Seminar on Italian Opera with Riccardo Muti
An international seminar based on Italian Opera conducted by world renowned conductor Riccardo Muti will take place in Valletta, Malta, to mark the official launch by the Maltese Government of the Mediterranean Music Academy – Malta.[>]
Riccardo Muti
Honorary President
Riccardo Muti was born in Naples where he studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Vincenzo Vitale, graduating with distinction. He was subsequently awarded a diploma in Composition and Conducting by the Conservatory Giuseppe Verdi, Milan, where he studied under the guidance of Bruno Bettinelli and Antonino Votto.
He first came to the attention of critics and public in 1967, when he was unanimously awarded first place by the prestigious jury of the Guido Cantelli competition for conductors in Milan. The following year he was appointed principal conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a position he maintained until 1980. Already in 1971, Muti was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, the first of many occasions, which led Muti to celebrate thirty years of splendid artistic collaboration with this glorious Austrian Festival in 2001. During the 1970s, he was the Philharmonia’s chief conductor (1972 to 1982) succeeding Otto Klemperer. From 1980 to 1992 he inherited the position of Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Eugene Ormandy.
From 1986 to 2005 he was Music Director of the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, and under his direction important projects were undertaken such as the Mozart-Da Ponte Trilogy and the Wagner Ring cycle. Alongside the classics of the repertoire, he brought many less performed and neglected works to light. These include exquisite pieces from the eighteenth century Neapolitan school as well as operas by Gluck, Cherubini and Spontini.
Over the course of his extraordinary career, Riccardo Muti has conducted most of the important orchestras in the world: from the Berlin Philharmonic to the Bayerischer Rundfunk, the New York Philharmonic to the Orchestre National de France, as well as, naturally, the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra to which he is linked by particularly close and important ties, and with which he appeared at the Salzburg Festival since 1971.
In 2004 Muti founded the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, consisting of young musicians selected, by an international committee, from some 600 instrumentalists from all over Italy. With the Cherubini Orchestra, he is running a new project dedicated to the Neapolitan School of the 18th Century for the Salzburg Whitsun Festival started in May 2007 with great success and continuing for three years.
Muti’s vast recording activities, already significant during the 1970s, have received recognition in the form of many prizes from specialist critics, and span from the classical symphonic and operatic repertory to contemporary works of the twentieth century.
Visit Mro. Riccardo Muti's official website at www.riccardomuti.com