Riccardo Muti at 80

“Our profession is to give to others, not to be locked in an ivory tower. We need the public’s response, whether positive or negative We need the human heat. Both I and my colleagues are suffering a lot from this situation. It’s a mortal blow to culture.”

Riccardo Muti is commenting on the closure of theatres and concert halls during the pandemic. “I support their opening with all the possible precautions and all possible measures of protection for the public and musicians.” He’s urged governments to fund culture as a salve to the mental health suffered during pandemic closures. “Music helps,” he said.

On the eve of his 80^th birthday on 28^th July, the Neapolitan-born Muti who’s commanded three of the world’s finest orchestras and two of Italy’s storied opera houses, is working as hard as ever.

Despite the challenges of lock downs, he’s been streaming operas and concerts from Italy, coaching young musicians on zoom, working with the two pet projects he founded in Italy: the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra and the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy. In May he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at La Scala as part of the 75^th anniversary celebrations of the theatre’s re-opening following its reconstruction after the war.

Muti is one of the pre-eminent conductors of our time, ‘one of the last lions of podium glamour.’ Intense and austere on the podium with a reputation for being temperamental and uncompromising, he’s regularly in the headlines supporting better conditions for his musicians, better funding for the arts, clashing with managements who don’t share his high ideals. “Mediocre people who don’t want to accept quality,” as he put it after his 19-year tenure at La Scala ended in 2005 with a ferocious power struggle.

In some respects, Muti is the last of the great ‘maestro’s,’ demanding the highest standards from musicians and preaching total fidelity to the score in the manner of his hero, Toscanini.

You might have been lucky to see him conduct the Australian World Orchestra here in 2018. Alexander Briger, the AWO’s Music & Artistic Director, says “Working with Maestro Riccardo Muti was an incredibly intense and exhilarating experience. There is an aura and magnetism about his personality that cannot be put into words. His eyes are mesmerizing, trance-like, having every member of the orchestra in his sights. 

What perhaps people do not know is that he has the most wicked sense of humour. He had the orchestra in fits of laughter the whole week whilst inspiring every musician to play at their very best. And of course, we were very touched that he called the Australian World Orchestra the most flexible orchestra he had ever conducted!”

Muti is lionised as the greatest living Verdi conductor.  “Everyone can identify, see himself in the music of Verdi. He translated the feelings of all of us in his music.”

He won two Grammy’s for his Verdi Requiem with the Chicago Symphony, but his huge discography reflects tastes wider than his beloved Italian opera, from Scriabin symphonies, cycles of Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert symphonies and contemporary music.

Considering his fame, Muti is quite media-shy and seldom gives interviews. He says he still feels like “an outsider” in the business, not interested in social or marketing activities.

The secret of his success?  “A good conductor must be able to carry the musicians with him or her, giving them the feeling that they are still free to express their feelings.”

“At that time in the south of Italy to become a professional musician was like flying to the moon”

Muti was born in 1941 in Naples during the war, but grew up in Molfetta, a small town on the Adriatic coast.

One of five boys, his father Domenico, “with a beautiful tenor voice” gave him a violin for his 8^th birthday. “Although my father was a medical doctor, he believed that music was absolutely essential in the general education of a young boy. He wanted for me and my four brothers to become professionals, like doctors, lawyers, engineers, or architects. At that time in the south of Italy to become a professional musician was like flying to the moon, something unusual. I became a conductor through unexpected circumstances.”

His mother Gilda, “was the one who had everything in her hands. She was extremely strong and very good at discipline. With one look, she could have five boys quiet. I never remember a physical embrace, but with a smile she could mean everything.''

When he was 17, the family moved to Naples so the boys could have a better education. It meant starting from nothing, but “the Italian family should be together, sons do not go away.”

Muti studied at Naples University and Conservatorium: philosophy, piano with Vincenzo Vitale, composition with Nino Rota (an assistant to Toscanini during his La Scala years) and the composer whom he credits with convincing him to become "a real musician.” Muti is a champion of his music.

