Nino Sanzogno facts for kids

Nino Sanzogno (born April 13, 1911 – died May 4, 1983) was a talented Italian conductor and composer. He was known for leading orchestras and writing music.

About Nino Sanzogno

Nino Sanzogno was born in Venice, Italy. He loved music from a young age. He studied the violin and learned how to compose music at a special school called the Liceo Musicale. His teachers were famous musicians like Hermann Scherchen and Gian Francesco Malipiero. Later, he went to Vienna to learn more about conducting from Scherchen.

He started his career by leading a group called the Gruppo Strumentale. They performed concerts in Italy and other countries. In 1937, he became the main conductor at La Fenice, a famous opera house in Venice. Soon after, he also started working with the RAI Milan Symphony Orchestra. His first time conducting at the famous La Scala opera house in Milan was in 1939.

A Champion of New Music

Nino Sanzogno was especially good at conducting new and modern musical works. At La Scala, he led the very first performances of many important operas. These included David by Darius Milhaud, Dialogues des Carmélites by Francis Poulenc, and Troilus and Cressida by William Walton. He also introduced Italian audiences to works like Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovich, Lulu by Alban Berg, and A Midsummer Night's Dream by Britten. He even conducted The Fiery Angel by Prokofiev.

Outside of Italy, especially in Britain, he helped introduce music by Italian composers like Gian Francesco Malipiero, Dallapiccola, and Ildebrando Pizzetti. In 1957, he conducted the first performance of the final version of Karl Amadeus Hartmann's First Symphony.

In 1955, he helped open the Piccola Scala, which was a smaller theater. There, he brought back many older musical works from the 1700s by composers like Piccinni, Paisiello, and Domenico Cimarosa. He even took this company to the Edinburgh Festival in 1957.

His Style and Compositions

People admired Sanzogno for how precise and disciplined he was when conducting. He also had a charming and elegant way about him. Besides conducting, he also wrote his own music. His compositions include two symphonic poems, which are like musical stories, called I quattro cavalieri del'Apocalisse (from 1930) and Vanitas (from 1931). He also wrote concertos, which are pieces for a solo instrument and orchestra, for the viola (in 1935) and the cello (in 1937). He also wrote music for smaller groups of instruments. In his later years, he taught conducting in Darmstadt.

In 1961, he conducted the first full opera studio recording of Rigoletto with the famous singer Joan Sutherland. This recording was made with Decca Records.

Nino Sanzogno passed away in Milan in 1983.

Selected Recordings

Nino Sanzogno conducted many recordings that you can still listen to today. Here are some of them:

• 1954 – A.Berg – Wozzeck (in Italian) – with Tito Gobbi and others, with the RAI Orchestra Roma.
• 1956 – D.Cimarosa – Il matrimonio segreto – with Eugenia Ratti, Graziella Sciutti, and others, with the Coro e orchestra del Teatro alla Scala.
• 1959 – G.Donizetti – Lucia di Lammermoor – with Renata Scotto, Giuseppe di Stefano, and others, with the Coro e orchestra del Teatro alla Scala.
• 1961 – G.Verdi – Rigoletto – with Cornell McNeil, Joan Sutherland, and others, with the Coro e orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Roma.
• 1965 – Arrigo Boito – Mefistofele – with Nicolai Ghiaurov, Renata Tebaldi, and Alfredo Kraus.

Opera Films

He also conducted operas that were made into films:

• 1954 – Verdi – La traviata – with Rosanna Carteri and others, with the Rai Milan Chorus and Orchestra.
• 1956 – Mozart – Le nozze di Figaro – with Heinz Rehfuss and others, with the Rai Milan Chorus and Orchestra.
• 1958 – Mozart – Don Giovanni – with Mario Petri and others, with the Orch. A. Scarlatti.

Sources

• Le guide de l'opéra, Roland Mancini & Jean-Jacques Rouveroux, (Fayard, 1989) ISBN: 2-213-01563-5
• Grove Music Online, Leonardo Pinzauti, July 2008.