Amsterdam’s half-naked music director
OrchestrasLorenzo Viotti, chief conductor of Dutch National Opera, seems determined to keep options open as a male model should the music business fail to satisfy his ambitions
Viotti, son of the distinguished Swiss conductor Macello Viotti, won the Salzburg young conductors award in 2015 and has been talked about ever since as a serious podium prospect.
But Viotti, now 33, has other brands in his basket. He is a model for a make of Swiss watches and men’s fragrances and a frontman for Lamborgini cars. He liked to display his fitness (the side-image is from Dutch Men’s Health magazine in 2021).
Here’s what he posts this week as preparation for an opera premiere.
View this post on Instagram
His father Marcello, whom I represented in New York, wa hottie too
C’est tout ce que cela vous inspire?…tout aussi lamentable…
Marcello Viotti was much better than his son.
But not batshit crazy.
Is he a good conductor?
totally overrated but the German call it Zeitgeist, don’t they?
They had Toscanini, Furtwangler, Walter, Klemperer, Horowitz….We have Lang Lang, Rattle, Makela, Viotti, …how lucky we are…
Can he make me close my eyes and be touched and inspired? Can he make me forget about him and make me feel, make me being, music?
Saw him at La Scala conducting Strauss and Korngold, I was moved. To me, he was a conductor, not a wanna be.
Narcissist much? Distasteful.
“Narcissist much?”
Gore Vidal defined a narcissist as “anyone better looking than you are.”
Following in Yuja’s footsteps.
but she is a talent
She is such an inspiration! Nobody can say she isn’t influential in classical music
What’s good enough for the goose, as they say. Otherwise, hypocrisy on steroids.
I still have yet to hear of anyone saying that any of his interpretations or conducting was in any way insightful, alas. So he may as well do this.
ridicule, pathétique, affligeant, consternant, stupide, idiot, déplacé, insignifiant, lamentable
Ah ?… Et moi, Cyrano-Savinien-Hercule
De Bergerac. 🙂
Otherwise everything else is satisfactory, right??!!
Utterly ridiculous. It is a great pity that his musical development currently lags so far behind the development of his pecs.
He should conduct half-naked too
Will come – he might be well payed. No ethical standards anymore – I have given up concerts, operas etc.
LMAO so many envious men in the comments. Bahahaha!
Yep me too :). And I’m a singer!
It’s all about pleasing young men and women and money. The classical music world in a challenging ‘outfit’.
In the end ears will decide.
Ears only decide if people use them. Lang Lang is a good pianist and a nice guy, but when people claim that he’s the greatest, I invite them to listen to these two performances of a Prelude by Rachmaninov. Then they change their minds.
https://youtu.be/d_Eboj3aWak
https://youtu.be/jDg2C7jUC_s
I’ve never heard a recording of Richter that I’ve not found masterful. The man was peerless.
I thought he is mid 40..
look very old compared to Asian..
Why shouldn’t a man want to be at his physical best? He works out, eat properly, takes good care of his body. Too bad Celibidache, James Levine, Josef Krips, and some other portly men didn’t do the same. As the world-wide population gets more and more obese this conductor should be heralded as a role model.
Even batons can go on preposterous diets; look at Gergiev’s trimmed down version!!
You clearly haven‘t seen Celi in his thirties.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G3346Dq9fXM
I can’t imagine him posing like Viotti does 😀
Certainly not, but he made it more than up with youthful charisma and talent.
But then, anything is in the eye of the beholder.
If I were asked to give young Viotti one advise, it would be: imagine all your interactions between you and your audience being between blind people. Put all effort and meaning into what is not visual!
I wonder if he would implode with that riddle.
The visual fetish will kill classical music I‘m afraid.
Will kill any access to the deeper meaning of music.
He was, indeed, a handsome bugger.
If James Levine had looked like that, there would not have been any complaints by his victims decades later, they would’ve considered that even though Levine never delivered the career he promised them in exchange for sex, they would have thought, “well, the sex WAS hot, at least I got that”
Life is unfair, beautiful people get away with things common and ugly people don’t.
Did the moderator of this site truly approve/allow this comment?!?
Child abuse is no joke
I haven’t seen this much pearl clutching and lip pursing since Aunt Maud wore red on the third go at the altar.
And that’s just from the Left!!
Interesting comment. Which ones are those?
Viotti…”frontman for Lamborgini cars.”
As the saying nearly goes “Big cars, small baton”
Ask the clarinetist…
“The bigger the ship the smaller the adventure” (Conrad Veidt, “Contraband”, 1939).
1966 Courgette?
I think that he himself has finally agreed with my opinion that he is an overrated conductor and that he is trying to find a new career. I have heard him in Mozart, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Brahms and he was never convincing.
It’s all about the music. We live in changing times…
“It’s all about the music and nothing but the music” (Anton Walbrook, “The Red Shoes”, 1948).
No wonder the music making is awful
Let’s see Yuja top that!
Thanks for the free advertising you keep making for young artists who have both the talent and the physical attributes to reach a larger audience and aren’t hiding behind screens like you do.
