Italian Government throws money at Muti

Italian Government throws money at Muti

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norman lebrecht

October 28, 2020

No connection to his recent agitation for concert halls to stay open, but overnight the Culture Ministry granted two-thirds of a million Euros to Riccardo Muti’s Cherubini Youth Orchestra. That’s 186,000 on top of their usual grant.

“Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini – Attività 2020”, un percorso d’eccellenza finalizzato alla crescita di giovani musicisti, ultima annualità del progetto triennale presentato dalla Fondazione Orchestra Giovanile LuigiCherubini sotto la guida del Maestro Muti, ivi incluso il concerto per Dante, nel settecentesimo anniversario della morte del sommo poeta Dante Alighieri programmato nel Cortile d’Onore del Palazzo del Quirinale a Roma. Somma destinata € 686.000,00.

Comments

  • Spaghetti Style says:

    Normal, you are right, the timing is entirely coincidental. Italians do it better!

  • Godfather says:

    “Signor Muti, we are going to make you an offer you can’t refuse!”

  • Firing Back says:

    Perhaps they threw it at him to make him shut up once and for all, to retire, to stop promoting members of his family in the profession etc.

    But, that’s just wishful thinking, I guess 🙁

    • Chicagoan says:

      Wishful thinking indeed. The entire Cherubini business is a sort of pyramid scheme for his family. It works sort of like this 1) Get a few dozens young and highly talented Italian musicians who want to work for the not-so-legendary-anymore conductor 2) Underpay the musicians 3) Make dozens of audio and video recordings of concerts and rehearsals branded with the family-run label 4) Sell the recordings and let the family cash the profit. And now, it seems, after a few barks reported by brave Italian journalists, the “family business” gets subsidized by Italian taxpayers, or maybe by the EU COVID bailout fund. Brilliant, no?

      • papageno says:

        you’re just mad cuz Muti quit Chicago.

        • orchestrainsider says:

          🙂 Sadly, I’ve learned that the CSO administration is considering retaining him beyond 2022. Why they would retain someone who disparages Americans and the administration itself is beyond me. Many people inside the CSO would like to see him booted.

  • Vincenzo Gabaguilio says:

    Thank our lucky stars that Muti was able to talk some sense into those fat cats down at El Capitale, if we lose one more orchestra society is doomed.

    • Greg Bottini says:

      Society is certainly NOT doomed “if we lose one more orchestra”.
      Non perdere la testa, Signore Gabaguilio.

  • papageno says:

    Sadly Cherubini’s music is all but forgotten outside of Italy. Better use the money to revive it than paying for weird new classical works that nobody wants to hear.

  • Old Man in the Midwest says:

    Most over rated conductor of the modern era.

    • Lothario Hunter says:

      And unethical based on the reasonable person standard. What flies in Italy does not fly in the US. Puzzling how the person at the very top can put up with that. Probably because they have not told her. (hint)

      • Burnham says:

        Muti is the Trump of classical music. Thinks of himself as above everyone else, unbound … and speaking of similarities, he has nicknames for everyone in Chicago. For example the President is the “mummy”. Everyone has a nickname, as offensive than those Trump uses (or maybe more?).

  • Carlo says:

    This post is perfectlly fine and true. But, the recipient of these subventions are many, E.G.:
    – Associazione naz. per la festa della musica (that did not take place)
    – EUYO
    – Artedanza s.r.l. so to say Roberto Bolle

    download the full doc. here (in pdf.): http://www.spettacolodalvivo.beniculturali.it/index.php/trasparenza/doc_download/2958-dd-16-ottobre-2020-rep-n-1844pdf

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