Muti’s Italian Opera Academy examines Verdi’s Requiem

The full impact and power of Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem is the focal point of the 2022 Italian Opera Academy led by the world’s most celebrated interpreter of Verdi’s music, Riccardo Muti. Now in its eighth edition and returning to Ravenna’s Teatro Dante Alighieri for the first time since 2020, the Academy opened its public programs on December 2 with Muti’s discussion of the featured work from the piano. Its programs continue through December 15, as the distinguished conductor works with young conductors and répétituers who will prepare the soloists and Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra for four performances of the masterwork in Ravenna, Rimini and Bologna.

“Verdi is the musician of life, and he certainly was the musician of my life,” explains Riccardo Muti. “He is a composer so capable of uncovering and dealing with our passion and pain, our strengths and weaknesses, that we recognize ourselves in [his works], and this is one of the reasons for his universality: he will always be current. My desire for years has been to dedicate myself to teaching what I have learned from my teachers, to teach what Italian opera is, how to build an Italian opera.”

Launched by Muti in 2015, the Academy offers opportunities for the next generation of musicians and audience members to explore and study Italian opera in a unique, in-depth setting. In addition to its regular presentations in Ravenna, the Academy has also been presented twice in Tokyo in 2019 and 2021 and in Milan in 2021 as part of a first-ever partnership with the Prada Foundation. This year, more than 300 hundred young conductors from all over the world applied to study with Muti at the Academy with only five being selected to work with him in the rigorous set of rehearsals and master classes. The five young conductors selected for the 2022 Academy are Vsevolod Sieva Borzak, an Italian-Russian (Italy/Russia); Nicholas Koo (U.S.); Polina Lebedieva (Ukraine); Kerou Liu (China) and Andreas Julian Ottensamer (Austria). In addition, five collaborative pianists were selected for the répétiteur training at the Academy including Richard Yu Fu (U.S.), Alexandra Maria Tchernakova (U.K.), Elena Lopez Gorriz (Spain), Rémi Hugo Geniet (France) and Ayaka Uenomachi (Japan).

Composed in 1874, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem was dedicated to Alessandro Manzoni, the celebrated 19th-century Italian poet, novelist and philosopher.  Muti, the Zell Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2010, has performed the choral-orchestral masterwork to international acclaim in concert performances not only in Chicago — including a live-streamed performance marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth in October 2013 — but also in tour performances at Vienna’s Musikverein and Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan. Verdi’s Messa da Requiem was also Muti’s first recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, receiving two Grammy awards in 2011 for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance. 

The 2022 Italian Opera Academy programs culminate with four performances of Verdi’s Requiem featuring acclaimed soloists soprano Juliana Grigoryan, mezzo-soprano Isabel De Paoli, tenor Klodjan Kaçani and bass Riccardo Zanellato and the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. The December 13 performance features the five young conductors alternating on the podium and the December 15 performance will be led by Riccardo Muti.  Following the conclusion of the Academy, Muti will lead two more performances of Verdi’s masterpiece at the Galli Theater in Rimini on December 17 and in a free, public concert on December 19 in Bologna. The sold-out event is part of the “Music is a gift” cultural initiative during Christmas week and is organized in part by the Bologna Festival and sponsored by the Italian energy company Illumia.