After a decades-long absence, in January 2025 Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music is once again on the program of the New York Philharmonic. The Italian conductor Daniele Rustioni, in his debut performances with the Phil, will open a series of three concerts with Mario’s Merchant of Venice Overture followed by Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with soloist Joshua Bell and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. All four of the composer’s grandchildren and his two great-granddaughters plan to attend the performance on Saturday, 11 January, which has been sold out for weeks.
Rustioni is already well-known to the New York concert-going public. In November 2024 The Metropolitan Opera appointed him principal guest conductor for three years starting with the 2025-2026 season. A fixture at the major opera houses and orchestras around the world, he was named “Best Conductor of the Year” at the International Opera Awards in 2022. He previously conducted Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Merchant of Venice Overture with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Turin this past October. He also conducted I Profeti, the composer’s Second Concerto for violin and orchestra, with the Orchestra della Toscana in Florence in 2019.
The Merchant of Venice Overture (1933) is the third of 11 overtures inspired by Shakespeare plays that Castelnuovo-Tedesco penned. Published by Ricordi in 1934, the piece had its premiere performance in Turin the following year with the RAI Orchestra, conducted by Massimo Freccia. Freccia also conducted the first American performance of the work at the New York Philharmonic in June 1939, just a month before Mario himself emigrated to the United States. The New York Philharmonic also performed the Overture in a concert series conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos in January 1941.
The work is dedicated to the great conductor Arturo Toscanini. In his memoir, Una vita di musica, Mario has this to say about The Merchant of Venice Overture:
The case of The Merchant of Venice is different. It would not have been possible to summarize the entire sequence of events of the play in one piece; it is too complex, so the character of Portia is consciously ignored. Rather, this overture is an introduction to the first part of the play, beginning with the introduction of Shylock through to his desperate cry when he realizes his daughter has disappeared. This work, too, is based on the thematic counterpoint between the bitter, tortured character of Shylock and the carefree bravado of the Venetian gentlemen (from an ethnic point of view, I would describe it as the conflict between the Jewish character and the Latin one). Here as well, the exposition, full of contrasts, refers to the conflicts between Shylock and his antagonists. The central section, idyllic, celestial, almost a gondoliera, refers to the affectionate exchange between Lorenzo and Jessica. The final recapitulation (condensed, in this case with a rapid, dramatic ascent) refers to the return of Shylock, his exhausting search, and the final explosion of pain and anger: “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!”*
*unpublished English translation by James Westby and Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco.