Arturo Toscanini

Played second cello in the world premiere of Verdi's Otello in 1887.

At Giuseppe Verdi's funeral in 1901, Toscanini conducted a performance of "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves), which ensured Verdi's success when it was first performed (it is from his opera "Nabucco"). Fifty-six years later, in 1957, the piece was played as part of a memorial concert for Toscanini, who had just died.

Conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1908 to 1915.

Toured the United States in 1920-1921 with the La Scala Opera orchestra (with which he made his first recordings) and in 1950 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Took the NBC Symphony on a concert tour of South America in 1940. Took the New York Philharmonic on a concert tour of Europe in 1930.

Principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 1928 to 1936, after making guest appearances in 1926 and 1927.

Conducted at Bayreuth in 1930 and 1931; did not conduct in Germany again after Hitler rose to power.

His 1936 recording of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony with the New York Philharmonic is regarded as one of the greatest recordings of all time.

Toscanini was such a part of American culture in the 1940s that Bob Hope, who also had a radio program on NBC at the time, made a comic reference to him in the film My Favorite Brunette (1947).

Conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1941-1942 after a falling out with the NBC Symphony; returned to the latter the following season.

In December of 1944, as the Battle of the Bulge was taking place in Europe, Toscanini conducted a two-part radio broadcast of Beethoven's only opera, "Fidelio", a German work whose plot revolves around the rescue of a woman's husband from a German prison, and the overthrow of the tyrannical governor of the prison amid rejoicing. To Toscanini, this gesture symbolized the imminent overthrow of Hitler. The performance later appeared on records and on CD.

After withdrawing their Toscanini Collection and not releasing anything by Toscanini for years, RCA Victor has begun once again to re-release its catalog of recordings by the conductor, this time in large box sets. Released so far have been "The Beethoven Symphonies" and "The Verdi Recordings" (containing all of the Verdi operas that Toscanini performed on NBC between 1946 and 1954). For the amount of CD's that each boxed set contains, they are relatively low-priced.

His first television concert, on March 20, 1948, was telecast on the same day that the Academy Awards were held that year. The schedules did not conflict because the Toscanini concerts were then broadcast in the early afternoon, and the Academy Awards had not begun to be shown on television yet. (They were broadcast on radio.)

It is widely believed that Toscanini toured the U.S. only once - in 1950, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra - but he also toured as conductor of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra during the early years of the twentieth century (Toscanini was with the Met from 1908 to 1914, and the company went on annual tours of the U.S. until 1987. Unfortunately, Toscanini conducted at the Met before they began making recordings, so we have no recordings of his performances of opera there.) During those years with the Met, Toscanini conducted fully staged performances of opera, as opposed to the concert performances of it that he was forced to do at NBC because the studio was unwilling to spend money on fully staged versions with scenery and costumes.

He conducted the first concerts ever televised from Carnegie Hall (1951-1952).

Toscanini was a perfectionist, and he was notorious for refusing to approve the release of recordings that he had made which he felt weren't good enough. Because of this, he officially approved only one of his recordings of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, although he had recorded it four times previously. The finally approved version was a 1952 LP recording made by RCA Victor, in the studio, without an audience. It became one of the biggest selling classical recordings of all time. Since the advent of compact discs, however, several of Toscanini's live recordings of the Ninth, none of which he actually approved for release on records, have appeared on several CD labels. His only television performance of the Beethoven Ninth was released on VHS in 1990, and on DVD in 2006.

Some indication of the status he once held in classical music may be found in the fact that he is the only symphony orchestra conductor to have been featured on the cover of "Time" magazine three times - more than any other conductor (so far) in the history of music. Upon his death in 1957, the magazine gave him a full page obituary, while the 1954 death of 'Wilhelm Furtwangler', Toscanini's great rival, was covered by "Time" in only one brief paragraph.

His supposedly ferocious temper was spoofed posthumously in the Tom and Jerry animated cartoon, "Carmen Get It!" (1962), in which Tom runs into the orchestra pit chasing Jerry in the Metropolitan Opera House, and the conductor breaks several instruments over Tom's head. Toscanini was famous both for having conducted at the Metropolitan, and for having conducted "Carmen".

Toscanini was on the verge of retirement at age 70 when RCA chairman David Sarnoff asked him if he would like to conduct a radio orchestra especially created and trained just for him. Toscanini, not wishing to return to Fascist Italy because of possible personal harassment from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, chose to take up permanent residence in the U.S. and accepted the offer.Thus was born his incredible 17-year tenure with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, trained by Artur Rodzinski, which enabled him to be heard by millions at once, and extended his career into the age of LP records, television, hi-fi, and even two stereo recordings, the first of which was not released until 1986 (the second was not released in a stereo edition until January of 2007). Toscanini didn't retire until 1954, when he was 87. He remained an Italian citizen all his life, and was buried in Milan, Italy.

Pictured on a 25¢ US commemorative postage stamp in the Performing Arts series, issued 25 March 1989.

In 1990, and over the next two or three years, RCA Victor issued on CD all of the recordings Toscanini had made for that label, including some that had never been released, in an effort to present those recordings in high quality, remastered sound. They also released excellent quality videocassettes of Toscanini's television concerts. These items, however, began to be withdrawn after only a few years. However, in recent years, still higher-quality reissues of the Toscanini output were released by RCA Victor.

Pictured on a Monaco 2.60-euros postage stamp issued 21 June 2017, issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Toscanini conducted the New Year concert at the Monte-Carlo Opera in 1935.