Toscanini: The Maestro

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Toscanini: The Maestro was a documentary about Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini who was once considered by most to be the greatest maestro of the twentieth century. It was originally created for the Bravo channel in 1985. However, PBS televised it in January 1988, perhaps (though this has never been confirmed) as a corrective to Joseph Horowitz's highly controversial, revisionist book on the conductor, Understanding Toscanini, which had been released the year before to both enthusiastic and devastating reviews. Horowitz put forward the thesis that Toscanini's enduring fame was largely due to publicity drummed up by NBC during the years that he conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and was not based on the conductor's actual abilities, an opinion which, only thirty years previously, would probably have been considered tantamount to heresy among music critics, if not musicians.

Toscanini: The Maestro is narrated by Alexander Scourby, and the program is highlighted by interviews with NBC Symphony Orchestra musicians who were then still alive, as well as reminiscences by such operatic singers as Robert Merrill, Herva Nelli, Jarmila Novotná, Licia Albanese and Bidu Sayao, all of whom worked with Toscanini, and rare color home movies of the maestros. Excerpts from several of Toscanini's television appearances, preserved on kinescopes, which at that time were undergoing extensive restoration prior to their release on videocassette, are also featured, as well as an extensive clip from Hymn of the Nations, a short subject that Toscanini filmed to support the U.S. war effort in 1944.