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Daniil AmfiteatrovItalian-American composer and conductor of Russian origin
Date of Birth: 29.10.1901
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Daniil Amfitheatrov
Daniil Amfitheatrov was an Italian-American composer and conductor of Russian descent. Born in 1902, his mother was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and introduced him to music at the age of six. The Amfitheatrov family had emigrated from Russia to Italy in 1904 after Daniil's father was released from Siberian exile.
In 1914, Amfitheatrov enrolled in Ottorino Respighi's class at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. Two years later, the family returned to Russia, and Daniil continued his studies at the Petrograd Conservatory under Nikolai Shcherbachev and Jazeps Vitols. Following the October Revolution in 1921, he left for Czechoslovakia to pursue his education and returned to Rome in 1922 to study under Respighi again. He received his diploma from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in 1924.
Shortly after graduating, Amfitheatrov joined the Santa Cecilia Orchestra as a pianist, organist, and assistant choir conductor. In the same year, the orchestra, under the direction of Bernardino Molinari, performed Amfitheatrov's early work, "Poem of the Sea."
During the 1920s and 1930s, Amfitheatrov held positions as the artistic director of the Italian radio departments in Genoa, Trieste, and Turin. He conducted numerous concerts and opera productions and made his debut as a film composer in 1934 with Max Ophüls' "La Signora di tutti." Dimitri Mitropoulos, who conducted Amfitheatrov's work "American Panorama" in 1937 in Turin, invited the composer to the United States. In October of the same year, Amfitheatrov, along with his wife and two children, left Europe.
From 1937 to 1938, he worked as the assistant conductor for the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He then relocated to Hollywood and signed an exclusive five-year contract as a film composer with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1939. Over the next two decades, Amfitheatrov composed music for more than 50 films from major Hollywood studios. He was nominated for an Academy Award twice, including for his work on Walt Disney's "Song of the South."
