Riccardo Muti, the esteemed Italian conductor who last season concluded a 13-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (and was promptly named conductor emeritus), unloads on opera stage directors imposing their ideas on composers’ works – Regieoper, as the Germans call the tendency – in an interview with Bachtrack’s Mark Pullinger.
When Pullinger notes that Muti, who was music director of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala for 19 years and a longtime presence in other major houses, now seems to prefer conducting opera in concert, Muti replies: “I had so many experiences of horrendous productions [in which] I had to fight with this director, that director.
“I come from the old school,” says the 82-year-old conductor, noting that he learned to conduct the operas of Giuseppe Verdi from Antonino Votto, who learned Verdi from Arturo Toscanini, who learned Verdi from Verdi.
“It’s not that I tell the stage director what to do, but I would like to talk with them beforehand. What I see on stage – modern, traditional, avant-garde – I don’t care, but I want something that doesn’t disturb what I am doing through the music.”
Muti cites a comment by Arnold Schoenberg: “If what you see disturbs what you hear, that’s wrong.”
“This was Schoenberg . . . not Giordano or Mascagni! Capisce? So I don’t want to spend the few years in front of me fighting with an idiot.”
http://bachtrack.com/interview-riccardo-muti-salzburg-chicago-vienna-opera-verdi-august-2023
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