He subsequently moved to Milan where he was awarded a Diploma in Composition and Conducting, at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatorium, studying with composer Bruno Bettinelli and conductor Antonio Votto, another former assistant of Toscanini, an old-fashioned maestro who was a big presence at La Scala at the time and helped launch Muti’s conducting career.

''I was the only one who went out of the family, when I went to the Verdi Conservatory in Milano. It was a sacrifice for my family. There was hardly enough money, so the only thing I could afford was to study.''

“The fact that the Queen came to La Scala later to award me, a southern Italian, an honorary knighthood makes me very proud.”

In 1965 Muti took part in conducting seminars in Venice with Franco Ferrara, then two years later hit the headlines when he became the first Italian to win the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Milan.

This success resulted in numerous invitations to guest conduct. Still in his 20’s he was appointed music director of the prestigious Maggio Musicale in Florence in 1968, a position he held until 1980.  One of his treasured memories is working with the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter.

“I don’t want to sound old-minded, but one thing I learnt from the great soloists early in my career – Richter, Claudio Arrau, Robert Casadesus – is the ethical approach. When I worked with Richter, even before the first rehearsal, he’d spend hours in a room discussing every modulation. ‘We must try to find the unexpected’ he would say, using the Italian word sorpresa. The surprise is not something you invent in the moment, it’s the result of long thought.”

A year later Muti married Cristina Mazzavillani who now runs the Ravenna Festival, the city they still live in. Richter played at their wedding. They have three children, Francesco, Chiara, and Domenico. ''When you have your family, your children, you have everything.''

During the ‘70’s his career expanded further after Karajan invited him to conduct at the Salzburg Festival and he had his first success with Don Pasquale. He’s returned regularly, celebrating an incredible 50 years of collaboration with the Austrian festival in 2020.

In 1973, the stylish Italian maestro made an electric impression in London conducting the languishing Philharmonia Orchestra, succeeding Otto Klemperer as the new principal conductor until 1982.  He was young and handsome, he wore tails like the archetypal Italian maestro but was inexperienced and didn’t speak a word of English. “It was very hard at the beginning, every piece for me was new but I love London because working there I became a good musician, and the orchestra became the best in London.” The Muti ‘era’ came to be regarded as a golden one for the orchestra.

London, he recalls “was my second school after Italy. There are certain things I won’t forget, things that were important for me as a young conductor, such as working with Janet Baker on Les Nuits d’Ete. The fact that the Queen came to La Scala later to award me, a southern Italian an honorary knighthood, makes me very proud.”

“I refuse to be considered an entertainer. I have nothing against entertainers, but music is with a capital M.”

In1980 to 1992, Muti inherited the position of Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Eugene Ormandy who’d been at its’ helm for nearly half a century, the creator of the famous ‘Philadelphia sound.’

Muti arrived with a reputation as a hot-blooded young Italian, full of fire and energy and found an ensemble that had a famous lush sound, but a repertoire limited to late-Romantic music. He decided to work on repertoire, “expanding it to give a sense of adventure,” conducting more baroque and classical repertoire.

One of his innovations was introducing complete operas performed in concert. He also commissioned new works from modernists like Berio, Ran, Davidovsky and Kirchner and iconoclastic Americans like William Bolcom and Rouse.

He was accused by some of homogenizing the famous lush Philadelphia string sound during his tenure but left behind a legacy of brilliant recordings: Verdi, Berlioz and Respighi and a complete set of Beethoven symphonies when he departed in 1992, citing the difficulty of maintaining posts in the US and Europe at the same time.

In his last months he spoke wistfully about his feeling that the city wasn’t behind the orchestra. He was upset to find his orchestra’s concerts listed in the entertainment section of the local paper. “I refuse to be considered an entertainer. I have nothing against entertainers, but music is with a capital M.”

“The Chicago Symphony has the quality, spirit and culture to play this music.”

