Vittorio Gui

Who was Vittorio Gui?

Vittorio Gui was an Italian conductor, composer, musicologist and critic.

Gui was born in Rome in 1885. He graduated in humanities at the University of Rome and also studied composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; his principal composition teachers were the noted composers Giacomo Setaccioli and Stanislao Falchi. His style was "impressionistic with characteristic Italian traits".

Gui's opera David premiered in Rome in 1907; later that year, he made his professional conducting debut at the Teatro Adriano in Rome, leading Ponchielli's La Gioconda as a substitute. This led to invitations to conduct in Naples and Turin. In 1923, Arturo Toscanini invited him to conduct Salome by Richard Strauss as the season opener at La Scala in Milan. He conducted the Teatro Regio in Turin from 1925 to 1927; in his last year in Turin, he premiered his fairy-tale opera Fata Malerba there.

In 1928, Gui founded and conducted the Orchestra Stabile; he developed the organization of the orchestra into the 1933 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino or "Florence May Music Festival", which he led until 1943. At the festival he conducted unusual operas such as Verdi's Luisa Miller, Spontini's La vestale, Cherubini's Médée and Gluck's Armide.