Tullio Serafin Competition

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Tullio Serafin

He was born in Rottanova di Cavarzere (Venice) and at the age of 11 he moved to Milan, where he played the viola in the orchestra of Teatro alla Scala conducted by Arturo Toscanini, later becoming his deputy. Less than twenty years old he made his debut as conductor in L ‘elisir d’ amore under the pseudonym of Alfio Sulterni. When Toscanini decided to move to New York, he took his place as musical director of La Scala. He held this post from 1909 to 1918, with an interval between 1914 and 1917 during the First World War. He then returned briefly from 1946 to 1947.

He later joined the staff of the Metropolitan Theater of New York in 1924 and remained there for over ten years and 683 performances, after which he was appointed Artistic Director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. During his long career he recorded with successful opera singers such as Rosa Ponselle and Joan Sutherland, and with Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. He conducted the orchestra of Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the recording of Otello with tenor Jon Vickers in 1960. Serafin always expanded his repertoire by conducting first performances of works by contemporary composers such as Alban Berg, Paul Dukas, and Benjamin Britten. 

He also conducted new works by important Italian and American composers such as Franco Alfano, Italo Montemezzi, Deems Taylor and Howard Hanson.

In his long career Tullio Serafin developed a vast operatic repertoire, including 243 operas, ranging from Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti to composers of the twentieth century. He also enjoyed a reputation as a talent scout for the youngest and most promising opera voices of the time. His greatest discovery was undoubtedly that of the Greek singer Maria Callas, although he liked to repeat that the only outstanding singers he had known were Rosa Ponselle, Enrico Caruso and Titta Ruffo. It was Serafin who brought to light, in the twentieth century, a work like the Norma, by Vincenzo Bellini, after having Rosa Ponselle study it for two years. Many of the works he directed were broadcast on the radio in the golden age of this media – the thirties and forties – and his commitment in this sense is testified by his participation, as an interpreter of himself, in the 1940 film directed by Giacomo Gentilomo and dedicated to EIAR Ecco la Radio!

The representation of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck that he conducted for the first time in Italy, in Rome in 1942, remains his particular merit and even an act of cultural courage.

After a very long career, which lasted six decades and is comparable only to that of Arturo Toscanini (he conducted both Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti), he died in Rome in 1968.

His remains rest in his native town, Rottanova di Cavarzere.