Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

The Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino was founded by Vittorio Gui in 1928 as the Stabile Orchestrale Fiorentina and from the outset took part in concerts and opera performances at Florence’s Teatro Comunale, now the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Conductors and international audiences have long regarded it as one of the world’s leading orchestras.

The Orchestra acquired its present name in 1933, when the city’s May Festival was established. Gui’s successors as principal conductor of the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino were Mario Rossi from 1937 and Bruno Bartoletti after the World War II. Important chapters in the Orchestra’s history have been written by Riccardo Muti (1969–81), Zubin Mehta (1985–2017) and Fabio Luisi (2018–19). Zubin Mehta has been the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino’s honorary conductor for life since 2006, continuing to leave his mark on the festival as one of its leading figures and offering his fatherly advice.

In the course of its history the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino has performed under some of the world’s greatest conductors, including Victor De Sabata, Antonio Guarnieri, Gino Marinuzzi, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Tullio Serafin, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Issay Dobrowen, Jonel Perlea, Erich Kleiber, Artur Rodziński, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Thomas Schippers, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Carlo Maria Giulini, Georges Prêtre, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Carlos Kleiber, Georg Solti, Riccardo Chailly, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Seiji Ozawa, Daniele Gatti and John Eliot Gardiner.

Among the composers who have conducted their own works – in many cases world premieres – are Richard Strauss, Pietro Mascagni, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Goffredo Petrassi, Luigi Dallapiccola, Krzysztof Penderecki and Luciano Berio. Since the 1950s the Orchestra has made numerous recordings for sound carriers, radio and television, and several have received international prizes, including a Grammy Award in 1990. To mark the 80th anniversary of its formation, the Orchestra was awarded Florence’s Fiorino d’Oro in 2008.

Numerous international tours under Zubin Mehta have taken the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America in a wide-ranging repertory featuring not only concert programmes but also operas. The orchestra made its Salzburg Festival debut during the summer of 1996 and returned to Salzburg at Whitsun 2021 – 25 years later – again under Zubin Mehta.