Film
In December 1943, Toscanini made a 31-minute film for the United States Office of War Information called Hymn of the Nations, directed by Alexander Hammid. It was mostly filmed in NBC's Studio 8-H and consists of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in a performance of Verdi's Overture to La Forza del Destino and Verdi's "Hymn of the Nations" (Inno delle nazioni), which contains national anthems of England, France, and Italy (the World War I allied nations), to which Toscanini added the Soviet "Internationale" and "The Star Spangled Banner". Tenor Jan Peerce and the Westminster Choir performed in the latter work and the film was narrated by Burgess Meredith.
The film was released by RCA/BMG on DVD in 2004. By this time the "Internationale" had been cut from the 1943 film, but the complete "Hymn of the Nations" can still be heard in all releases of the audio recording of the film issued by RCA. Hymn of the Nations was nominated for a 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
Toscanini: The Maestro is a 1985 documentary made for cable television. The film features archival footage of the conductor and interviews with musicians who worked with him. This film was released on VHS and in 2004 on the same DVD with Hymn of the Nations.
Toscanini is the subject of the 1988 fictionalized biography Il giovane Toscanini (Young Toscanini), starring C. Thomas Howell and Dame Elizabeth Taylor, and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It received scathing reviews and was never officially released in the United States. The film is a fictional recounting of the events that led up to Toscanini making his conducting debut in Rio de Janeiro in 1886. Although nearly all of the plot is embellished, the events surrounding the sudden and unexpected conducting debut are based on fact.
Read more about this topic: Arturo Toscanini
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