Antonino Votto

Antonino Votto (born October 30, 1896 in Piacenza , † September 9, 1985 in Milan ) was an Italian opera conductor who worked for a long time at La Scala in Milan .

Live and act

Votto studied piano with Alessandro Longo and composition with Camillo de Nardis in Naples . In 1919 he made his first appearance as a pianist in Trieste , where he also became a professor at the Conservatory. In 1919 he moved to the Conservatory of Milan as a professor (until 1921), where he was also répétiteur at La Scala in Milan with Arturo Toscanini . In 1923 he made his conducting debut with Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini at La Scala, and in 1924 he made his debut at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with Puccini's Madame Butterfly and Pagliacci by Leoncavallo. In 1925 he became 2nd Kapellmeister at La Scala (under Toscanini as music director) and in 1929 1st Kapellmeister in Trieste.

From 1948 he was 1st Kapellmeister at La Scala (while Victor de Sabata was the musical director). In the 1950s, Vottos conducted numerous recordings, some of them classical, with Maria Callas for EMI, such as Puccini's La Bohème 1956, Verdi's Masked Ball 1956, Bellini's La sonnambula 1957, Ponchielli's La Gioconda 1959. He made his US debut in Chicago in 1960 with Aida and Don Carlos . He conducted at Scala until 1967.

Votto taught at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan from 1941 to 1967, where a. a. Guido Cantelli , Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti were his students. The latter two had the musical direction of La Scala one after the other from 1971 to 2005, so that the “Votto School” shaped the Milanese opera for decades.

swell

• Alain Paris Lexicon of Classical Music Performers in the 20th Century , dtv
• biography

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sebastiano De Filippi, Daniel Varacalli Costas: The Other Toscanini. The Life and Works of Héctor Panizza. University of North Texas Press, Denton (TX) 2019, pp. 245-246.