Nino Marcelli

Who was Nino Marcelli?

Nino Marcelli was an Italian composer and conductor who revived the San Diego Symphony orchestra. Marcelli wrote compositions for musical theatre and oratorio including one for the Bohemian Club.

Marcelli was born in Rome in 1890. When he was a small child, his family moved to Santiago, Chile, and he attended the National Music Conservatory. Marcelli became bandmaster to a U.S. Army band during World War I, and toured France. Marcelli became a United States citizen in 1917. After the war, Marcelli settled in San Francisco with a position as cellist in the San Francisco Symphony. In November 1920, Marcelli accepted a position to lead the high school orchestra in San Diego, there being but one high school at the time: San Diego High School. Under Marcelli's leadership, the youth orchestra gained a national reputation in the 1920s, playing radio broadcasts and concerts in Los Angeles.

In 1922, Marcelli wrote the music for a Grove Play entitled The Rout of the Philistines, a libretto written by Charles Gilman Norris. He reported later that he had been inspired by the operas of Pietro Mascagni. Marcelli used four main themes for Philistine: the theme of Dagon, the God of the Philistines; the theme of Saph, the nobility of the race; the theme of Saph's love for humanity and his belief in brotherhood; and the theme of the forest.