Massimo Freccia

Massimo Filippo Antongiulio Maria Freccia (19 September 1906 – 16 November 2004) was an Italian American conductor. He had an international reputation but never held a post as music director of a major orchestra or opera house. Unusually for an Italian, he built his career around symphonic music rather than opera. For several years he was an assistant to Arturo Toscanini, whom he venerated, and he was regularly invited by Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Massimo Freccia came from a wealthy background and counted royalty and aristocrats among his friends. He was born on 19 September 1906 in the Tuscan village of Valdibure, near Pistoia, not far from Florence. His father was a solicitor and landowner, his mother from an aristocratic Pistoian family. She was a good amateur pianist, and encouraged Massimo's growing interest in music, engaging a violin teacher for him when he was six. He had no formal school education.

When World War I broke out, his Russian great-aunt came to live with them. Brought up by his mother on Vivaldi and Corelli, he was introduced to Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Wagner which his great-aunt played for hours on the piano. She recounted tales of her youth in Saint Petersburg when she met Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.

In 1923, when he was 17, Freccia went to the Florence Conservatory of Music, where he became friends with the composer Luigi Dallapiccola, who introduced him to the music of the contemporary school of Italian non-operatic composers such as Gian Francesco Malipiero, Giorgio Federico Ghedini, Goffredo Petrassi and Alfredo Casella.

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