2019 Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy: Day 1
By: Claire Liu
Tags: Art, Culture, Italy, Music, Opera

And it has finally begun, that is, the fifth edition of Maestro Muti’s Italian Opera Academy! In case you don’t know, this incredibly cool project of Maestro Muti’s aims to spread the experiences that Maestro Muti has gained from his illustrious career, with regards to the meticulous, careful, and extensive preparation that is required to really bring an entire operatic interpretation to fruition. It’s a tradition that is so often lost in the rapid and seemingly superficial rehearsal process (if there are even that many rehearsals to begin with…) for opera today. This year, as I’ve previously mentioned, the Academy focuses on Mozart’s , and as Maestro Muti mentioned, while Mozart may not himself be Italian, his trio of operas with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (e.g. Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan Tutte, and Don Giovanni) are some of the most important representations of the Italian operatic repertoire. With regards to Le Nozze di Figaro, the opera actually represents a revolutionary turn in the repertoire, as it’s the first opera to really demonstrate the working class attitudes against the nobility/aristocracy, depicting the latter as inferior/incompetent individuals against their very own servants.

As usual, Maestro Muti inaugurated the academy with his opening remarks (basically think of it as a full class lecture!). And, while he usually walks through the opera on the piano, this time, he actually let the three student répétiteurs play most of the piano, a difference from the opening night of the 2017 Academy on Aida (much kudos to all three players, who basically played on the spot without any prior knowledge that they would be playing!). Nevertheless, Maestro Muti gave an insightful lecture into the general structure of the opera, with regards to each of the main characters and the role they each play in the storyline, as well as the main themes that run throughout the opera (fidelity, for example). It was actually a pretty clear delineation, where he kind of created a bracketed tree (kind of like a family tree) to explain how each of the characters are related to one another (e.g. the Count and the Countess are at the top of the tree, followed by Figaro and Susanna, etc.). This is definitely helpful for those who may never have encountered this opera or Beaumarchais’ plays to begin with, and it’s one of the reasons why I think Maestro Muti is practically the only conductor of his stature doing the most to make this art form super accessible to everyone!

Now, one of the main points that Maestro Muti emphasized is that the Le Nozze di Figaro should be considered to be more of a “dramma giocoso” instead of the “lyric comedy” description it is so often given. The actual, specific designation given for the opera is a “commedia per musica”, but if you consider the underlying subtext, commentary and thematic issues that the opera pulls from Beaumarchais’ play, then it really isn’t so light-hearted as one might initially think. Furthermore, there are tons and tons of hidden meanings within the libretto/score (basically a running joke between Mozart and da Ponte), and so it takes careful deliberation and analysis to really figure out what’s going on haha. I’ll definitely be pointing out some examples throughout the coming days!

Afterwards, I of course headed over to see Maestro Muti, and after the usual greetings, he told me that Li-Kuo Chang, who is the acting/assistant principal viola of the CSO and fellow Northwesterner (he’s on the faculty at Bienen!), will actually be arriving in Ravenna tomorrow-it’ll definitely be nice to have another Chicagoan here at the Academy 🙂 …Anyways, I have to head back to the theater in about a half hour for today’s afternoon session with the orchestra-we’ve already covered a lot of ground this morning with the first piano and orchestra rehearsals, and I’m sure the same will happen in the afternoon! I’ll update more on the specifics, hopefully by tonight!

I’m currently a graduate student at Northwestern University, working on developing bio-integrated electronics and microfluidics for health monitoring and pain therapeutic applications. I’m also an avid listener of classical music and am particularly interested in the musicology of 19th century Italian opera, especially those of Giuseppe Verdi. View all posts by Claire Liu