Early life and background The Abbado family enjoyed both wealth and respect in the community until Abbado's great-grandfather gambled away the family fortune. His son, Abbado's grandfather, Michele Abbado, became a professor of
botany at the
University of Turin. He re-established the family's reputation and also showed talent as an amateur musician. Born in
Milan,
Italy on 26 June 1933, Claudio Abbado was the son of violinist Michelangelo Abbado, and the brother of the musician
Marcello Abbado (born 1926). His father, a professional violinist and a professor at the
Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, was his first piano teacher. His mother, Maria Carmela Savagnone, also was an adept pianist. (Marcello Abbado later became a concert pianist, composer, and teacher at the
Rossini Conservatory in
Pesaro.) His sister also exhibited talent in music but did not pursue a musical career after her marriage. His other brother later became a successful architect. Abbado's childhood encompassed the Nazi occupation of Milan. During that time, Abbado's mother spent time in prison for harbouring a Jewish child. This period solidified his anti-fascist political sentiments. Claudio himself is known for having a famous anecdote about how when he was just eleven years old he wrote "Viva
Bartók" on a local wall which caught the attention of the
Gestapo and sent them on the hunt for the culprit. His passionate opposition to fascism continued into his adult years. It was upon hearing
Antonio Guarnieri's conducting of
Claude Debussy's
Nocturnes that Abbado resolved to become a conductor himself. At age 15, Abbado first met
Leonard Bernstein when Bernstein was conducting a performance featuring Abbado's father as a soloist. Bernstein commented, "You have the eye to be a conductor."
Education and early engagements Abbado studied piano, composition, and conducting at the
Milan Conservatory, and graduated with a degree in piano in 1955. Abbado and Mehta both joined the academy chorus to be able to watch such conductors as
Bruno Walter and
Herbert von Karajan in rehearsal. which resulted in a number of operatic conducting engagements in Italy. In 1959, he conducted his first opera,
The Love for Three Oranges, in Trieste. He made his
La Scala conducting debut in 1960. In 1963, he won the
Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize for conductors,
Conducting career In 1969, Abbado became the principal conductor at
La Scala. Subsequently, he became the company's music director in 1972. He took the title of joint artistic director, along with
Giorgio Strehler and
Carlo Maria Badini, in 1976. During his tenure, he extended the opera season to four months, and focused on giving inexpensive performances for the working class and students. In addition to the standard opera repertoire, he presented contemporary operas, including works of
Luigi Dallapiccola and of
Luigi Nono, in particular, the world premiere of Nono's ''
Al gran sole carico d'amore''. In 1976, he brought the La Scala company to the US for its American debut in
Washington, D.C. for the
American Bicentennial. In 1982, he founded the
Filarmonica della Scala for the performance of orchestral repertoire by the house orchestra in concert. Abbado remained affiliated with La Scala until 1986. On 7 October 1968, Abbado made his debut with the
Metropolitan Opera with
Don Carlo. He began to work more extensively with the
Vienna Philharmonic (VPO) after 1971, which included two engagements as conductor of the orchestra's New Year's Day concert, in 1988 and 1991. He was a recipient of both the Philharmonic Ring and the Golden Nicolai Medal from the
Vienna Philharmonic. He served as principal guest conductor of the
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) from 1975 to 1979 and became its principal conductor in 1979, From 1982 to 1985, he was principal guest conductor of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). In 1986, Abbado became the
Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) of the city of Vienna, and in parallel, was music director of the
Vienna State Opera from 1986 to 1991. During his Berlin tenure, Abbado oversaw an increased presence of contemporary music in the orchestra's programming, in contrast to Karajan who had focused on late Romantic works. In 1992, he co-founded 'Berlin Encounters', a
chamber music festival. In 1998, he announced his departure from the Berlin Philharmonic after the expiration of his contract in 2002. Before his departure, he was diagnosed with
stomach cancer in 2000, which led to his cancellation of a number of engagements with the orchestra. Subsequent medical treatment led to the removal of a portion of his digestive system, In 2004, Abbado returned to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time since his departure as chief conductor, for concerts of Mahler's
Symphony No. 6 recorded live for commercial release. The resulting CD won Best Orchestral Recording and Record of the Year in
Gramophone magazine's 2006
awards. The Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic established the
Claudio Abbado Kompositionspreis (Claudio Abbado Composition Prize) in his honour, which has since been awarded in 2006, 2010 and 2014.
Other orchestras and post-Berlin work In addition to his work with long-established ensembles, Abbado founded a number of new orchestras with younger musicians at their core. These included the European Community Youth Orchestra (later the
European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO)), in 1978, and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (GMJO; Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra) in (1988). In both instances, musicians from the respective youth orchestras founded spinoff orchestras, the
Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) and the
Mahler Chamber Orchestra, respectively. Abbado worked with both these ensembles regularly as well and was artistic advisor to the COE, though he did not hold a formal title with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In turn, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra formed the core of the newest incarnation of the
Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which Abbado and Michael Haefliger of the Lucerne Festival established in the early 2000s, and which featured musicians from various orchestras with which Abbado had long-standing artistic relationships. From 2004 until his death, Abbado was the musical and artistic director of the
Orchestra Mozart,
Bologna, Italy. In addition to his work with the EUYO and the GMJO, Abbado worked with the
Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar of Venezuela.
Death Abbado died from
stomach cancer in Bologna on 20 January 2014 at the age of 80. One week later, in tribute to him, the orchestra "Filarmonica della Scala", conducted by
Daniel Barenboim, performed the slow movement of
Beethoven's
Symphony No. 3 (Marcia funebre: Adagio assai in C minor) to an empty theatre, with the performance relayed to a crowd in the square in front of the opera house and live-streamed via La Scala's website. Abbado's mortal remains were cremated and an urn with a part of his ashes was buried at the cemetery of the 15th-century chapel of
Fex-Crasta in the
Val Fex. It is a part of the municipality of
Sils-Maria, a village in the
Swiss canton of
Graubünden where Abbado had a vacation home. His musical estate was transferred to the
Berlin State Library where it is being catalogued and digitised. ==Personal life==