Religious Artists

WHEN ONE surveys what the mainstream media has to say about Arturo Toscanini and Maria Callas, both of whom occupy distinguished niches in the hall of fame of opera and classical music, one finds practically no mention at all about their private religious lives, leaving one with the impression that both Toscanini and Callas were not religious people.

It indeed appears that most lay journalists these days have been spellbound into believing that genius and religion have nothing in common. It is believed that people who are great in science, in art, in statesmanship, etc, do not usually bother themselves with such childish pursuits.

The media also seems to convey the idea that it is possible to understand a human being apart from his or her religious dimension. This rather one sided approach, however, is not conducive to a real exploration into human nature, because religion, or the absence of it, forms an essential part of who we are, and this is especially so for artists and scientists.

In fact, many acute observers of human nature have come to the conclusion that a lack of religious sensitivity is destructive to artistic creativity.

Art without God?

This was brought out to me one day during a conversation I had in 1975 with Cesare Augusto Tallone, a master tuner and piano-maker who was then 80 years old. Tallone, a learned, soft-spoken man, was a child of art. His father was a distinguished painter and his mother a poet, and each of his four brothers had managed to make a name for themselves in some field of human endeavour. During his long life, Tallone had been personally acquainted with many of the great musicians of the 20th century. For years he worked as the personal tuner of the great pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and he was also adviser to Toscanini himself. That day our conversation fell on the subject of famous concert artists. At a certain point I mentioned someone whose name was on everyone’s lips, only to notice that the name evoked no response at all from Tallone.

“Don’t you like him?” I asked.

“He is a talented technician,” he replied laconically, and then added, “but he’ll never become a great artist.”

“Why not?” I asked, surprised.

“Because he doesn’t believe in God!” was his surprising explanation.

At the time this seemed to me an exaggerated statement; that it was inspired by fanatical religious sentiment. But in time I began to have second thoughts.

I began to see that religious faith opens the mind and soul to realities that are not normally accessible to the precise, yet cold, powers of intellect. Those who believe in God have an extended vision of life and creation; they have a window which looks out into infinity. Atheists, however intelligent they may be, are more restricted within the narrow confines of time and space. Their materialistic outlook has negative repercussions on their lives of feeling, on their creative fantasy and artistic sensibility. When these faculties are mortified even the most talented artist is disadvantaged with respect to one who believes.

Many agnostics or atheists will disagree, and cite numerous names of artists or scientists who did not believe in God yet, statistically speaking, Cesare Tallone seems to be right.

In his autobiography, the celebrated comedian Charly Chaplin recounts an enlightening episode. Chaplin had invited some friends over for dinner. These were the famous Russian pianist and composer Sergei Vasilievich Rachmainov, the conductor John Barbirolli, and the Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz and wife Wanda, who was Toscanini’s daughter. At a certain point the conversation fell on the subject of religion, and Chaplin declared that he did not believe in God. Surprised, Rachmainov replied, “What?! Can true art exist without religion?”

La Divina

One of the most striking features about Maria Callas, hailed La Divina (The Divine), was a deep religious faith. This is clearly shown by her letters, and is attested by Callas’ husband, the Italian industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini. In 1980 I edited a collection containing Meneghini’s memoirs called Maria Callas Mia Moglie (Maria Callas My Wife). In one of my many encounters with Meneghini, the industrialist revealed to me many precious details on the life of this extraordinary woman, such as that of the private audience they had with Pope Pius XII in the spring of 1954. During the audience, Pius XII, who was a great lover of classical music, conversed with Callas on the subject of the German composer Richard Wagner for over half an hour, thus demonstrating that the Pope thought highly of Callas’ opinion on the German composer’s religious music.

Meneghini, a lukewarm Catholic, told me that his wife had, “an almost fanatical attitude to religion. In the language she used, in the letters she would write to me,” Meneghini told me, “the name of God was in practically every sentence. Success, health, fine weather, and all the good things in life, Maria believed had been bestowed on her out of God’s goodwill. She had a very individual concept of God. Her God was always on her side, and would protect her from all her enemies. She even attributed her triumphs to God’s justice, and would say, ‘God has seen my sacrifices and my sufferings, and has rewarded me.’”

