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Some patrons offer swift best wishes when asked about the newly named musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In a half beat, they beg off further talk. Others consider questions about Muti, who three years ago was forced out as musical director of La Scala, in a kind of reflective crouch.
"Lucky Chicago," said Giulia Maria Mozzoni Crespi, president of the Italian Environmental Foundation, a philanthropy for which Muti returned, after his ouster, to conduct one last concert at La Scala in 2005.
"He's an extraordinary conductor and extremely precise. ... I am very sad for La Scala, for Milan and for all of us."
Few places on Earth swoon over opera the way that Italy does. The music of Verdi or Puccini can be heard from apartment blocks in Rome, is sung by gondoliers in Venice and comes with the territory in this city, the home of the world's greatest opera house.
Ticket sales are slower now--an Internet generation is apparently daunted by steep prices and four-hour-long evenings of arias--but opera lovers remain faithful to La Scala. The gilt-and-cream hall is where they expect to hear the best Italian operas and see the greatest Italian stars. And it was there, in 2005, that all witnessed the tempestuous final act of a remarkable conductor.
"It's nearly a law of art," said Anna Crespi, a patron who oversees the Friends of La Scala foundation and who still rues the fall of Muti. "It doesn't last for an eternity ... Leaving a theater is like a love story. When two lovers split, it can be very painful."
Muti walked into Il Teatro alla Scala as musical director and conductor in 1986. He exited 19 years later when nearly all 700 employees of La Scala--save three--voted for his removal.
Muti left so bitter that he has yet, some stalwart supporters say, to see them three years later. Detractors often begged off conversations to consider his legacy. "La Scala is dead to him. That is that," said Sandro Malatesta, a trumpet player and a union representative who chafed under Muti's rule.
Others were more circumspect about the tumultuous end. "We could talk 20 hours, and still I wouldn't be able to tell you what precisely happened," said Danilo Rossi, 42, the lead viola who spent nearly his entire career with Muti.
Rossi, who still refers to his one-time mentor with a respectful "Maestro Muti," said the situation at La Scala broke down with everyone feeling bruised. "It was not one thing. And it was not a war as some people have described. It was just a machine that was no longer working," Rossi said. "People no longer saw him as a great personality but a man full of faults.
"It is like any relationship, intense and long. A football team, a basketball team, an opera house. Who is the coach who stays 20 years?" Rossi asked.
Muti, in his last year at La Scala, was known as a man blunt about his musical demands. La Scala and Muti had been inseparable for a generation. Muti was seen as a dashing and vibrant ambassador for the prestigious opera house. He also knew how to play the strings of its delicate internal politics.
A native of Naples, Muti was the Southern Italian who charmed Milanese society, a dense layer-cake of family, business and political connections. He knew how, and with whom, to laugh. He was good at parties. He also believed, as admirers and detractors agree, that music was all that really should matter at La Scala.
Muti was remarkable in his effort to re-organize and rejuvenate La Scala's uneven orchestra. Throughout his tenure, performers said, Muti focused on musicianship, orchestral sound and structure and the execution of every note in every score.
That diligence eventually found some critics.
Some found Muti too conservative. He was criticized for safe choices in his repertoire. Others were impatient with his increasing penchant to explore lesser-known Italian composers--works that Muti found musically and historically tempting but left audiences often unmoved.
By December 2004, relations had disintegrated between Muti and the theater's general manager, Carlo Fontana. The opera house had anticipated a stellar season to celebrate a long-awaited renovation that had transformed its stage. In early 2005, shows were canceled as union disputes flared and Muti and Fontana were no longer speaking.
Skirmishes arose over production choices, repertoire, even set designs. By February, Fontana was banished largely because of demands from Muti. By spring, Muti and Mauro Meli, Fontana's replacement and an ally of the maestro, were routed in a staff no-confidence vote.
Muti, who adheres to a rigorous work ethnic, retreated from Milan for a short time. Then he threw himself into engagements across the classical musical world including Vienna, Salzburg, London, New York and Chicago.
