Riccardo Muti: In our anthem, every note is filled with pain

Crowds turned out in southern Milano to watch the veteran maestro rehearse Nabucco, while La Scala prepares its opening Macbeth.

Corriere’s reporter has a verbatim report of the rehearsal here.

Two injunctions caught our eye.

One is Muti berating a singer: ‘No excuses, pronounce, follow me…. You already sang Nabucco? Don’t tell me with whom! Not with me!’

The other is a homily on Va, pensiero:

‘Every note must be filled with pain. All in a whisper, Peppino wrote it, not me. Legato! The pauses are sighs, not silences, they are a voice that breaks with emotion, not a moron who leaves a word unfinished. But think about it, they wanted to make it the anthem of Italy. Can you imagine the national football team on the pitch, (captain Lorenzo) Insigne singing the anthem of a slave people, who dream of freedom? Long then! Five minutes. And the referee and sixty thousand people waiting. We have been discussing it for years… ‘.