Votto developed an extensive discography with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan during the 1950s, when EMI produced the bulk of its studio recordings featuring Maria Callas.

Though Votto was a dependable conductor (and the teacher of Riccardo Muti), critics frequently faulted his recordings for their lack of emotional immediacy.

Arturo Toscanini right-hand man, he entered La Scala in Milan as early as 1923, later conducting operas in major theaters, from Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires to Teatro Massimo in Palermo, from Tokyo to London, from Berlin to Amsterdam.

From 1941 he acquired the chair of orchestral conducting at the Giuseppe Verdi Milan Conservatory, where over the course of thirty years of teaching he was the teacher of other important performers of contemporary music, such as Riccardo Muti,Claudio Abbado,Maurizio Pollini,Guido Cantelli, and Giorgio Gaslini.

A favorite of the most celebrated international opera performers, Votto picked up, along with Victor de Sabata, Tullio Serafin and a few others, Toscanini's legacy after he left Italy in the first half of the 1930s to emigrate to the United States.