It’s Maestro knight

Oh yess!!! Yess!! Finally an Italian Maestro who is Knighthood-worthy! And finally an award worth reporting on! Ezelente Maestro Luisi!! You deserve a round of applause!

This glorious Danish award is most unlike other awards such as the French Legion of Honor! We should not bother about those lesser awards – for example, this site did not report on Riccardo Muti receiving an upgraded Legion of Honor award last month … That was a good call, who cares about Muti and the Legion of Honor anyway?

During the award ceremony, Muti got on the French ambassador’s nerves by asking to transfer Cherubini’s bones from France back to Italy. Perhaps the French repented about his award even as they were conferring it to him, as the CSO belatedly repented on his music directorship.

Maestro Riccardo Muti is among a revered list of notable Legion of ‘Honor ‘recipients, including, but not limited to : Vladimir Putin, Benito Mussolini, Bashar al-Assad, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif, Harvey Weinstein, Lance Armstrong, Manuel Noriega, Philippe Pétain and … Gerard Depardieu!!

Yes yes – Ezelente Maestro Riccardo Muti and Monsieur Depardieu have lots in common, much more than the Legion of ‘Honor’!

In 2017 – nine years after Depardieu allegedly raped the actress Charlotte Arnould, and four years after Putin conferred the Russian citizenship to the French actor– Muti and Depardieu teamed up again in Chicago for Prokofiev’ ‘Ivan the Terrible’. They had already joined forces in Chicago with a very artistic Lelio. Because the two of them just get along and evidently share common interests; and because Chicago knows how to pick worthy music directors and artists of great integrity! Muti was quoted by the Chicago Sun Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2017/2/24/18322435/cso-muti-and-depardieu-join-for-prokofiev-s-ivan-the-terrible “… when I wanted to do it at the Salzburg Festival, I thought my good friend Depardieu, who I’d known for years, would be the ideal person to play Ivan.”

Oh yes, yes!! What good friends Muti has!! … The Guardian discusses in this article Depardieu’s good qualities (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/08/gerard-depardieu-documentary-shows-vile-footage-of-sexist-behaviour). They describe a beautiful documentary ‘Depardieu: The Fall of an Ogre’. Quoting from the article:

“The documentary showed footage of Depardieu on a trip to North Korea in 2018 to mark the secretive state’s 70th anniversary. The actor, who had travelled to Pyongyang with a TV crew and knew he was being filmed, made obscene comments to women, and about women, repeatedly sexually harassed a female translator and made sexual comments about a child at an equestrian centre whom he saw riding a horse. On Friday, the footage was described by the leftwing member of the European parliament Manon Aubry as ‘vile’ …. Darras described how Depardieu ‘looked at me like a bit of meat’ and asked her if she wanted to go to his dressing room. She said no. But she alleges he then assaulted her on set, grabbing her body. She said she was petrified and no one on set reacted. “

Muti does not appear in the documentary but he should have been involved to bring balance and vouch for Depardieu’s character. This documentary is for sure a shameless piece of Me2 propaganda and we know what Ezelente Muti thinks of the shady Me2: “With MeToo, Mozart would be in jail” (though there is no documentary or anecdotal evidence that Mozart ever raped anyone or that criminal charges were brought against him). What does Muti think of his buddy Depardieu rape charges? The rape allegedly happened nine years before they collaborated on Prokofiev and “bonded” in Chicago. Did Muti and Depardieu discuss Charlotte Arnould and similar topics in Chicago? Did they ensconce somewhere to discuss the Me2 scourge? Did they disserted on La Selva Oscura, so essential to both them? We don’t know.

(Muti is also a ‘buddy’ of Domingo, another man accused of assaulting women and having phone calls with sex traffickers. I am not saying it’s a pattern let’s be clear, I am just laying out the facts!)

A nice video of Gerard having dinner with Putin here after being granted his Russian citizenship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JDSNxgLRAM

Muti is not only a good friend of Depardieu. He’s a proud recipient of Putin’s award ‘The Russia Order of Friendship’ and a honorary member of the Russian Academy for the Arts presided by the Zurab Tsereteli – a sculptor who likes to make Putin statues. Muti selected the Great Putin Bass Abdrazakov to sing at the Verdi Gala in Ravenna weeks ago – which ended the Festival in glory. Among his most notable achievements, Muti conducted in Iran with the Cherubini Orchestra; before him Karajan – a member of the Nazi party- also conducted.

Vive Riccardo and Depardieu, Putin, La Legion and above all La Selva Oscura!!