Conductor Nello Santi – who conducted 401 performances at The Met – has died at 88

The conductor Nello Santi has died at 88. He last worked at La Scala in November 2017, when he was 86, conducting Nabucco.

He was born in 1931 in Adria in the Veneto region. He was the director of Zurich Opera from 1958 to 1969. In 1960, Santi conducted the Wiener Philharmoniker for Don Carlo in Salzburg with Boris Christoff and Ettore Bastianini. At The Royal Opera House in London he conducted Joan Sutherland in La traviata.

He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, where he returned regularly, in 1962 conducting Un ballo in maschera with Leonie Rysanek, Carlo Bergonzi and Robert Merrill. He conducted 401 performances at the Met including an Aida with Leontyne Price, Bergonzi and Bonaldo Giaiotti, La traviata with Anna Moffo, as well as Otello, Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Tosca, La forza del destino and so on, until 2000.

Santi first collaborated with La Scala in 1971 with Madama Butterfly, starring Gabriella Tucci and Giacomo Aragall, and then in Liliana Cavani's La traviata in 2017 with Anna Netrebko, Francesco Meli and Leo Nucci, who would also be the protagonist of the Nabucco later that year.

Santi's name is linked with that of Toscanini and the era of the great voices: Alfredo Kraus, Renata Scotto, Franco Corelli, Birgit Nilsson, Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé and many others.

Nello Santi
September 22, 1931 – February 6, 2020

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.