December 1967. In the night between 10th and 11th Victor de Sabata experienced a fatal heart attack. Aged 75, ten years after his farewell to the stages, ten years after Arturo Toscanini’s death, his body returned to Milan and stopped in the opera house that was “Toscanini’s”. The funeral went through the same ritual: for him too the orchestra played the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica. Gianandrea Gavazzeni, who had taken his position, should have conducted it. But this gentleman gifted with great sensitivity had refused: “I was artistic director. We decided that La Scala orchestra should perform without baton what de Sabata had conducted for Toscanini. In these two departed’s walk toward mystery there was a meeting that could not be disrupted by any other intrusion”.

Forty years after his death, La Scala remembers Victor de Sabata with a “dedicated” event. On 5 December at 6 pm Eliana de Sabata, the professor Quirino Principe and the pianist Alessandro Marangoni will take part in a musical event in the Foyer. They will discuss de Sabata as conductor, but also as composer. The event will also be the opportunity to hear some of his composition in absolute premiere, as Alessandro Marangoni has discovered ten new pieces for piano. Amongst them are the transcriptions for piano of two symphonic poems by de Sabata, Juventus(1919)and Gethsemani (1925), which Marangoni will perform. In addition, Daniel Barenboim will choose one piece of which he will give a personal interpretation in homage to the artist who in 1939 conducted Tristan und Isolde at La Scala and soon after in Bayreuth – which was to be key to the critical success of Wagner in Italy.