Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli drunk!

In a review of the book by Carlo Maria Dominici - a book which I have not seen- , Cesare Galla [source in Italian] writes: 'Evidently, the Calabrian-American boy must have impressed the great international concert pianist... His memories are lucid and precise, painting an image of the Brescian pianist that doesn't always coincide with the mannered one, established through the testimonies of friends and relatives, colleagues, and fans. What's striking are his quirks of character, his inviolable routines in the household, the family authoritarianism that was certainly widespread at the time, the almost fifty-year-old's penchant for surprising his sixteen-year-old student, and his oblique and ironically disguised humor. His demand that the boy call him "dad" when they were in public is thought-provoking—due to the psychological implications.

Colpiscono le bizzarrie del carattere, le scelte abitudinarie inviolabili nel ménage domestico, l’autoritarismo familiare peraltro all’epoca sicuramente diffuso, il gusto del quasi cinquantenne nello stupire il suo allievo sedicenne, il suo umorismo obliquo e ironicamente mascherato. Fa pensare – per le implicazioni psicologiche – la sua pretesa di essere chiamato papà dal ragazzo, quando si trovavano in pubblico.

Dominici's memoir becomes almost a news story when it recounts two episodes that occurred between June 1967 in Brescia and the same month in 1968 in Rimini, when the crisis erupted that led Michelangeli to abandon Italy forever. In Brescia, the student was sent to look for his teacher, who had disappeared as the time for his recital at the piano festival that bore his name approached, and a packed theater awaited him with growing impatience. Dominici decided to tour the taverns, and the strategy proved successful: in two downtown establishments, people told him they had seen him, and at the third, he found him fully dressed for the concert, sitting with other patrons playing cards and drinking white wine. Somehow he persuaded him to appear at the theater, and the artist agreed on the condition that no one backstage could see him. He entered the stage 45 minutes late, according to his student, having perfectly concealed his drunkenness. The success was resounding. As to the reasons for such behaviour, no hypothesis is respectfully advanced...​ (The Rimini event is discussed in the USA 1966 page)