Carlo Maria Giulini

Carlo Maria Giulini was born in Barletta, in Apulia, in May 1914, and was raised in Bolzano in the South Tyrol. He studied viola, composition and conducting at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, and joined the Augusteo orchestra (later the Santa Cecilia) as a violist in 1932. He made his conducting début in 1944 in liberated Rome, conducting the Augusteo in a programme of Brahms — having been hidden by friends for the previous nine months to avoid conscription into the Italian Social Republic’s army.

He was appointed music director of the RAI Orchestra in Milan in 1946 and from 1953 was principal conductor of La Scala, where his collaborations with Maria Callas — particularly the 1955 *La traviata* with Visconti’s production — became legendary. He withdrew from the opera house in the late 1960s in favour of the concert hall, holding posts as principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony (1969–72), principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (1973–76), and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1978–84). He returned to opera only once, for a 1982 *Falstaff* at the Los Angeles Music Center.

Giulini retired in 1998 after a final tour with the Berlin Philharmonic. He died in Brescia in June 2005. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his work with British orchestras and the Philharmonia, where he was a regular guest from the 1960s onwards.