Muti concludes the year-long celebration of Italy’s most famous poet

Just over one year ago, Riccardo Muti led concerts in Italy to open the worldwide commemoration of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Aligheri, Italy’s most celebrated literary figure. Throughout 2021, nearly every corner of the country has paid homage to the great poet with countless activities and programs, even including a historic steam train route created to connect the Italian cities of Marradi, Florence and Ravenna.

To bring the celebration to a noteworthy conclusion, Muti, the CSO’s Zell Music Director, recently led the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, principal members of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Choir in a program of music inspired by Dante’s literary masterpiece The Divine Comedy in three Italian cities where Dante lived and worked during his lifetime — Ravenna, Florence and Verona. The program was performed first in Ravenna on Sept.12 at the end of a day-long celebration that included a ceremony attended by the Mayors of Italy, as well as literary readings and other performances at historic sites in the city, where Dante died in 1321.

The Sept. 12 performance was presented in Ravenna’s Public Gardens with the Renaissance-era architecture of the Loggetta Lombardesca serving as a fitting backdrop, and was also offered for free live streaming in Italy via ITsART, a new streaming platform created by Italy’s Ministry of Culture. The concert was presented by the city of Ravenna in collaboration with Ravenna Festival and with the support of the National Committee for the Dante celebrations, dante2021.it.

Muti led the musicians in a program that opened with Verdi’s “Laudi alla Vergine Maria” from the Four Sacred Pieces for a female choir of four voices that features text from the 33rd canto of Paradise. The program continued with a performance of Purgatorio, for baritone, mixed choir and orchestra, which features several verses from the second Canticle of Purgatory. The new work by Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian was commissioned by the Ravenna Festival for the Dante anniversary year and previously performed on this summer’s Roads of Friendship concerts. The composer attended the performance, which represented the Italian premiere and featured baritone soloist Gurgen Bayevan and cello soloist Giovanni Sollima. Concluding the program was Liszt’s Dante Symphony, a choral-orchestral fantasy inspired by the three main sections of The Divine Comedy that musically depicts scenes from the Inferno and Purgatory, concluding with the ethereal sounds of paradise and an angelic choir of female voices.