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Victor de Sabata

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Vittorio (Victor) De Sabata (April 10, 1892 – December 11, 1967) was an Italian conductor and composer. De Sabata is widely recognized as one of the greatest conductors of Italian opera, especially Verdi and Puccini, and is also acclaimed for his conducting of orchestral music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Like his near contemporary Wilhelm Furtwängler, De Sabata regarded composition as more important than conducting but struggled to achieve recognition as a composer.

Early Life

De Sabata was born in the cosmopolitan city of Trieste, Austria (today in Italy) to a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother. Both his parents were musicians: his father was a professional singing teacher and his mother was a keen amateur. His formal musical studies began after his family moved to Milan around 1900. While at Milan, De Sabata studied at the Conservatory, excelling at piano, violin, theory, composition and conducting. In 1911 he performed in an orchestra under the baton of Arturo Toscanini who greatly influenced him.

Conducting Career

In 1918 De Sabata was appointed conductor of the Monte Carlo Opera, performing a wide variety of late-19th century and contemporary works. In 1925, he conducted the world premiere of L'enfant et les sortilèges by Ravel. The next day Ravel wrote a note to the conductor saying that "You have given me one of the most complete joys of my career". In 1921, while still conducting opera at Monte Carlo, De Sabata began his career as a symphonic conductor with the orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He conducted the orchestra of La Scala in Milan for the first time in 1926, and conducted opera there from 1930, soon becoming the music director, a post he would hold for over 20 years.

During the 1930s, De Sabata conducted widely in Italy and Central Europe. In 1939, he conducted Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth and made celebrated recordings of Brahms, Wagner and Richard Strauss with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It is unclear why he was allowed to work in Germany by the Nazi regime despite his part-Jewish background.

After World War II, De Sabata's career expanded internationally. He was a frequent guest conductor in London, New York and other American cities. His base remained La Scala, Milan, and he often worked with the soprano Maria Callas. In 1953 he collaborated with Callas in a recording of Puccini's Tosca that is widely regarded as one of the greatest opera recordings of all time. The same year he suffered a heart attack that prompted him to stop performing in public. He resigned his post at La Scala and was succeeded by his assistant Carlo Maria Giulini.

De Sabata only conducted twice again, once in a famous recording of Verdi's Requiem from 1954, and at Toscanini's memorial services in 1957. The last years of his life were devoted to composition, and he died in obscurity in Italy in 1967.

Conducting Style

De Sabata's conducting style combined the fire, iron control and technical precision of Toscanini with a deep sonority and flexibility of phrasing more reminiscent of Furtwängler. He was exceptionally demanding of his players: according to one musician: "Those eyes and ears missed nothing…the players had been made to work harder than ever before and they knew that, without having been asked to play alone, they had been individually assessed" [1]

Musical Abilities

There are several amazing anecdotes of De Sabata's musical abilities. Among them:

  • After De Sabata was shown the score of Elgar's Enigma Variations for the first time, the very next day he rehearsed the work from memory and pointed out several errors in the orchestral parts which no-one, including Elgar himself, had noticed before. [2]
  • In a rehearsal of Respighi's Feste Romane, De Sabata told one brass player to play in a higher octave. The player protested that what De Sabata was asking was impossible, whereupon the conductor seized his instrument and blew the note perfectly.

List of Notable Recordings of De Sabata's Conducting

File:De Sabata Pearl BPO.jpg
Album cover from Pearl's CD release of De Sabata's 1939 Berlin Philharmonic recordings

The recordings that De Sabata made in the studio are, with some exceptions, less gripping than the best of his work in the concert-hall and opera-house. Fortunately there are now several unauthorized "live" recordings that demonstrate just how exciting de Sabata could be on the podium (although the sound quality can be problematic). This contrast comes through in the two different versions of Richard Strauss's Death and Tranfiguration and Verdi's Requiem listed below.

  • Debussy, Jeux, studio recording with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, HMV, 1947. The premiere recording of this work. (Currently available on Testament)
  • Debussy, La mer, studio recording with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, HMV 1948 (currently available on Testamet)
  • Puccini, Tosca, studio recording with Callas, HMV 1953. De Sabata's and Callas's most famous recording. (currently available on EMI and Naxos)
  • Respighi, Fountains of Rome, studio recording with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, HMV, 1947 (currently available on Testament)
  • Verdi, Falstaff, live performance with Tebaldi and Stabile, La Scala, Milan, 1951 (currently available on Music and Arts, and Urania)
  • Verdi, Macbeth, live performance with Callas, La Scala, Milan, 1952 (currently available on EMI)
  • Verdi, Requiem, live performance with Tebaldi, La Scala, Milan, 1951 (currently available on Urania)

Composition Style

De Sabata's compostions are written in a late-romantic style reminiscent of Respighi and Richard Strauss. They were quite successful in the 1920s but are little-known today. One reason may be that De Sabata did relatively little to perform and publicize his own works, preferring that his music should succeed or fail on its own merits

List of Notable Compositions

  • Il macigno (opera, 1917)
  • Juventus (symphonic poem for orchestra, 1919)
  • La notte di Platon (for orchestra, 1923)
  • Gethsemani (for orchestra, 1925)
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