Vittorio Maria Vanzo

Vittorio Maria Vanzo (Padua, 1862 – Milan, 1945) was an Italian conductor, pianist and composer whose career unfolded mainly between Milan and the leading European stages of his day. His name is closely associated with the promotion of Wagner's music in Italy in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

He studied with Bazzini at the Milan Conservatory. His early interest in Wagner was strengthened after he met the composer in person in Palermo in 1882. As a conductor, he introduced Die Walküre to Italy with its Italian premiere in Turin (1891), and staged the Milan premiere of Götterdämmerung (1896). He also conducted Italian repertoire in Moscow (1897) and visited Buenos Aires in 1900. He retired from conducting in 1906.

As a pianist he enjoyed a good reputation; Grieg compared him favourably with Liszt and Rubinstein. He undertook numerous concert tours, often accompanying his wife, the singer Anna Kribel, with whom he founded a singing school in Milan. His opera Edipo re was composed in 1893 but was never staged, and two other operas, Fosca and Pamela, were left unfinished. Lubino, a one-act operetta premiered in Milan in 1887, was published under the pseudonym Canard.

Today his musical legacy is largely preserved in the library of the Milan Conservatory, where songs, piano pieces, chamber music, small-scale choral works and a symphony can be found. He also composed a Requiem Mass.