At 80, Riccardo Muti is not a man to deny his convictions and mince his words. While he’s leading right now A masked ball in Chicago, the Italian conductor refused to modify a passage of Verdi’s work, which contains supposedly racial references, believing that it is necessary ” respect the composers and reject the revisionists”.
According to Riccardo Muti, Verdi wanted to ridicule the racism of a character
In A marchera dance (A Masked Ball), an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi created in 1859, a judge utters a racist insult towards Ulrica, a black fortune teller accused of witchcraft: “ of the filthy blood of the niggers “ (from the impure blood of Negroes). A sentence that goes badly today especially in the country of cancel culture and mainly in Chicago, where the Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot had notably refused to answer white journalists last year.
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Despite pressure from certain authorities and even from musicians within the orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), Riccardo Muti, who is conducting 3 performances of Verdi’s opera until Tuesday, June 28, refuses to withdraw or adapt this sensitive passage. The Italian conductor specifies that he has engaged three African-American singers in this production, including the famous judge, and that through this passage Verdi wishes ” ridicule the character’s racism, cruelty and ignorance”.
Riccardo Muti: « With few exceptions, young directors are destroying opera”
Interviewed by the Italian daily Corriere della Serra on the question of revisiting classic works with regard to the very lively politically correct approach in the United States, where Riccardo Muti has been directing the CSO since 2010 (until 2023), the Italian maestro replied: ” I am opposed to institutions that make up and change the lyrics of the librettos. You can’t change history, you have to keep it in its essence, for better or for worse, so that future generations can know ».
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Riccardo Mutti is also very angry with young directors. ” The problem today is that these operas are often in the hands of directors who, with a few exceptions, destroy the opera. he told Associated Pressadding: most of them don’t read music. Some are completely deaf! ».
Philippe Gault
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