Muti in Chicago

(The Pines of Rome in Millennium Park. %^&!)

It took six years but the Chicago Symphony has a new music director, and it's Riccardo Muti. Even I'm a bit starstruck...

Brief primer: Muti has been the director of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Maggio Musicale Festival in Florence, La Scala Opera in Milan, the Philadelphia Orchestra, an honored guest with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics every year for the past forty, principal guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic and will soon be the music director of the Rome Opera. He is the oldest of all old school maestros, regularly performing a repertoire which Toscanini and De Sabata would recognize in nearly its entirety. His blithe, old-school penchant for running roughshod over his orchestral colleagues has earned him the nickname "Mutollini." There is not a single organization of which he has been director that has not ended in an acrimonious split. But...he's Riccardo Muti, and is sometimes capable of putting together performances for which anybody would forgive foibles like his. Let's see how long it takes in Chicago before they stop...

h/t Alex Ross


(Verdi's Overture to La Forza Del Destino. With the Berlin Philharmonic in Naples. Yes, that's Silvio Berlusconi in the balcony.)