page_title: Riccardo Muti
section_title: Childhood and education
hierarchical_section_title: Riccardo Muti / Childhood and education
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Riccardo Muti Premio Cantelli Teatro Coccia di Novara 1967
context_page_description: Riccardo Muti, OMRI is an Italian conductor.
  He currently holds two music directorships, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. He has previously held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Muti has been a prolific recording artist, and has received dozens of honours, titles, awards and prizes. He is especially associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi.
context_section_description: Muti was born in Naples but he spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast. His father was a pathologist in Molfetta and an amateur singer; his mother, a Neapolitan woman with five children.
  Muti graduated from Liceo classico (Classical Lyceum) Vittorio Emanuele II in Naples, then studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Vincenzo Vitale; here Muti was awarded a diploma cum laude. He was subsequently awarded a diploma in Composition and Conducting by the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, Milan, where he studied with the composer Bruno Bettinelli and the conductor Antonino Votto. He has also studied composition with Nino Rota, whom he considers a mentor. He was unanimously awarded first place by the jury of the "Guido Cantelli Competition for Conductors" in Milan in 1967 and became, the next year, principal conductor and music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a post he held for eleven years.
caption: Riccardo Muti, Premio Cantelli Teatro Coccia di Novara, 1967
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