Muti tours Slovenia and southern Italy with the Cherubini Orchestra

Following inspiring performances at holy sites in Lourdes, France and Loreto, Italy for the Ravenna Festival’s 25th annual Roads of Friendship project, Riccardo Muti and the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra launched a five-concert tour. The tour began on July 19 at the Ljubljana Festival, in the Cankarjev dom, Slovenia’s largest cultural venue, with a performance presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of Ljubljana and sponsored by the Italian Ambassador to Slovenia, H.E. Carlo Campanile.

The repertoire selected for this tour focused on 19th-century, Romantic era works inspired by places real and imagined, including Bizet’s Roma, Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake and Liszt’s Les preludes. The latter is a work that Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Zell Music Director, also conducted during a free open rehearsal that closed the 2022 Chicago Youth in Music Festival on April 11, 2022. For that performance, the ensemble was comprised of more than 50 young musicians, from 10 U.S. cities, who sat alongside musicians of the Chicago Symphony and Civic orchestras. On that occasion, Muti addressed the audience to discuss the work, inspired by the poetry of Alphonse de Lamartine, and its finale, which Muti described as a hymn to freedom. In the 20th century, that movement was appropriated by Nazis to signal a victory and, as a result, fell out of favor for a long time. Muti wishes to restore the symphonic poem’s intended message: “grand, beautiful and full of light.”

Muti and the Cherubini musicians continued their tour with a stop in Ravenna for a July 21 performance at the Palace de Andre that officially concluded the 2022 Ravenna Festival. As part of the evening’s program, Muti presented the 2022 Ravenna Festival Prize to distinguished photographer Silvia Lelli, who along Roberto Masotti (La Scala’s house photographer for decades and Lelli’s partner in art and life for more than 40 years, who died in April 2022), has captured photos of the performing arts that bring audiences close to the artists and the art itself. The tour continued with concerts at the restored Teatro Petruzzelli in the southern Italian city of Bari on July 23 and 24. 

After the conclusion of the first concert, the musicians performed the Intermezzo from the opera Fedora by Umberto Giordano, who was born in the Puglia region. Muti dedicated the piece to the Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004), who suggested Muti conduct the work many years ago. Kleiber is buried in the Slovenian village of Konjšica, east of Ljubljana, next to his wife, the Slovenian ballet dancer Stanislava Brezovar. Muti also spoke to the audience, expressing his regret that regions of Southern Italy have fewer “orchestras, conservatories and theaters,” which would contribute to spreading culture: “the only antidote to violence, to disagreements and to wars.” 

On July 25, Riccardo Muti and playwright and director Ruggero Cappuccio spoke in a panel discussion entitled “The Music of the Universe” at the historic Palazzo Coppola in Sessa Cilento, a town in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy. During the program, Muti and Cappuccio offered thoughts about how music can be used as an instrument of peace and as a means for spiritual growth. The event, which preceded an evening tour concert, was hosted by Naples’ Festival Segreti d’Autore (Author’s Secrets), which was founded by Cappuccio and celebrates its twelfth season this summer. Muti received the 2022 Premio Segreti d’Autore in honor of his commitment to young musicians, exemplified in his founding of the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. The award, a sculpture by the Italian artist Mimmo Paladino, was presented to Muti following his discussion with Cappuccio and dramatic readings by the actor Claudio Di Palma.

Muti and the Cherubini concluded their 2022 summer tour on July 26, with a return to the Ravello Festival, set on Italy’s scenic Amalfi Coast as part of the program for the Festival’s 70th season.  After the concert by Muti and the Cherubini Orchestra, the young musicians performed chamber music programs July 28-30 in some of the most beautiful rooms in the city, where they will appear again on August 11 for a concert to be led by conductor Erina Yashima, who has studied with Muti and was the CSO’s Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprentice from 2016-2019.