When Toscanini Went to Palestine

...I know of no other public or private references to the Jews or Jewish matters on Toscanini's part during the following 20 years, although his work in New York—at the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 to 1915 and with the Philharmonic beginning in 1926— brought him into close contact with many Jews...

...Toscanini (1867-1957) was born in Parma, in the Po valley...

...A telegram from Toscanini to the Italian-Jewish composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, for instance, assured the latter that an affidavit would be provided to enable him to immigrate to the United States, and that everyone would try to find work for him there...

...Having studied Toscanini's life thoroughly, I agree with her—because he was an anti-clericalist who believed in civil liberties for all, at whatever cost...

...Rothschild, but personally went to [George] Dyson, the Head of the [London] Academy of Music, to secure a permit for my mother to teach [piano] here, a very rare privilege...

...At a special ceremony, the Toscaninis and Huberman planted trees on this piece of land, and school children sang songs for them...

...He had been an ardent Wagnerian since his youth, and even his German colleagues greatly admired him in the Wagner repertoire...

...Even I, the only Jew and the only non-Italian involved in the project, had and continue to have many doubts about the wisdom of our action...

...The sorrowful events that have wounded my feelings as a man and as an artist have not undergone any change, contrary to my every hope," he wrote to Winifred Wagner, the composer's daughter-in-law, who was a great friend and supporter of Hitler...

...If you stop to think what they have achieved through sheer labor, it is nothing short of miraculous...

...That summer and the following one, Toscanini conducted at the newly founded Lucerne Festival in Switzerland—founded, indeed, as a result of his willingness to conduct there after having given up Salzburg...

...Toscanini's gesture elicited the gratitude of Jews around the world...

...As usual, Toscanini made no public reply...

...Sinigaglia bombarded him with requests to conduct his Piedmont Suite at the Turin International Exposition of 1911, but the piece did not interest Toscanini...

...The choice was not a casual one...

...he refused, however, to precede the first concert, as requested, with the Fascist anthem...

...his wife wept openly...

...The British High Commissioner as well as Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion were among the capacity audience at the first concert on December 26...

...Toscanini and his wife soon became deeply involved in assisting Jewish and other antiFascist musicians who were fleeing Italy, Austria and Germany...

...A few days later, he returned with his wife, and they passed several hours of animated conversation at the house of one of the directors...

...The concert was given a second time in Tel Aviv and repeated in Jerusalem and Haifa...

...I walk and shall always walk on the straight path that I have traced for myself in life...

...Thus, for the following four years, Italians and Germans who wanted to hear Toscanini conduct had to go to Vienna or to the Salzburg Festival...

...His last public act on behalf of the Jews took place in 1946, when he returned to Italy at the age of 79 to conduct the opening concert at La Scala, which had been heavily damaged during Allied bombing raids...

...and so has Toscanini's granddaughter, Countess Emanuel di Castelbarco, who contributed much valuable material to the exhibition, and whose family (including herself) has always demonstrated the greatest friendship towards the Jews and towards Israel...

...This statement caused Mussolini to have the conductor's passport withdrawn, but it was given back a month later, thanks to pressure from the world press...

...People who had been unable to obtain tickets surrounded the area and even climbed onto the roof, hoping to hear something...

...By 1930...

...You are not only the unmatchable interpreter of the world's musical literature...

...Toscanini arrived in Tel Aviv on December 20, 1936, and found great excitement throughout Palestine over his visit...

...Toscanini spent the war years in New York, where he was active in the antiFascist Mazzini Society and in fund-raising efforts for War Bonds, the International Red Cross and other war-related causes...

...Toscanini wrote back: "It would be a bitter disappointment to me if any circumstances should interfere with my purpose to take part in the coming Festival...

...Three Israeli newspapers (Haolam Hazeh, Ha'aretz and Kol Ha'ir Terushali'im) took up the theme of my letter and their wholehearted support attested to Toscanini's continuing value as a symbol of nonpartisan political morality...

...Hitler replied by sending Toscanini a letter in which he ignored the protest and told the conductor that he hoped to hear his performances at Bayreuth that summer...

...The young people have adapted themselves," Carla Toscanini wrote to her daughter, Wanda Horowitz, "but for those who are 50 and over, it is very sad...

...In April 1938, he and his wife again traveled around the country...

...During the summer of 1933, the Polish-Jewish violinist Bronislaw Huberman persuaded Toscanini that he could reinforce his anti-Fascist position by accepting a long-standing invitation to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic...

...He returned to the festival in 1931 and was to have gone back in 1933, but in January of that year Hitler came to power...

...The farmers were overjoyed to be able to present Mrs...

...One sensed only an infinite sadness, and when we left we were both crying...

...On reading of Toscanini's decision, his colleague Serge Koussevitzky wrote to him: "Allow me to express my deep admiration...

...Among Toscani-ni's classmates at the Parma Conservatory was a certain Zaccaria Levi—of the "Israelite" religion, according to the school records...