Meneghini also revealed that Maria prayed very frequently, but in her “own way,” and added, “Before entering the stage she would first go to a church, and remain genuflected for long periods – like a lifeless statue. Whenever she sang at Milan’s La Scala theatre, I had to first accompany her to the Duomo, the city’s great Gothic cathedral, where she would kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary which was then located near the entrance, and she would remain there in prayer for over half an hour”.

Even though Callas had married a Catholic, she remained Greek Orthodox. “She tried to adapt to our Catholic liturgy,” Meneghini told me, “but she preferred her own Orthodox liturgy.”

There is a very significant passage in a letter she wrote to her husband from Argentina in the summer of 1949 which shows this, “Yesterday I went to the Greek-Orthodox church and lit a candle for us two. You see, I feel more at home in my Church than in yours. It’s strange, but that’s the way it is. This may be because I was born into this Church, or perhaps because I perceive the Greek Orthodox faith as warmer and merrier.”

Sweet Tyrant

Toscanini likewise reveals strong religious leanings. I have recently published a book on the extraordinary conductor on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death called Toscanini Dolce Tiranno (Toscanini, the Sweet Tyrant). In the book I paid special attention to the religious dimension behind the man.

It is saddening that numerous biographies on the Maestro contain little or no reference to his religious faith. Toscanini was always very reserved, thus making it difficult to glean something of his inner life from his letters and documents. In the 2,000 or so letters which surfaced after his death, Toscanini never explicitly mentions his religious convictions.

We do have, however, numerous anticlerical statements and condemnations of the clergy. We also know from friends and acquaintances that he was an inveterate blasphemer, and that, during his youth, he liked to style himself a free-thinking atheist, as was fashionable among intellectuals around the end of the 19th century. So it should come as no surprise that many biographers have assumed, more or less tacitly, that he was simply an atheist.

A totally different picture of the Maestro emerges, however, when we study the testimony of those who knew him closely, revealing the picture of a man who had inherited a very Catholic and a very private religious faith from his mother – something which remained in him throughout life.

Consciousness of sin

It was, however, a faith imbued with consciousness of sin, of deep remorse, for example, for his numerous infidelities to his wife, Carla De Martini. Atheists usually do not criticise themselves. Believing in nothing, they have no standard against which to judge themselves. Men of faith, on the other hand, have this standard in their conscience, and often experience deep pain at their incapacity to live up to it.

Toscanini’s mother, Paola, was a devout Catholic, whereas his father, Claudio, who had been a soldier in Garibaldi’s anti-clerical army, was not. However, Claudio respected his wife’s choices and decided to marry in church and baptise all his children.

The fact that it was his mother who transmitted him the faith is substantiated by the Maestro’s own words, and by the testimony of Giuseppe Valdengo, a renown baritone who toured the United States extensively after the Second World War. Valdengo, who sang in the last lyrical operas conducted by Toscanini, was a close confidant of the Maestro.

“Toscanini would often reminiscence,” Valdengo once told me, “about a very old chapel in the centre of Parma, the city of his birth. The church was closed and in a dilapidated condition. He used to say that a large wooden cross stood in front of the entrance to the church, and that passers-by used to touch it and then sign themselves. Later, when Toscanini was in the States, he heard that the wooden cross had disappeared, and the news saddened him. Whenever he met any artist from Parma he would always enquire about its fate, or if he met anyone who was going back to Italy, he would ask them to enquire about the fate of that cross.

“One day Toscanini told me, ‘When I was a child my mother used to tell me that that was the cross Jesus had left there on a night lit by the full moon, and she would always urge me to take off my hat in reverence whenever I went past there.’”

This episode illustrates just how deep and ingrained Toscanini’s faith was.

Reserved Catholic

From historian and researcher Gaspare Nello Vetro, we learn another revealing episode on the Maestro’s life.

