MAESTRO OF THE RESISTANCE

In the 1930s and ’40s, Arturo Toscanini, the most celebrated conductor of opera and symphonic music in history, was also the best-known opponent, among musicians, of Nazism and Fascism. The man who had worked directly with Verdi, Puccini, Debussy, Richard Strauss, and many other composers—the man whose hatred of compromise had allowed him to carry out major reforms in musical performance practices—was also the man who stood up to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

The story of Toscanini’s opposition to totalitarianism begins long before his birth in Parma, Italy, in 1867. Claudio Toscanini, the future conductor’s father, was by trade a tailor but by nature what the Italians call a —a hothead, a person who feels fully alive only in a state of agitation. Born in 1833, Claudio from an early age believed deeply in the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy. He joined Giuseppe Garibaldi’s irregular army in 1860 and that year followed the general through the Sicilian campaign, which paved the way for Italian unification in 1861. He enrolled in the regular army’s Bersaglieri Corps but deserted in 1862 to rejoin Garibaldi in the ill-fated attempt to snatch control of Rome from Pope Pius IX. Captured at the Battle of Aspromonte, Claudio spent three years in prison before being pardoned and returning home to Parma, where he married and became the father of four