THE late
Carlo Maria Giulini was a great Bruckner interpreter even if he only regularly conducted four of the symphonies.
Carlo Maria Giulini conducts an exciting performance with a dream-team cast that includes Boris Christoff as Filippo II, Tito Gobbi as Rodrigo, Fedora Barbieri as Eboli, Michael Langdon as the Grand Inquisitor and Gre Brouwenstijn as Elisabetta.
He was just 25, but already his resume was impressive: the native-born Montrealer had studied conducting privately with the renowned Italian maestro
Carlo Maria Giulini, and had already directed several local ensembles, including the chorus of the Montreal Opera and his own Chapelle de Montreal choir.
And the stage has been graced by a host famous names: con ductors like
Carlo Maria Giulini Sir Georg Solti, Simon Rattle and Yehudi Menuhin; internationa orchestras including Cleveland Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and our very own BBC National Orchestra of Wales; big names like Rudolph Nureyev Billy Connolly and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and music stars such as Sir Cliff Richard, Will Young and Tina Turner.
There's a fairly up to date tribute by Jim Bostwick on October 3 to the great Italian conductor
Carlo Maria Giulini.
Carlo Maria Giulini was one of the first conductors to become familiar to television audiences and was notable for his musical gestures and graceful hands, and hypnotic eyes, through which he communicated with his musicians.
They cover Sir Adrian Boult, Albert Coates,
Carlo Maria Giulini, Erich Kleiber, Paul Kletzki, Otto Klemperer, Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Leopold Stokowski, Vaclav Talich, Eugene Ormandy, Carl Schuricht, and Bruno Walter.
No soprano has come close to Maria Callas' legendary 1956 interpretation of the opera (directed by
Carlo Maria Giulini, produced by Luchino Visconti), though Mirella Freni and Anna Moffo made valiant efforts in 1964.
Given his Italian heritage, it's perhaps surprising that he is so adept in the strongly Germanic repertoire, much as his late compatriot
Carlo Maria Giulini was, in Bruckner and Mahler.
Subsequent strong recordings conducted by
Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Richard Hickox and even Kurt Masur have caught the work's anti-war message, but the original Britten recording, digitally re-mastered and still available, is a tough act to equal and comparisons will always be made.
But
Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Overture to The Sicilian Vespers and then the Stabat Mater?