Robert Clements wrote:

>Deryk Barker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>Robert Clements ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>>
>>>Politically, he loathed facism/naziism with a fury; an attitude which
>>>cost him quite a few opportunities in Europe.
>>
>>Some of this may have been the zeal of the reformed, though: Toscanini
>>actually stood as a fascist candidate in the 1919 (?) Italian elections.
>
>1917 or 1919...  i can't quite remember myself; but it definitely occurred
>at a very early stage in Fascist politics, when it could be plausibly be
>considered as an extension of the Italian revolutionary movements of the
>19th century.

It was 1919.  A possible explanation was that Italy felt short changed
in the victors' division of the spoils after WWI.  (Italy had been in an
alliance w/ Germany and Austria, the "Triple Alliance", before the war
started, but stayed neutral originally, then joining the war on the side
of the Allies against Germany and Austria.) Fascism may have had an appeal
to the population from a purely nationalistic point of view.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, he became a strong opponent of Fascism,
refusing on numerous occasions (including the premiere of *Turandot*) to
conduct the Fascist hymn.  FDR had to intervene w/ Mussolini in 1938 to
have Toscanini's passport restored.  As the first non-German conductor at
Bayreuth, he broke with the festival in 1933 over Hitler's ban on Jewish
artists and never returned.  Similarly, his appeearances at the Salzburg
Festival ended abruptly w/ the Anschluss.

Walter Meyer