that he was quitting Formula One there and then.  He was furious that his Alfa Romeo team had ordered him during the race to hand his car over to Juan Manuel Fangio, the Argentine who would go on to win the 1951 World Championship, which meant the victory was shared rather than his outright.  Nonetheless, at 53 years and 22 days, Fagioli's name entered the record books as the oldest F1 Grand Prix winner.  Fagioli trained as an accountant but was always fascinated with the new sport of car racing and his background - he was born into a wealthy family of pasta manufacturers - gave him the financial wherewithal to compete.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 - 1350, by Joanna Cannon

In the early 1300s, the city of Siena gave rise to an extraordinary period of creativity and innovation. Painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths produced remarkable works whose impact was felt far beyond the city’s walls. From vast altarpieces to portable objects for private devotion, the art emanating from Siena left an enduring legacy.  This book explores a crucial turning point in Italian art when the prestige of painting reached new heights. Siena became the centre of a rich exchange of ideas, as painters took inspiration from marble and ivory sculptures, intricate metalwork, and precious imported silks to enhance the power of their work. Travelling beyond their native city, Sienese artists made their mark across Italy and into northern Europe.  Beautifully illustrated, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 - 1350 explores masterpieces by four of Siena’s most illustrious painters - Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti - alongside objects in other media and from other countries and cultures, encouraging fresh perspectives and dialogues between these groundbreaking works.

Joanna Cannon specialises in the art and architecture of Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries. She is professor emerita at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

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8 June

Beatrice Portinari – Dante’s inspiration

Florentine beauty was immortalised in verse

Beatrice ‘Bice’ di Folco Portinari, who has been identified as the lifelong love of the important poet Dante Alighieri, died on this day in 1290 in Florence, at the age of 25.  Dante is believed to have met Beatrice only twice, but was said to have been so affected by the encounters that he loved her for the rest of his life.  Many scholars believe Beatrice was the inspiration for Dante’s work, Vita Nuova, and that she also acted as his guide in the last book of his narrative poem, the Divine Comedy, and was the symbol of divine grace and theology in his poetry.  Beatrice was the daughter of a rich banker, Folco Portinari, and she lived in a house near Dante’s home in Florence. Dante first met Beatrice when they were both just nine years old at a May Day party given by her family.  But by the time Dante was 12, he had been promised by his parents in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, who was from another powerful, local family.  Years after his marriage to Gemma, Dante claimed he met Beatrice again and he wrote several sonnets to her, without ever getting to know her properly, which were examples of the medieval notion of courtly love.  Read more…

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Tomaso Albinoni - Venetian composer

Prolific writer of operas and instrumental music

The composer Tomaso Albinoni, perhaps best known for the haunting and powerful Adagio in G Minor, was born on this day in 1671 in Venice.  Albinoni was a contemporary of two other great Venetian composers, Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi, and was favourably compared with both.  It is his instrumental music for which he is popular today, although during his own lifetime he was famous for his operas, the first of which was performed in Venice in 1694.  He is thought to have composed some 81 operas in total, although they were not published at the time and the majority were lost.  His first major instrumental work also appeared in 1694. With the support of sponsorship from noble patrons, he published nine collections - in Italy, Amsterdam and London - beginning with Opus 1, the 12 Sonate a Tre, which he dedicated to his fellow Venetian, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII.  It was this work that established his fame.  He followed it with another collection of instrumental pieces, dedicated to Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, who may have employed him as a violinist.  Read more…

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Guido Banti – physician

Doctor was the first to define leukaemia

The innovative physician and pathologist Guido Banti was born on this day in 1852 in Montebicchieri in Tuscany.  His work on the spleen led him to discover that a chronic congestive enlargement of the spleen resulted in the premature destruction of red blood cells. Closely related to leukaemia, this was later named 'Banti’s disease' in his honour.  Banti’s father was a physician and sent him to study medicine at the University of Pisa and the Medical School in Florence.  He graduated in 1877 and was appointed an assistant at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and also as an assistant in the laboratory of Pathological Anatomy.  The ability to observe patients in bed and then carry out post mortem examinations was to prove fundamental to his work.  Within five years he had become chief of medical services. In 1895, after a five year spell in a temporary post he was appointed Ordinary Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the medical school in Florence. He remained in this post for 25 years.  Banti published the first textbook in Italy on the techniques of bacteriology in 1885.  He studied and also wrote about heart enlargement.  Read more…

