Victor de Sabata
[5] In 1918, aged 26, de Sabata was appointed conductor of the Monte Carlo Opera, performing a wide variety of late-19th century and contemporary works, and earning acclaim from Maurice Ravel.
His animated conducting style led one observer to describe his appearance in performance as "a cross between Julius Caesar and Satan.
His Roman Catholic father, Amedeo de Sabata, was a professional singing teacher and chorus master, and his mother, Rosita Tedeschi, a talented amateur musician, was Jewish.
[12] In 1918 de Sabata was appointed conductor of the Monte Carlo Opera, performing a wide variety of late-19th-century and contemporary works.
Ravel said that de Sabata was a conductor "the like of which I have never before encountered"[13][14] and wrote him a note the next day saying that "You have given me one of the most complete joys of my career".
[16] In 1921, while still conducting opera at Monte Carlo, de Sabata began his career as a symphonic conductor with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
[22] According to Benito Mussolini's son Romano, de Sabata was "a personal friend" of the Italian dictator, and gave "several concerts" at the leader's Villa Torlonia home.
[12] In 1939, he became only the second conductor from outside the German-speaking world to conduct at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus when he led Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (Toscanini had been the first, in 1930 and 1931).
[25] Among the audience at Bayreuth was the young Sergiu Celibidache, who hid in the lavatory overnight in order to surreptitiously attend rehearsals.
[citation needed] In 1950 he was temporarily detained at Ellis Island along with several other Europeans under the newly passed McCarran Act (the reason was his work in Italy during Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime).
[citation needed] De Sabata's base remained La Scala, Milan, and he had the opportunity to work with two upwardly-mobile sopranos: Renata Tebaldi and Maria Callas.
In August 1953 he collaborated with Callas in his only commercial opera recording: Puccini's Tosca for HMV (also featuring Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi along with the La Scala orchestra and chorus).
[30][31] One critic has written that de Sabata's success in this Tosca "remains so decisive that had he never recorded another note, his fame would still be assured".
[33] His scheduled December 1953 La Scala performance of Alessandro Scarlatti's Mitridate Eupatore with Callas was replaced at short notice by an acclaimed Cherubini Medea with Leonard Bernstein.
[35] De Sabata conducted only twice more, once in a studio recording of Verdi's Requiem from June 1954 for HMV, and for the last time at Arturo Toscanini's memorial service (conducting the funeral march from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony at La Scala opera house followed by Verdi's Requiem in Milan Cathedral[36]) in 1957.
[37] Victor de Sabata died of heart disease in Santa Margherita Ligure, Liguria, Italy in 1967, aged 75.
A prize for young musicians sponsored by the province of Genoa and the region of Liguria, the competition takes place in Santa Margherita.
[40] De Sabata's conducting style combined the fiery temperament, iron control and technical precision of Toscanini with greater spontaneity and attention to orchestral color.
He, too, would be transformed, once he picked up the baton... and I must admit that Tristan und Isolde made an even bigger impression when De Sabata conducted it than with Toscanini.
[49] Toscanini did not approve of de Sabata's conducting style or of many of his interpretations: he considered the younger man's gestures to be too flamboyant.
"[52] "A visitor [to La Scala] rehearsing Tristan asked Victor de Sabata to take the baton while he tested the sound from the centre of the auditorium.
Culshaw reports that "One exceptionally tricky passage for the conductor is the entry of Tosca in act 3, where Puccini's tempo directions can best be described as elastic.
'"[54] The recordings that de Sabata made in the studio are, with some exceptions, considered less gripping than the best of his work in the concert hall and opera house.
[6] Fortunately there are now several unauthorized "live" recordings that demonstrate how exciting de Sabata could be on the podium (although the sound quality can be problematic).
[11] One reason may be that de Sabata did relatively little to perform and publicize his own works, preferring that his music should succeed or fail on its own merits.
[76] His grandson, Cristiano Ceccato de Sabata, son of Eliana, is a former student of CAD pioneer John Frazer and worked for architects Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.
