Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

Giulini was born in Barletta, Kingdom of Italy, to a father from Lombardy and a mother from Naples; but he was raised in Bolzano, which at the time of his birth was part of Austria (it became Italian, following a provision included in the Treaty of London (1915), with the end of First World War in 1919).

[8] Among the guest conductors he played under were Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, Victor de Sabata, Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, Igor Stravinsky, and Otto Klemperer.

[11] Giulini told interviewers that he loved the gentle manner of Bruno Walter, who he said had a gift for making every musician feel important.

Giulini chose instead to go into hiding, living for nine months in a tunnel underneath a home owned by his wife's uncle, along with two friends and a Jewish family which was avoiding Nazi arrest and deportation.

[13] After the Allies liberated Rome on 4 June 1944, Giulini—who was among the few conductors not tainted by associations with Fascism—was chosen to lead the Accademia's first post-Fascist concert, held on 16 July 1944.

It was La traviata and he returned the following year, this time with Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi alternating in the role of Violetta.

His work in Bergamo came to the attention of Arturo Toscanini, who asked to meet the young conductor, and the two men formed a deep bond.

It was at this period that Giulini was first able to work with colleagues who shared his views about the relationship of music and the stage in opera, and the results were spectacular: the Traviata, originally scheduled for four performances in 1955, had to be allotted another 17 in the following season.

His UK debut took place at the 1955 Edinburgh Festival conducting Verdi's Falstaff for the Glyndebourne Opera company when it toured to that city.

"[7] Although he returned to Covent Garden in 1957, it became clear that, after two more Covent Garden performances in 1961 and 1964 (the famous black-and-white Il trovatore) and another at the Holland Festival in 1965, where he disagreed so strongly with the visual treatment of The Marriage of Figaro on the stage that he refused to conduct, and only concert performances were given,[7] Giulini would abandon opera, not wanting to compromise his artistic vision.

From 1978 to 1984, he served as principal conductor and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, launching his tenure there with performances of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Overall, his impact on the musical world of the mid-to-late 20th century is summed up by Anthony Tommasini in his New York Times obituary of 2005: Far from being an autocratic conductor or a kinetic dynamo of the podium, Mr. Giulini was a probing musician who achieved results by projecting serene authority and providing a model of selfless devotion to the score.