Toscanini

One of the most acclaimed musicians of his era, Toscanini was a conductor of the "old school" - aristocratic, perfectionistic and something of an autocrat on the podium. After a brief flurry of interest in Fascism in the 1910s, he rapidly became disillusioned with the movement and indeed became a personal rival of Mussolini, repeatedly antagonising him through acts of artistic defiance such as refusals to open concerts with the Fascist anthem Giovinezza.

On 7th February 1857, after a delay of one year due to problems of copyright on a possible production of King Lear, Verdi accepted and signed a new agreement with the Teatro di San Carlo of Naples for an opera to be staged in January or February 1858. Not long after he had put behind the experiences of Simon Boccanegra (June 1857) and Aroldo (August), Verdi, then, had to face the issue of a new subject for Naples, which would no longer be King Lear, discarded for various reasons, and not even El tesorero del Rey by António García Gutiérrez or Ruy Blas by Hugo, to which he had given more serious thought, but Gustave III by Eugène Scribe, a play written in 1833 for Daniel Auber in which the king of Sweden is assassinated, in 1792, by a group of noblemen led by Jacob Ankarström. The composition of the score, between October 1857 and January 1858, went hand in hand with Verdi’s complex relationship with the Neapolitan censors, who would end up distorting the libretto and unnerving the composer to the point that he ended up refusing to stage the opera and breaking his agreement with the theatre.

One of the most acclaimed musicians of his era, Toscanini was a conductor of the "old school" - aristocratic, perfectionistic and something of an autocrat on the podium. After a brief flurry of interest in Fascism in the 1910s, he rapidly became disillusioned with the movement and indeed became a personal rival of Mussolini, repeatedly antagonising him through acts of artistic defiance such as refusals to open concerts with the Fascist anthem Giovinezza.

One of the most acclaimed musicians of his era, Toscanini was a conductor of the "old school" - aristocratic, perfectionistic and something of an autocrat on the podium. After a brief flurry of interest in Fascism in the 1910s, he rapidly became disillusioned with the movement and indeed became a personal rival of Mussolini, repeatedly antagonising him through acts of artistic defiance such as refusals to open concerts with the Fascist anthem Giovinezza.

One of the most acclaimed musicians of his era, Toscanini was a conductor of the "old school" - aristocratic, perfectionistic and something of an autocrat on the podium. After a brief flurry of interest in Fascism in the 1910s, he rapidly became disillusioned with the movement and indeed became a personal rival of Mussolini, repeatedly antagonising him through acts of artistic defiance such as refusals to open concerts with the Fascist anthem Giovinezza.

This production of Verdi’s ever-popular, melodic opera was filmed in Busseto, near Parma, Italy, close to the composer’s home and birthplace. The story of the opera concerns the plight of Violetta a mid-19th century Parisian courtesan who is dying of consumption. She responds to the ardent love of the young Alfredo but sacrifices him when his father, Giorgio pleads that their love will ruin his daughter’s happiness and his son’s career. Leaving the musicality of the opera to conductor Plácido Domingo, Franco Zeffirelli is here concerned with a natural expression of Verdi’s opera – and Alexander Dumas’ story.