(b Orvieto, 5 Feb 1848; d Rome, 2 Feb 1921). Italian conductor and composer. The leading Italian conductor of the generation between Faccio and Toscanini, he was an immediate success from his début in Aida (Perugia,1874), soon working at the Teatro Apollo, Rome (1874-80), and in Bologna (1881-6); chief conductorships at the Madrid opera (1887-93), Covent Garden (1888-1905) and the new Metropolitan in New York (1893-1903) followed, though in later years, as the Wagner repertory began to be sung in German, he confined his activities to Italy, South America, Spain and Portugal. He was an authoritarian, charismatic figure who put great emphasis on fidelity to the score and championed the German classics. As a composer he never fulfilled the promise of his early incidental music for Cleopatra (1877) and the opera Isora di Provenza (1884).