Benedetto Alfieri – architect

Talented designer behind the Teatro Regio in Turin

Baroque architect Benedetto Innocenzo Alfieri was born on this day in 1699 in Rome.  He was a member of the Alfieri family who originated in Piedmont and he became the uncle of the dramatist, Vittorio Alfieri. Benedetto was also the godson of Pope Innocent XII.  Alfieri was sent to be educated in mathematics and design by the Jesuits. He later moved to Piedmont and lived in both Turin and Asti, where he practised as a lawyer and an architect.  Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia, one of his patrons, commissioned him to design the Royal Theatre in Turin, originally assigned to Filippo Juvara, but who died before work began. The building was acknowledged as his masterpiece, but it burned down in 1936 and the theatre did not reopen until 1973.  Benedetto also helped with the decoration of the interior of the Basilica of Corpus Domini in Turin and the interior of Palazzo Chiablese next to the Royal Palace in Turin. In recognition, Charles Emmanuel III made him Count of Sostegno.  Alfieri also completed the bell tower of the Church of Sant’Anna in Asti and the façade of Vercelli Cathedral.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Fiorelli - archaeologist

The man whose painstaking work saved Pompeii

Giuseppe Fiorelli, the archaeologist largely responsible for preserving the ruins of Pompeii, was born on this day in 1823, in Naples.  It was due to Fiorelli’s painstaking excavation techniques that much of the lost Roman city on the Neapolitan coast was preserved as it had looked when, in 79 AD, it was totally submerged under volcanic ash following the eruption of Vesuvius.  He also hit upon the idea of filling the cavities in the hardened lava and solidified ash left behind by long-rotted bodies and vegetation with plaster to create a model of the person or plant that had been engulfed.  This became known as the Fiorelli process.  Little is known of Fiorelli’s early life apart from some details of his academic career, which clearly show him to be precociously clever.  He studied law from the age of 11 and obtained a degree in legal studies at the age of 18. He was also a student of italic languages, numismatics – the study of coins, paper money and medals -- and epigraphy – the study and interpretation of ancient inscriptions.  Having chosen to pursue his interest in archaeology and the study of ancient civilisations, he wrote an article on numismatics that won him membership of a number of academies at the age of 20.  Read more…

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Luigi Comencini – film director

Movies helped create an international audience for Italian cinema

Award winning director and screenwriter Luigi Comencini was born on this day in 1916 in Salò, a town on the banks of Lake Garda in Lombardy.  He is considered to have been one of the masters of the commedia all’italiana genre, a type of film produced between the 1950s and the 1970s that dealt with social issues such as divorce, contraception and the influence of the Catholic Church in a sardonically humorous way.  After Comencini studied architecture in Milan he went to work as a newspaper film critic. He began his career as a filmmaker in 1946 with a short documentary, Bambini in città, about the hard life of children in post-war Milan.  His first successful movie was L’imperatore di Capri in 1949, featuring the comedian Totò.  Comencini’s 1953 film, Pane, amore e fantasia, starring Vittorio De Sica and Gina Lollobrigida, is considered a prime example of neorealismo rosa -  pink neorealism. It was followed by Pane, amore e gelosia in 1954.  His masterpiece is considered to be Tutti a casa, starring Alberto Sordi, which was a bitter comedy about Italy after the armistice of 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Dante in Love, by A N Wilson

For Yeats, Dante Alighieri was 'the chief imagination of Christendom'; for Eliot he was of supreme importance, both as a poet and philosopher; Coleridge championed his introduction to an English readership. Tennyson based his poem 'Ulysses' on lines from the Inferno and Byron chastised an 'Ungrateful Florence' for exiling him. The Divine Comedy resonates across 500 years of our literary canon.  In Dante in Love, A N Wilson presents a glittering study of an artist and his world, arguing that without an understanding of medieval Florence, it is impossible to comprehend the meaning of Dante's great poem. He explains how the Italian States were at that time locked into violent feuds, mirrored in the ferocious competition between the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy. He explores Dante's preoccupations with classical mythology, numerology and the great Christian philosophers which inform every line of the Comedy. Dante in Love also lays bare the enigma of the man who never wrote about the mother of his children, yet immortalised the mysterious Beatrice, whom he barely knew.  With a biographer's eye for detail and a novelist's comprehension of the creative process, A N Wilson paints a masterful portrait of Dante Alighieri and unlocks one of the seminal works of literature for a new generation of readers.

A N Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is a prolific and awarding-winning biographer and celebrated novelist. 

