Antonino Votto

Antonino Votto was born in Piacenza in October 1896 and studied conducting at the Naples Conservatory under Camillo De Nardis. He served as Toscanini’s assistant at La Scala from 1923, and held the position for twenty years across Toscanini’s two periods of leadership at the house. He became a staff conductor at La Scala in his own right from the 1930s, conducting hundreds of performances across the central Italian operatic repertoire.

His career was largely defined by his collaborations with the major sopranos of mid-twentieth-century Italian opera — particularly Maria Callas, with whom he made important recordings of *La sonnambula*, *La Gioconda*, *Il pirata* and *Norma* in the late 1950s. He worked regularly at the Metropolitan Opera, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Vienna State Opera. As a teacher at the Milan Conservatory from 1948 to 1967, he taught a generation of Italian conductors including Riccardo Muti, who has spoken extensively of Votto’s influence on his own technique and repertoire.

Votto died in Milan in September 1985. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his work with Maria Callas and other Italian sopranos of the 1950s and 1960s.