...they spent a day with Weizmann at Rehovot, and they returned to Ramot Hashavim, where they wept on being given the first oranges from "their" plot of land...

...He supported Italian intervention against the Germanic nations during World War I because, like many other Italians with social-democratic leanings, he saw the war as a means both for wresting from Austro-Hungary its remaining Italian territories (the Trent and Trieste areas) and for democratizing Europe...

...All these people had been raised in the world of German culture...

...The piece was not performed on that series, but Toscanini later changed his mind and conducted it elsewhere...

...By that time Toscanini had become deeply involved in the struggle against Fascism, and against anti-Semitism in particular...

...Toscanini said it was difficult for him to speak because of the power of the impressions he had received...

...She has recounted that when she told her father of her decision to marry Horowitz—whom she had met earlier that \ear when he had played with the New York Philharmonic under Toscanini's direction—her father reminded her of the Italian proverb, "Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi" ("Wile and cattle from your own village"), but did not otherwise oppose the match...

...One day, Toscanini and Huberman were overtaken by a storm while out for a ride...

...One of its administrators recalled years later: Nearly all of these farmers Were professors, doctors, lawyers, who had decided...

...Toscanini was also to have returned to Salzburg that summer, but when Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg made concessions to Hitler in February, Toscanini immediately cabled the festival's directors to say that he would not be back...

...but several of the organizers felt that bringing the exhibition to Israel at this time would seem to some people, both in Israel and in Italy, to be a show of solidarity with the policies of the current Israeli government...

...Both concert programs were repeated in Cairo and Alexandria at the end of Toscanini's stay in the Middle East, but before leaving Palestine, he told Huberman that he would come back—and so he did, again at his own expense...

...In 1936, again at Huberman's behest, Toscanini traveled to Palestine at his own expense to conduct the first concerts of the Palestine Orchestra (later to become the Israel Philharmonic), an ensemble made up largely of refugees from Nazi persecution...

...The city had a Jewish population of 700 in those days, out of a total population of 47,000...

...I have only one way of thinking and acting...

...Toscanini had grown up in poverty and had acquired radical anti-monarchist and anti-clericalist sympathies from his father, who had fought as a volunteer under Garibaldi in the struggle for Italian reunification...

...he visited Hebrew University and was greeted with thunderous applause when he entered a hall to attend a lecture on Hebrew literature, which was translated into English for him...

...today there are only 30 Jews in Parma, although the total population has more than quadrupled...

...The decision cost him a great deal, artistically (but not economically, as he had conducted gratis at Bayreuth), and he later referred to his withdrawal from the festival as "the deepest sorrow of my life...

...His clashes with the Fascists began a few weeks after Mussolini's accession to power and worsened throughout the 1920s as the party became ever more dominant...

...The war achieved only the first of these goals...

...they were all music lovers and, like the whole country, were full of love and gratitude for Toscanini and Huberman, who had brought such unexpected musical events to their new country...

...They had a lively conversation that afternoon, and Toscanini was so impressed by these people that he said he would come back soon...

...By the time King Victor Emmanuel III asked Mussolini to form a government (October 1922), Toscanini was beginning his second season as artistic director of Milan's Teatro alia Scala, which he had completely reorganized and revitalized...

...Toscanini also accepted invitations to conduct orchestras in other countries geographically close and/or politically opposed to Nazi Germany: Sweden, France, Denmark, Holland and Great Britain...

...The maturation of his opposition to Mussolini and Hitler is the most singular episode in the story of musicians' reactions to our century's manifold forms of political oppression...

...At Toscanini's first concert in Tel Aviv, people who had been unable to obtain tickets surrounded the area and even climbed onto the roof, hoping to hear something...

...a second program was also performed in ail three cities...

...As a token of gratitude for Toscanini's action towards the Jewish people . . . the kibbutz dedicated a piece of land to him...

...Nothing has yet come to light about Toscanini's attitude towards the Jews in the early decades of his long career, except a passing, intolerant reference to a Jewish composer from Turin, Leone Sinigaglia, whose music he occasionally conducted...

...Albert Einstein, himself in exile in the United States, wrote to Toscanini: "I feel a need to tell you for once how much I admire and honor you...

...I hate compromise...

...He insisted that Jewish musicians who had lost their positions at La Scala in 1938 and who had also managed to survive the German occupation (September 1943-April 1945) were to be re-engaged—first among them, Vittore Veneziani, the chorus director...

...On departing, Toscanini promised to return again as soon as possible, but international events were to render that promise unfulfillable...

...In 1929, the 62-year-old Toscanini, angered and perplexed by the Fascists' attempts to suppress internal freedom and to transform Italy into a belligerent power, and worn out by his heavy workload in Milan, resigned from La Scala...

...In the fight against the Fascist criminals, too, you have shown yourself to be a man of greatest dignity...

