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The Letters of Arturo Toscanini | 
 enlarge | Author: Arturo Toscanini
Creator: Harvey Sachs
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Category: Book
List Price: $62.00
Buy New: $35.60
You Save: $26.40 (43%)
New (4) Used (9) from $13.28
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 3131838
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0571196292
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780571196296
ASIN: 0571196292
Publication Date: May 6, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
Toscanini (1867-1957), one of the most celebrated conductors in musical history, raised the standards of orchestras and opera ensembles to great heights. He conducted the world premieres of Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and Puccini's "La Boheme" and "Turandot". Yet he never wrote a memoir or granted interviews. Now we are brought close to him in 700 vivid and impassioned letters, the vast majority of them previously unpublished. There is fascinating correspondence with his wife and children, but even more interesting are the letters concerning his tempestuous affairs and erotic adventures. He writes with particular vehemence about his opposition to Fascism, Nazism and Mussolini: "You won't find [anyone] who is more of a delinquent, more of a criminal than that ignoble animal!" Vivid and impassioned, the letters reveal the depth of his musical knowledge and insight, and shed light on the musical life of his time.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Entertaining and informative August 29, 2003
Sachs' editorial comments provide fascinating insights into the world of opera and Toscanini's role in it. Beyond the minutiae of the Maestro's life and passions, however, this book provides an intriguing perspective of world events during the first half of the 20th century.
Great Man -- Great Book March 13, 2003
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an obsessively edited great book about, and by, an obsessively great man and great conductor. Of greatest interest to those also obsessed by Arturo Toscanini, but of great interest to anyone who wants to enter the mind of the greatest conductor of the 20th century. That's a lot of "greats", but they're well-deserved. Toscanini writes with passion, grace, lyricism, eroticism, and political insight. Mr. Sachs, the brilliant Toscanini biographer, has edited this book in a way that makes it an autobiography. Buy it!
Most readable and absorbing January 29, 2003
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I loved this book. Toscanini's writing style is so direct and passionate. His love of music and his worship of its icons permeates the book and his ever-present desire to do them justice (even at the expense of dealing with musicians not meeting his exacting standards) make this a fun read. As a musician I can relate to the exhaustion of rehearsals and the exaltation he felt after a great concert and in the midst of musicians in which he had respect.
The hundreds of letters to his mistress are amazing, written in the most ardent and intimate manner. (One feels that one knows her, too, from osmosis). They are speckled also with his reflections on aging and their age disparity, of his concertizing, of his passionless marriage, of his disappointment/disgust with emerging regimes of his time. I found even the most mundane details of his everyday life are somehow also interesting.
The commentary from the author is nicely formatted so that it is easy to skip over details which have no familiarity to the lay reader.
Humanizing and scary June 11, 2002
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
What will floor a Toscanini fan here is the revelation that the old man's emotional life was much more intense than anybody realized. The majority of the book is taken up with love-letters to one woman, although this affair only went on for 10 years or less; the outpouring of adoration, obsession, and eventual anger is stunning. There are certain performances of his about which we've customarily said, hmm, this one is relatively expressive--it turns out Toscanini confesses to his true love that while he conducted Tchaikovsky's 6th tonight, he was thinking only of her, and wept at such-and-such a passage, and even kissed the locket with her picture during the performance...so much for "literal" music-making! Although some letters are not always interesting (in the sense that his culture was not all that broad--this is not a book from which you'll learn a lot about arts & letters, performance practice, or even about music in general), and some letters will definitely make some people squeamish, they present a quite different picture of the conductor as primarily passionate, rather than primarily angry. You come away from the book, as you do from his best performances, amazed at his honesty and phenomenal intensity.
 Perhaps the hype was too great May 12, 2002
1 out of 12 found this review helpful
I was prepared for true revelations which didn't come through in the letters, found precious little I didn't already know.
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