Muti is speaking of Verdi’s music. He first conducted the CSO in 1973 at the Ravinia Festival and was appointed Music Director in 2010. He’d grown up with Fritz Reiner recordings from 50’s and 60’s, pioneering stereo recordings which he says, “were astonishing.” He also has high praise for the work of successive CSO MD’s, his predecessors, Solti and Barenboim whom he has met over the years.

In addition to the Grammy award-winning Verdi Requiem, they’ve also done a series of operas ‘in concert.’ “The CSO was always a great Wagner orchestra because of my predecessors. Verdi wasn’t done in the way an Italian can do but I was impressed with their Requiem and immediately felt the CSO had the quality, spirit and culture to play this music. Otello they played fantastically, I’ve conducted it elsewhere but the CSO’s was the best.”

He is excited to be returning to Chicago in September to launch his 12^th season, their first concerts together since February 2020.  “September is the best month of the year; nature has the new dress.  There is hope.”

“Sometimes when a music director becomes very strong in demanding quality, it can happen that mediocre people don’t want to accept quality and so starts a process that you cannot control.”

Muti’s heart is in opera and from 1986 he became Music Director of La Scala in Milan, beginning a tenure that’s the longest in the theatre’s history, even longer than Toscanini’s: 19 years!

“When I came to Milano I was invited by the orchestra. I told them I have no reason to be here but if I’m here, I want to work. I say all the time- I’m not an artist, I’m an artigiano – an artisan. Italy gave me a lot of good schooling, good teachers. What my country gave to me I want to give back.”

At La Scala Muti put Italian opera front and centre, particularly the operas of Verdi, he directed projects like Mozart’s Da Ponte trilogy, a Wagner Ring Cycle and brought neglected works to life, in particular works from the 18^th century Neapolitan school. His tenure culminated in 2004 with the triumphant re-opening of a restored La Scala; a production of Salieri’s Europa Riconosciuta.

At La Scala and elsewhere, Muti has been at the forefront of restoring historical authenticity to Italian opera. He sees himself as having led the Verdi Renaissance, questioning hallowed performing traditions, where the score was cut, where divas interpolated extra high notes to further show off in their showiest aria. He’s trained audiences too not to clap and break the magic with applause after every aria. He has always been keen to record opera ‘live.’ “I don’t want Violetta to die when the red light says ‘GO!’”

In 2005 a major politically driven imbroglio forced Muti to resign at La Scala. Looking back later he said, “You have to understand some aspects of the Italian attitude and I am also Italian you know. Sometimes when a music director becomes very strong in demanding quality, it can happen that mediocre people don’t want to accept quality and so starts a process that you cannot control” [When I went to La Scala] “I found an orchestra that was not in very good condition, and I left an orchestra in very good condition. That is what a music director is expected to do.”

“Culture is the spiritual glue that holds a people together."

Muti continues to stand up for his beliefs. Famously at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera, where he became life-time director in 2011, he broke with opera protocol and addressed the audience after the famous chorus “Va pensiero” in Nabucco, delivering a speech about severe budget cuts to the arts which had just been announced by the Berlusconi government.

He spoke of the need to keep culture alive in Italy, prompted, as he later stated, by the belief that "killing culture in a country like Italy is a crime against society. Culture is the spiritual glue that holds a people together."

He then invited the audience to participate in an encore of the "Va, pensiero" chorus. The 3000-strong audience stood up and sang along with the on-stage chorus. Muti recalls that "80 percent of the audience knew the lyrics" and sang along, while "some members of the chorus were in tears."

Four days later thanks to his intervention, the planned cuts were reversed, a decision he received on the back of winning the $1Million Birgit Nilsson Prize a few days earlier for his ‘enormous influence in the music world.’

The last is a reference to his conducting his youth orchestra in locations like the Balkans, Armenia, and New York after the towers fell, and the Middle East.

“This has been very positive. Instead of having these bad feelings that old people still have, the younger musicians become friends. They love each other, sing together, play together. So, in the name of the music and with its’ help, they are able to look to the future and not to the past all the time. This only music could do.”

Buon compleanno maestro!

Mairi Nicolson presents Lunchtime Concert, The Opera Show and Sunday Opera on ABC Classic.