Here is my Thursday August 20 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com news article on reports that Riccardo Muti will head the Rome Opera, at least on a limited basis. On March 19 I reported here on an earlier stage of these discussions.
Will CSO share Muti with Rome Opera?
CLASSICAL MUSIC | Deal all but done, report says
As he prepares to make Chicago his orchestral home beginning in the 2010-11 season, Italian maestro Riccardo Muti appears ready to call Rome his home for opera.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported Wednesday that Muti would take up the position of "director" of the Rome Opera in December 2010, with a guarantee of two opera productions and two concerts each season in the Italian capital.
Muti, 68, is to start a five-year contract as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in September 2010. The CSO job calls for 10 weeks of concerts a year in Chicago, plus all of the orchestra's international tours.
Muti and representatives of the CSO could not be reached for comment.
Holding two music directorships is common in the complementary worlds of opera and symphony orchestras. James Levine has a much busier schedule with the full-time music directorships of both the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. When Daniel Barenboim was CSO music director, he had a much heavier commitment to the Berlin State Opera than Muti will have in Rome.
The Italian paper said the controversial conservative mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, had traveled to Austria, where Muti is leading concerts and an opera at the annual Salzburg Festival and where the conductor has a summer home, to conclude an agreement with Muti. The mayor announced that an agreement had been reached but that a formal contract awaits agreement "on technical details."
Alemanno has been looking to raise the profile of the Rome Opera since being elected last year.
A previous effort to hire Muti in Rome during what another Italian paper, Rome's Il Messaggero, called "the long courtship" collapsed earlier this year over political squabbles between the city government and the opera house. Il Messaggero said Muti wants guarantees of labor peace before taking the post.
In 2005, the Naples-born Muti left the more prestigious La Scala opera house in Milan after 18 years as its musical leader when local political and union intrigues spiraled out of control.
"This is a logical move for Riccardo," said Philip Gossett, the University of Chicago's Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music. A leading authority on Italian opera, he has worked with Muti on many projects. "This will allow him to lead operas at a regular base in Italy while devoting himself to his orchestral duties in Chicago. I imagine this will mean he can cut back on some of his other free-lance plans as well as a result."
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