The Letters of Arturo Toscanini - Softcover

Toscanini, Arturo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226733408 ISBN 13: 9780226733401

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006

Synopsis

Fifty years after his death, Arturo Toscanini is still considered one of the greatest conductors in history, and probably the most influential. His letters, expertly collected, translated, and edited here by Harvey Sachs, will give readers a new depth of insight into his life and work. As Sachs puts it, they “reveal above all else a man whose psychological perceptions in general and self-knowledge in particular were much more acute than most people have thought likely.” They are sure to enthrall anyone interested in learning more about one of the great lives of the twentieth century.

“This is a major contribution to our understanding of Toscanini and of several entire eras of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century musical life, especially the almost improvisatory looseness of opera in Italy, the glamour of European festivals, and the concert life of the United States. It’s also a wonderful, sometimes downright salacious read.”—New York Times

“Toscanini’s large, cranky humanity comes alive throughout his letters, as it does in his best recordings.”—New York Review of Books

“Edited with scrupulous care and wide-ranging erudition.”—Wall Street Journal

“Sachs has served the conductor well . . . by editing this generously annotated and unprecedentedly revealing collection of letters that were written, usually in haste and often in fury, over the course of seventy years.”—Washington Post

About this title

From the Inside Flap

A major event in the literature of music?the first significant collection of the letters of Arturo Toscanini.

Toscanini (1867?1957) was one of the most celebrated and influential symphonic and operatic conductors in history. With his amazing ear and photographic memory, his sense of moral imperative and iron will, he raised the standards of orchestras and opera companies to previously undreamed-of heights. He conducted the world premieres of Leoncavallo?s Pagliacci and Puccini?s La bohème, The Girl of the Golden West, and Turandot. His sixty-eight-year conducting career began before Verdi had completed Otello and lasted into the era of televised concerts and stereophonic sound. He headed such ensembles as La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Yet he never wrote a memoir, or even essays for publication, or granted interviews. Now we are brought closer to him than we have ever been?in seven hundred letters, well over ninety percent of them previously unpublished in any language.

The letters are vivid and impassioned. They reveal a complicated man, often angry and unhappy, who was also capable of great generosity of spirit, self-irony, and humor. They show the depth of his musical knowledge and insight, and shed much light on the musical life of his time in Europe, in New York, and throughout the world. There is fascinating correspondence with his wife and children, and with colleagues and friends, and he writes, as well, about his affairs and erotic adventures. He expresses particular vehemence when talking about his active opposition to fascism and Nazism. Of Mussolini, for instance, he says: ?Open all the prisons?you won?t find a delinquent or a criminal who is more of a delinquent, more of a criminal, than that ignoble animal!?

The Letters of Arturo Toscanini is a revelation of both the maestro and the man.

With 7 photographs.

From the Back Cover

"The Letters of Arturo Toscanini is extraordinary. I can't recommend it highly enough."
--Marilyn Horne

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0226733408
• ISBN 13: 9780226733401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 494