Opera is dying and this is exactly because of people like you, who can’t accept to live with their times. Young artists such as maestro Viotti are helping bringing new audiences to the theaters, not only because they are great communicative artists, or hot, but because they have all this AND something to say and defend in their art…and that’s already a win !
Musiciens are athletes, sport is healthy, Instagram is part of today’s business. Just deal with it or don’t look if it’s so upsetting.
What is unhealthy is your constant frustration that sounds like resentment and envy.
Really? You seriously think that American opera audiences haven’t had enough Eurotrash? Look at the numbers.
Who is going to the opera to see Viotti? Is there anyone really interested in hearing him playing music?
I’d say “the soul of this man is in his clothes”, but he’s not wearing any.
how “annoying” it must be to see someone Young, Talented Successful and looks like movie star…….. from society that admires beauty and Media…..in a business which is powered by that! just be happy for him.
Eh what can you do? This is a cut throat business, everybody need to bring out their strongest assets
All that, just from lifting a baton and tossing cues at the horns in the back row!
The better to shame the overweight opera singers with.
I’m reminded of the line attributed to Marilyn Monroe…
Q: What did you have on when those pictures were taken?
A: The radio.
I wonder what all the women who think this is such a tasteful display would be saying if Yuja posed half-naked on a bed? No double standards here I’m sure …
Admittedly, he ain’t a Karajan, and whether you like it or not but his good looks sell at least here in Amsterdam. At the times when even Concertgebouw orchestra struggles to fill up the hall, is his narcissism really such a bad thing?!
Definitely more palatable than YNS!
At least YNS is fully authentic.
Slow to the party Mr Lebrecht! He’s been doing these sort of publicity stunts since taking over as chief conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in 2021. I’ve attended many of his concerts with the orchestra, and despite carrying a huge amount of cynicism with me to the Concertgebouw, prompted by his publicity campaign, I have always been pleasantly surprised by what he has achieved with the orchestra. They sounded good under Albrecht, but these days I’d say they sound stunning, both in the concert hall and in the opera house, and mostly the reviews have said the same. On top of that the concerts sell well, which is quite an achievement in these times. Compare their attendance with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Friends and colleagues in the orchestra tell me he is a hard task master and pushes them to the limit, but they are happy for that and have no regrets about his appointment.
I’d agree entirely, he’s a very good conductor. I have a feeling that a long and excellent career lies ahead of him. There is absolutely nothing wrong in his doing this kind of publicity, it just shows that he’s modern and rather more in touch with the world than many in our profession.
At last! A male pin-up to match SD’s favorite pianist model, Yuga Wan! Anything to distract from the serious business of a working musician.
Just imagine a “half-naked woman conductor”… They will say that’s a “shame”.
Sure, you’re kidding us. That is really Matthew McConnaughy.
Hot pants report right from the conducting budoir.
Hats off. If he appeals to the women and to the gays, he’s got it sewn up!
Nice but he should drop those pants — so 20th century. Take Randy, the violonist who Plays From the Heart, as advertised in the latest issue of Gramophone — you will notice that the camera is focused on an organ which is not the heart.
If Daniel Harding can fly planes, this guy can (almost) unzip his fly.
I used to be a fan but have been really disappointed lately. I definitely don’t think posting pics like that is wrong per se for a young musician, but lately he’s just been WAY overdoing it, and furthermore seems to have given up all authenticity for marketing purposes… a real pity
How many of the people commenting have actually heard him conduct?
Ma che bello!!!! As my mother would say. Tragic to think he feels he cannot survive on music alone….and sad that we have come to this…
I’ve worked with him and thought he was an excellent, thoughtful musician. So he’s a bit of an Adonis, and flouts it? Not my taste, but I suspect some of the criticism here is just lazy knee-jerk reaction against the image.
What a petty article! So what if he is in good shape and likes to flaunt it? In case it isn’t obvious, he is allowed to have a life outside his activities as a musician, and he clearly enjoys physical activity and is aware of his natural good looks. He is clearly also aware of the importance of a good diet; anyone who thinks that that body can be achieved by simply spending many hours at the gym is a fool. His athleticism is a clear reflection of a balanced and disciplined life. His good looks are just a happy accident of nature. Why should he be ashamed of them? Should he be a fat and ugly slob like most American musicians, and, indeed, most Americans (full stop) so that he can be considered “fierce” and “beautiful” by “woke” people who have no self control and disguise their self-destructive behavior as virtuous “body positivity”?!
Since some people write that it’s great that he’s in good shape and why shouldn’t he post about it… he should!! The problem really is the *amount* of it lately. Because basically every second post on his account now is about advertising… and if the day of an important opera premiere the *only* thing he posts is a half-naked pic in bed then the balance seems a bit off… he used to come across as a great, authentic guy, but now it has all turned into marketing… this is what’s so annoying, *not* the fact that he’s athletic and likes to show it
Yeah, someone apparently so primarily interested in the superficialities of the superfluous (watches, Lamborghinis, LOL) lifestyle doesn‘t interest me a bit to go and buy a ticket to hear his story or interpretation about anything. Yawn.