Carlo Maria Giulini, who died on Tuesday at 91, was the leading Italian conductor of his generation and had a dazzling career in his native country, and in Vienna, London, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

A tall man with saturnine good looks and the deportment of a Roman aristocrat, Giulini made no flamboyant gestures to win the adulation of audiences, but he was such a charismatic presence on the rostrum that his popularity was immense.

While Herbert von Karajan was derided for conducting with his eyes closed, when Giulini did the same, he escaped censure. Although he insisted on the highest standards of discipline and artistic integrity, he had nothing of the fiery temperament of some of his compatriots of the baton, obtaining results by persuasiveness and good manners. He rationed his appearances, insisting on time to spend with his family, and confined himself to a repertory that had room for only a few contemporary composers. Thus, he was not well known in New York and Berlin.

He made a sensational Covent Garden debut in 1958, conducting Verdi’s “Don Carlos” in a production by Luchino Visconti that became one of the classics of the postwar repertoire. He rebelled against the decor and production of a “Don Giovanni” at the Edinburgh Festival, conducting it with a minimum of scenery. In 1968, after a production of Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro” in Rome, he became so disenchanted with the management of opera that he was not seen in an opera house for 14 years.

Giulini was a regular guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra for many years from 1955. Walter Legge, the orchestra’s founder, and Karajan, then its principal conductor, had heard him in Milan and engaged him to record Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and Bizet’s “Jeux d’Enfants.” In 1959, Giulini recorded two Mozart operas, “Figaro” and “Don Giovanni,” with the orchestra – the former was preceded by more than 100 hours of rehearsal.

Perhaps his most glorious Philharmonia occasion was the performance of Verdi’s “Requiem” with which he opened the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, when the Philharmonia Chorus made its festival debut. One critic wrote of “Giulini’s magic hands, which seemed to mould the very phrases out of the empty air and give them tangible form and substance.”

A repeat performance in London brought equal acclaim. Giulini later recorded the work and conducted it regularly in the Festival Hall and Albert Hall seasons in the 1960s. In 1963 Giulini and the Philharmonia and Chorus were invited to open the Verdi 150th anniversary celebrations at Parma with the “Requiem.” Although there was resentment beforehand at the choice of a British orchestra, and especially chorus, for this occasion, the event was another triumph – and the local chorus escorted the Philharmonia singers’ buses to the airport the next day, literally singing their praises.

Carlo Maria Giulini was born in Barletta on May 9, 1914. As a boy he played the violin. Later, at the St. Cecilia Academy in Rome, he studied violin and viola with Remy Principe, composition with Alessandro Bustini and conducting with Bernardo Molinari. He also received instruction in conducting from Alfredo Casella in Siena. He then went on to join Rome’s Augusteo Orchestra as a violist, playing under Strauss, Furtwangler, Otto Klemperer, and Bruno Walter. Despite his old viola teacher’s prediction that he would never become a conductor because of his weak elbows, he received a degree in conducting in 1941.

Giulini was conscripted into the Italian army but, as a committed anti-Fascist, went into hiding. When Rome was liberated by the Allies in 1944, he conducted the Augusteo Orchestra in a Brahms program to celebrate the occasion. It was his conducting debut.

He then became assistant conductor of the RAI (Italian Radio) Orchestra in Rome, becoming its principal conductor in 1946. Four years later he participated in the founding of the RAI Orchestra in Milan and was appointed its conductor.

He conducted his first opera, Verdi’s “La Traviata,” in a 1948 broadcast. He made his operatic debut in a theatre, again in “La Traviata,” at Bergamo in 1950. His conducting of Haydn’s then little-known opera “Il Mondo della Luna” was heard by Toscanini, who was influential in arranging Giulini’s La Scala debut in 1950 in Falla’s “Vida Breve.” He became assistant to Victor de Sabata as conductor at La Scala and also conducted at festivals at Florence and Aix.

From 1953 to 1955 Giulini was music director of La Scala. He worked with the producers Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli and with the soprano Maria Callas, conducting her in “La Traviata” and Gluck’s “Alceste.” His British debut was with the Glyndebourne company in Verdi’s “Falstaff” at the 1955 Edinburgh Festival. In November of the same year he made his American debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Giulini conducted the Philharmonia on several of its foreign tours. In 1963, after Legge tried to disband the orchestra and it became the self-governing New Philharmonia, Giulini pledged his support to the players. His conducting of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” with the New Philharmonia and Chorus in Florence the same year matched his Verdi triumph.

One of the few modern composers with whom he was sympathetic was Benjamin Britten. He conducted “Les Illuminations” in Budapest, for example, and an unforgettable performance of “War Requiem” at the 1968 Edinburgh Festival with the three soloists for whom it was written – Galina Vishnevskaya, Peter Pears, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; the composer conducted the chamber orchestra in the Owen settings. Later Giulini recorded “Les Illuminations” and the Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes.”

However, he became disappointed by the New Philharmonia’s decline in artistic standards and withdrew from his special relationship with it. In 1972, he said he could no longer work with any of the London orchestras because of his lack of faith in their artistic managements, although he later conducted the London Philharmonic.

He was wooed back to the Philharmonia at an emotional Edinburgh Festival reunion in 1977 with three concerts of Mozart and Bruckner. The following year he took the orchestra to Barcelona, and in 1981 agreed that, apart from visits with foreign orchestras, he would conduct only the Philharmonia in Britain.

Outside Britain, Giulini’s career was based mainly in America, although from 1973 to 1976 he was music director of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. He also conducted the Vienna Philharmonic, notably at the Salzburg Festival, where he first appeared in 1970 as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, a rare tribute from Karajan to a colleague.

For nine years, beginning in 1969, Giulini was principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony, a lyrical contrast to Sir Georg Solti’s dynamic style, and beginning in 1978 was music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, succeeding Zubin Mehta.

In Los Angeles, where he said his only friend was the comedian Danny Kaye, his contract specifically exempted him from taking any part in the social whirl. He resigned in 1985 to care for his ailing wife.

Giulini’s Verdi performances had an inner incandescence that gave them spiritual depth. If they did not possess the high voltage of Toscanini and de Sabata, they had instead a profound perception of the music’s underlying melancholy, for example even in the comedy Falstaff, he found an unsuspected dark strain (as his recording testifies).

He was stylish in Mozart, elegant in Rossini, luminous in Debussy, and outstandingly effective in Bruckner’s late symphonies, molding them with Italianate warmth but still penetrating to their Austrian core.

His Mahler, too, while scarcely idiomatic, was very impressive. Some found that his natural reticence in certain works could sometimes be carried too far – Peter Heyworth, for instance, once wrote of Giulini’s “modesty with a capital M.”

A number of Giulini’s recordings, especially Verdi’s “Requiem” and “Falstaff,” are treasured by music buffs, and many Mozart-lovers considered his “Don Giovanni” the best ever. Critics also gave Giulini high praise for his sensitive accompanying on concerto recordings.

Giulini received many honors, including the medals of the international Mahler and Bruckner societies. He was the first recipient, in 1988, of the Verdi Medal of the London Friends of Verdi, and was awarded the Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna in 1990.

Carlo Maria Giulini’s wife, Marcella, died in 1995; he is survived by their three sons.