Toscanini: Too much of the Absolute in my heart
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), the most celebrated conductor in history, was also admired for his opposition to Fascism and Nazism. His clashes with Mussolini and Hitler and his trips to Palestine to conduct an orchestra made up of Jewish refugees from Europe showed the world that artists can raise their voices against totalitarianism. During World War II he lived in exile in the United States, giving benefit concerts to further the war effort, and helping other musicians immigrate and find work.
This program is based mainly on the hundreds of passionate letters that Toscanini wrote to his lover Ada Mainardi during the 1930’s, in which he discussed political, artistic, and personal matters.
The program also draws upon his letters to Mussolini, Hitler, and Roosevelt. All reveal the thoughts of an artist who had the courage to say no to the Fascist regimes.
This theatrical concert features music by composers such as Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Fano, younger contemporaries of Toscanini who were forced to flee Italy, as well as works by Verdi. These works are interwoven with an audio collage of the Italian Racial Laws of 1938 and Toscanini’s rehearsals of Aida.
Toscanini: Too much of the Absolute in my heart was part of our 2008-2009 Season.
2008-2009 Season
Artists in Exile
Ensemble for the Romantic Century celebrated its eighth season by examining the lives of exiled artists. Exile can take many forms. It can be political or spiritual, or it can be caused by an isolating physical condition. Artists in exile sometimes withdraw into themselves, as was the case of the exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who said that “the condition we call exile accelerates tremendously one’s otherwise professional flight-or drift- into isolation, – into an absolute perspective: into the condition in which all one is left with is oneself and one’s own language, with nobody or nothing in between.” Yet some exiled artists become mediators between the culture or situation they have left behind and the new one in which they find themselves. They take from and contribute to their new worlds, transforming their experience as exiles into artistic expression and in some cases into political activism.