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7 June

Gaetano Berenstadt – operatic castrato

Italian-born performer who specialised in roles created by Handel

Gaetano Berenstadt, an alto castrato who sang many roles in George Frideric Handel’s operas, was born on this day in 1687 in Florence.  His parents were German and his father played the timpani - kettle drums - for the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  Berenstadt was sent to be a pupil of Francesco Pistocchi, a singer, composer and librettist who founded a singing school in Bologna.  After performing in Bologna and Naples, Berenstadt visited London where he performed the role of Argante in a revival of Handel’s Rinaldo. The composer created three new arias especially for Berenstadt’s voice.  On a later visit to London, Berenstadt sang for the composers of the Royal Academy of Music. On this visit he created the roles of Tolomeo in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, the title role in Flavio, and the role of Adalberto in Ottone.  Back in Italy, he sang music by Italian composers and in two new compositions by Johann Adolph Hasse. He usually took on the role of a villainous tyrant and, despite the quality of his voice, he never portrayed a female character.  His final appearances on stage were in his native Florence.   Read more…

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Federico da Montefeltro – condottiero

Patron of the arts made money through war

Federico da Montefeltro, one of the most successful of the Italian condottieri, was born on this day in 1422 in Gubbio.  He has been immortalised by the famous portrait painted of him by Piero della Francesca, where he was dressed in red and showing his formidable profile.  Federico ruled Urbino from 1444 until his death, commissioning the building of a large library where he employed his own team of scribes to copy texts.  He was the illegitimate son of Guidantonio da Montefeltro but he was legitimised by the Pope with the consent of Guidantonio’s wife.  Federico began his career as a condottiero - a kind of mercenary military leader - at the age of 16. When his half-brother, who had recently become Duke of Urbino, was assassinated in 1444, Federico seized the city of Urbino.  To bring in money he continued to wage war as a condottiero. He lost his right eye in an accident during a tournament and later commissioned a surgeon to remove the bridge of his nose to improve his field of vision and make him less vulnerable to assassination attempts.  Subsequently, he refused to have his portrait painted in full face, hence he is depicted in profile by Piero della Francesca.  Read more…

Pippo Baudo - TV presenter

Record-breaking host of Sanremo festival

The television presenter Pippo Baudo, who became one of the most recognisable personalities on Italian television in a broadcasting career spanning six decades, was born on this day in 1936 in Militello in Val di Catania, in Sicily.  Baudo has presented numerous shows for the national broadcaster Rai and for private networks but is probably best known as the host of the annual Sanremo Music Festival and the presenter of the immensely popular Sunday afternoon magazine show Domenica In.  He was the face of Sanremo a record 13 times between 1968 and 2008, eclipsing another much-loved TV host, Mike Bongiorno, who presented the prestigious song contest on 11 occasions.  Baudo has anchored or co-hosted Domenica In for 13 seasons.  His appearance in the 2016-17 edition of the show came 37 years after he presented the programme for the first time in 1979.  His other major shows include Settevoci, Canzonissima, Fantastico, Serata d'onore and Novecento.  Pippo - short for Giuseppe - is the son of a lawyer, whose father had ambitions for his son to follow a similar career path.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Castrati: Their Lives, Their Music, Their Legacy in Opera’s Golden Age, by Richard Fleischman

For over two centuries, they were the superstars of the opera world - revered, envied, and worshipped like demigods. With voices that defied nature, soaring effortlessly from haunting whispers to dazzling virtuosity, the castrati became the most celebrated and controversial figures in music history. Yet today, their names are barely remembered, their once-glorious voices lost to time.  In The Castrati: Their Lives, Their Music, Their Legacy in Opera’s Golden Age, renowned performer and music historian Richard Fleischman pulls back the curtain on these extraordinary singers—men who sacrificed everything for the sake of art. From the gilded opera houses of 18th-century Europe, where they commanded fame, fortune, and adoration, to the hidden realities behind their training and the complex lives they led, this book explores both the dazzling triumphs and the stark human cost of their existence. Through vivid storytelling, first hand historical accounts, and a deep understanding of Baroque music, this book transports readers to an era when opera was at its most extravagant - when composers such as Handel and Vivaldi wrote masterpieces for these otherworldly voices, and when the castrati held sway over kings, composers, and audiences alike. And it explains why, as musical tastes changed and their era faded, these once-revered artists fell into obscurity, their legacy buried beneath myth and misconception.

Richard Fleischman is a dedicated and celebrated performer, educator, and author with a passion for making classical music and historical storytelling accessible to all. 

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