Last year in an interview with the Tribune, Muti spoke almost casually about the upheaval. He declined to go into detail.
"Everything became political, everything got out of control, especially things that had nothing to do with art. These things are very difficult for people to understand [outside Italy] ... I'm not inflexible, " Muti said. "But at a certain point, instead of making compromises, I preferred to leave."
No one interviewed for this story, in Milan or elsewhere, could speak so casually of the loss. Some people would only speak off record about Muti. Many sighed when they tried to describe their experiences with the man whose years as music director exceeded even those of the legendary Arturo Toscanini.
"That experience and the way people spoke about Maestro Muti was cheap and sad. It was unacceptable for a man like Muti," his friend Meli, now artistic director of Il Teatro Regio di Parma, said in a phone interview. "Maybe after 19 years, it is normal for things to fall apart. But respect has to go both ways. ... La Scala is all in the past for him now."
"To this day, I feel this sorrow inside me," said Carlo Fontana, the former general manager who served a brief two-year term in Italy's parliament before re-engaging in theater. "I believe in a long relationship between a manager and a musician--the artist. There are always moments of friction and tension. It is part of the job ...
"I still have the greatest esteem for Muti. But what we had broke," he said in a phone interview from Lugano. "I suffered a lot and still do. For me, it was a true and real amputation."
La Scala has yet to name a permanent musical director. Daniel Barenboim, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's former music director, is filling in as de facto acting director. No replacement is foreseen for some years, La Scala officials said.
Muti, by contrast, has had no trouble moving on. He's turned down at least one offer as music director of the New York Philharmonic. His decision to take over the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is widely seen as a cultural coup.
"I think maybe the Chicago orchestra is a little better than New York's?" Jurgen Flimm, intendant of the Salzburg Festival who has worked with Muti for years, said a bit mischievously in a phone interview.
"Chicago can be very happy. ... He's one of the best conductors of the world and he's a very, very fine person," Flimm said.
At 66, Muti is deeply committed to teaching the young and founded the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, which rehearses and performs in Piacenza and Ravenna. He personally selects young musicians for study; their first concert was in June 2005. He and his wife, Cristina Mazzavillani, live in Ravenna where she directs the Ravenna Festival, a major summer music event.
"Leaving La Scala gave Muti a great sense of freedom," said Mario Salvagiani, who presides over the youth orchestra. "Muti always said: 'From life and the world, I have received much. I had the luck to learn from great maestros. I feel the moral and ethical duty to teach the young.' "
Soprano Barbara Frittoli has a keen sense of Muti's drive and how he will approach a big second act, in America. She has sung at La Scala and Vienna's Staatsoper, among other venues, with him over 15 years. Her ardor has yet to wane. She still upends performance schedules to work with him.
"The great conductors do very particular work--that's why they are great. Muti wants to work with people who understand the music and who want to understand and find exactly what the composer wanted," said Frittoli, who spoke by phone from Moscow.
"I think he's fantastic--and Muti sometimes is not very kind to singers. He doesn't like somebody who says: 'I can't do this. I can't hit that note. I can't sing that way.' He wants to work with people who will do exactly what the composer wrote," Frittoli said.
She first worked with Muti when she was in her mid-20s. This winter in Vienna, they collaborated in Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte." "We've done it many times, but I still learn something with him," she said. "He is looking to show the power of the music and the text. ... He wants the message of music to travel in time, from the composer to us.
"It's easy to say. It's difficult to do."
Music is what matters to Muti, and he is devoted to his work, she said. That somehow got lost in the rabble-rousing La Scala climax. When Frittoli heard of the vote results, she didn't sing at La Scala for two years to register a protest.
"I'm from Milan. I know everything and I know all versions of the story," Frittoli said lightly.
"I know the man that Muti is. He's one of the greatest maestros of our century. He will be in the history of music.
"For Chicago--the combination of that top-quality orchestra and Muti? It will be very interesting."
cspolar@tribune.com
Alessandra Maggiorani contributed to this report.
To see more of the Chicago Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chicagotribune.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Chicago Tribune Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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