Rito Selvaggi

He showed an early talent for music, especially the piano, and in 1910, his family sent him to the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, where he studied under Amilcare Zanella.

After graduating from the conservatory, he continued his piano studies with Ferruccio Busoni in Bologna and made his Paris debut in 1913.

His career as a concert pianist was cut short by World War I, when he served as a lieutenant in the Italian Army from 1915 to 1918.

He was the co-director (with Tullio Serafin) of the Teatro Regio in Turin and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris from 1918 to 1922 and toured internationally as a conductor from 1923 to 1927.

[1] Selvaggi spent the last years of his life in his villa at Zoagli in the Province of Genoa where he died in 1972 at the age of 74.