Exhibition Arturo Toscanini, la vita e il mito di un Maestro immortale Marzo – Giugno 2017

So far as is known, Arturo Toscanini first entered Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in the fall of 1886, at the age of 19, to accompany two singers’ auditions, and he left the theatre for the last time in February 1955, at the age of nearly 88, after having attended a rehearsal or performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess as a spectator. Given the length of his conducting career, the amount of time that Toscanini spent at la Scala was not as great at some might imagine: 15 seasons as what would today be called artistic and music director of the ensemble, and miscellaneous concert or opera performances in ten other years. But the importance of his tenures and his visits to La Scala can hardly be underestimated, not only in terms of the
house’s history but also in terms of the history of performance in general. Before Toscanini, the lyric theatre had often been held hostage by star singers and their caprices, but he gradually imposed a system in which solo voices chorus, orchestra, stage movement, sets, costumes, and lighting were all given maximum attention in order to create what Wagner called Gesamtkunstwerk – the total work of art. At La Scala he modernized and internationalized the repertoire, giving first performances in Milan (and, in many cases, in Italy) not only of operas by Puccini, Mascagni, Boito, Giordano, Franchetti, Cilea and other compatriots, but also of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Siegfried, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Richard Strauss’s Salome, Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande and much symphonic music by Strauss, Debussy, Sibelius, Elgar and others. Toscanini overlooked no aspect of La Scala’s existence. He had a modern lighting system installed in 1901 and an orchestra pit in 1907, and he ordered a complete overhaul of the house in 1921. He abolished the anti-dramatic practice of having arias encored during performances, and he forbade ladies in the audience from wearing huge hats that blocked other spectator’s views. In both 1898 and 1921, together with Milanese political authorities, aristocrats and industrialists, he worked out new systems for financing the theatre and for opening it to a wider public. And in 1928 he established a foundation that provided assistance for orchestra and chorus members, technical staff and others who faced medical, social or economic difficulties.