Guido Cantelli

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Guido Cantelli (born April 27, 1920 in Novara , † November 24, 1956 in Paris ) was an Italian conductor .

Life

At the age of 14 Cantelli gave his first concert as a piano soloist. He studied piano and conducting at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, his teachers were Arrigo Pedrollo , Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Antonino Votto . In 1943 he was engaged as a conductor and artistic director at the Teatro Coccia in Novara . In the late stages of World War II Cantelli refused to fight on the side of Nazi Germany, which is why he was imprisoned in a labor camp. A priest helped him to escape and he lived under a false name until the liberation of Milan. In April 1945 he married his childhood friend Iris Bilucaglia, who (as an amateur) also played the piano.

After the end of World War II, Cantelli had a lightning-fast career. In July 1945 he made his debut as conductor of the orchestra of La Scala in Milan ; soon afterwards he conducted the RAI symphony orchestra in Turin. In 1946 he led the festival orchestra at the Biennale di Venezia . After Arturo Toscanini had seen him conducting at La Scala in 1948, he invited him to conduct several concerts with his NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York the following year . He then wrote enthusiastically to Cantelli's wife Iris:

“(...) this is the first time in my long career as an artist that I've found a young man truly gifted with those qualities that can't be described but that are the real ones, those that raise an artist high, very high . "

- Arturo Toscanini : Letter to Iris Cantelli, March 3, 1949

After this international breakthrough, Cantelli conducted not only many of the major orchestras in Europe, but also in South Africa and America, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra (from 1951), the New York Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra . With its clear, lively, meticulous and effective interpretations, it is considered to be Toscanini's stylistic legacy.

A few days before his death, Cantelli was appointed chief conductor of La Scala in Milan . At the age of 36, he was killed on the night of November 24, 1956 when a Douglas DC-6 B of the Linee Aeree Italiane failed to take off at Orly Airport in Paris . He left behind his wife Iris and son Leonardo, who was then four months old. The director of La Scala, Antonio Ghiringhelli, described Cantelli's accidental death as the most terrible event since the theater was bombed in World War II. Toscanini, who died in New York on January 16, 1957 , never learned of Cantelli's death.

literature

  • Luigi Sante Colonna: Presenza di Guido Cantelli. Comune di Novara, Novara 1962.
  • Laurence Lewis: Guido Cantelli. Portrait of a Maestro. AS Barnes & Co., San Diego 1981.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Marc Vignal, Leoncarlo Settimelli (ed.): Dizionario di musica classica italiana. Gremese Editore, Rome 2002, p. 35, entry Cantelli, Guido .
  2. ^ A b c David Ewen: Musicians Since 1900. Performers in Concert and Opera. HW Wilson, New York 1978, p. 130.
  3. ↑ quoted from Harvey Sachs (translator and ed.): The Letters of Arturo Toscanini . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2006, p. 423.
  4. ↑ Laurence Lewis: Guido Cantelli. Portrait of a Maestro. AS Barnes & Co., San Diego 1981, p. 120.
  5. ↑ Laurence Lewis: Guido Cantelli. Portrait of a Maestro. AS Barnes & Co., San Diego 1981, p. 11.
personal data
SURNAME Cantelli, Guido
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian conductor
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Novara
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1956
Place of death Paris