...Last spring, the documentary exhibition, "Arturo Toscanini from 1915 to 1946: Art in the Shadow of Politics"—sponsored by the Parma-based Emilia-Romagna Symphony Orchestra—visited Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium, following its stays in Parma and New York's Library and Museum of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center...

...This time Hitler did not respond, and by the end of May Toscanini had made his decision...

...He attended a performance of The Merchant of Venice at the Habimah Theater...

...Several friends reported that while laughing off the Tosenstein nonsense he remarked on the fact that many Italian Jews had taken place-names as surnames (Toscanini means "little Tuscans...

...He was to have conducted two special concerts at Bologna's Teatro Comunale in 1931...

...Switzerland was his last "front" in Europe before the war...

...A few weeks later, Hitler entered Austria, and an overwhelming majority of the Austrian people voted in favor of unification with the German Reich...

...When Toscanini ;T Went to ^ Palestine HARVEY SACHS During the 1930s, when Arturo Toscanini was the most celebrated performing musician in the world, he embarrassed various Fascist governments by refusing to conduct in the countries they dominated—in his native Italy from 1931 on, in Germany from 1933 and in Austria from 1938...

...When he attempted to enter the theater that evening, he was assaulted by party supporters...

...In 1919, in the midst of grave postwar social and economic upheaval, Toscanini joined Benito Mussolini's new political movement, the Fasci di combatlimenio (combat groups), which advocated a Bolshevik-like platform well to the left of that of the Italian Socialist Party...

...Although she is thoroughly aware of the complexity of the situation (as are the rest of us), she believes that if her grandfather were alive today he would not make the great gesture of support for the Israel of Prime Minister Shamir that he made for the not-yet-born Israel of 50 years ago...

...Sinigaglia is a Jew, in case you didn't know it, and he has been buzzing around me for several years, entreating me, annoying me, etc., etc.," he wrote exasper-atedly to the organizer of the concert...

...their driver brought them to a nearby kibbutz, Ramot Hashavim, to the surprise of the settlement's inhabitants...

...Some of his colleagues (including Bruno Walter, who.was Jewish) and the Salzburg Festival's administration urged him to reconsider, but he replied: "My decision, however painful, is final...

...The orchestra was Huberman's brainchild...

...Toscanini with a basket of eggs from their henhouses...

...There were more visits...

...For my tranquility, for yours, and for everyone's it is better not to think any longer about my coming to Bayreuth...

...As the exhibition's organizer, I sent an open letter, shortly before the Tel Aviv opening, to Israeli artists and intellectuals, the main part of which read: The current crisis in Israel has aroused much consternation among the exhibition's organizers, especially since the contents of the display are not purely artistic: They include letters, photographs and other documents that bear witness to Toscanini's staunch opposition to Fascism and Nazism and to his generous solidarity with the Jews at the most terrible moment in their history...

...You have acted not only as a great artist but also as a great man...

...Everywhere, enthusiasm and gratitude were boundless...

...We all realize that Israel, like any other country, must resolve its own internal problems...

...His success at Bayreuth was unparalleled...

...most of his non-Italian friends and colleagues in New York were Jews, and in 1933 hk daughter Wanda, the youngest of his three children, married the Russian-Jewish pianist Vladimir Horowitz...

...In September 1938, the Italian government began to promulgate anti-Semitic laws, and the day after the first of these regulations had been published, Fascist police informers who tapped Toscanini's telephone line reported that he had called the decrees "medieval stuff...

...Roberto Farinacci, one of Mussolini's more powerful and ruthless subordinates, referred to Toscanini as "the honorary Jew" (the epithet was intended as an insult), while Goebbels' propaganda machine went a step further and leaked the disinformation that the conductor was an authentic Jew whose real name was Arthur Tosenstein...

...Within two months of the Nazi takeover, Toscanini co-signed a cable to Hitler from a group of musicians active in America, protesting the ostracism of Jewish musicians in Germany...

...Toscanini was to have returned to Salzburg, but when the Austrian chancellor made concessions to Hitler, Toscanini immediately cabled the festivals directors to say that he would not be back...

...Although the conductor was a patriot all his life, he viewed his country's vicissitudes from a radical-internationalistic point of view...

...There is, however, a postscript to the story...

...But the exhibition did visit Israel...

...Toscanini toured the country, from its biblical and other historic sites to its potash plants and agricultural settlements...

...Sir Ernst Gombrich, the Viennese-born art historian, recently informed this writer: "When my parents had to emigrate, Signora Carla Toscanini was much concerned and during a visit to London not only spoke to Mrs...

...When the new party veered sharply to the right, however, and began to advocate violence as a means of obtaining power, Toscanini withdrew his support...

...to become agriculturalists in Palestine after the destruction of their existences in Germany...

...In 1930, Toscanini had become the first non-German conductor to perform at the Bayreuth Festival...

...He was not seriously hurt, but he vowed not to conduct again in his native country until the Fascists and the monarchy were overthrown...