Toscanini had spent the Second World War in America, so, when the conflict ended, he decided to visit his native country. One day he went to see his home town. He visited his family home and parish church, the Church of the Annunciation, where he stopped to pray for some time in the chapel of the Immaculate. He then told the parish priest escorting him, “Here, in this chapel, I attended Sunday School, and in this beautiful church I received my first Holy Communion. I can still remember my old parish-priest and the Catechism teacher; she was a very kind lady who had to teach us, young rascals…”

Everyone likes to visit the places of their youth, but it is revealing that Toscanini was particularly drawn to those places where he received his first religious instruction. This is surely not the attitude of one who is insensitive to religion.

It should also be noted that Toscanini spent his teenage years in a boarding school, the Regia Scuola di Musica of Parma. The students were obliged to recite communal prayers first thing in the morning and just before going to bed. Sunday Mass was mandatory, with obligatory Confession before Communion during Christmas and Easter. All this, received during the most formative years of his life, must have engraved itself deeply into his soul. The school reports we have of him testify to a young man who was respected by students and teachers alike.

We know that Toscanini married in church, and that his children were baptised and received a good Christian education. Moreover, his interpretations of sacred music were always particularly intense, especially his Requiem by Verdi and the Missa Solemnis by Beethoven.

Wally and Wanda

In 1972 I had the privilege of writing a biography on Toscanini with the help of two of the conductor’s daughters, Wally and Wanda. When I came to the last days of the Maestro’s life, Wally told me, “Shortly before his death I was in a moral and religious dilemma: I was asking myself if my father was a believer or not; if I should call a priest for confession or not. One day I found the strength to ask him bluntly, ‘Dad, do you believe in God?’ He looked at me with surprise; he had never raised this subject with us, but after a few seconds he replied, ‘Of course I believe in God! I have less faith in priests, though, unless they be saints like Father Carlo Gnocchi.’” The Venerable Carlo Gnocchi, a priest in the diocese of Milan, was the founder of a centre to provide care, rehabilitation and social integration to children who lost limbs during the war. “Gnocchi was a friend of the family, and knew my father well,” Wally said. “I was sure my father would have accepted him as a confessor. When I returned to Italy I referred these words to Fr. Gnocchi, and invited him over to the US”. Unfortunately at that time Fr. Gnocchi was suffering from cancer, and died shortly afterwards in 1956, the year before Toscanini.

From baritone Giuseppe Valdengo we learn of another interesting episode. In 1950 Valdengo, under Toscanini’s direction, was interpreting Falstaff in concert form at the Carnegie Hall in New York.

“I was in the dressing room garnering strength before the performance, when Toscanini entered with his last admonitions. He noticed I was holding something in my hand under my pocket. ‘What’s that in your hand?’ he asked. I showed him a small statue of the Virgin Mary, and told him, ‘She might have pity on me and help me during the performance’. Toscanini laughed and replied, ‘Look at this’. He then produced a small wallet which contained photos of his loved ones, and said, ‘This is Giorgio; he died in infancy. This is Carla, my wife. These are my children Walter, Wally, Wanda; and these are my parents. And this…’ at this point he reached for his pocket on the left side of his jacket, near the heart, ‘… is the Universal Saviour’. But he didn’t tell me who this saviour was. ‘You know,’ he added, ‘the older you get and the closer you need to get to the ‘Father Superior’. When you’re young you think everything will go as you plan it, but as you get older you begin to understand that things go well only if He wants them to go well!’

“It was only later, and from another friend of his, a tenor called Assandri, that I learned that this ‘Father Superior’ was, in fact, a crucifix. I believe he invoked this crucifix before every performance, as it was his habit to remain completely alone in his dressing room for a few moments before entering the stage with his usual verve.

“From Assandri, who waked on the Maestro’s body in the mortuary chapel, I also learned that that same crucifix was placed on his chest.”

Toscanini died on the morning of January 16, 1957. An ictus had left him unconscious for the last 15 days. Last Rites were performed by an American priest. It is said that, when this priest pronounced his name during the ceremony, the Maestro opened his eyes for a moment.

A solemn funeral Mass was celebrated in the Cathedral of New York and, a month later, in the Duomo of Milan, celebrated by Cardinal Montini, later to become Pope Paul VI.