As maestro Woody Allen once said, the most beautiful words in the English language are not "I love you" but "It's benign". Nevertheless, it's quite certain that "I told you so" is a close second.
And since Opera Chic reported on March 18 the breaking news of the offer of Opera di Roma's Music Directorship to Riccardo Muti -- a post that, we are shamelessly proud to remember, happily landed us in the Chicago Tribune -- Opera Chic has followed since then the various stages of the complicated courtship.
The skepticism of some news outlets now appears to have been laughably wrong: the Musicalamerica.com website for example thought the offer was just some sort of diversionary tactic by Rome's Mayor and advised not to hold one's breath (see screencap below, and don't bother searching the site unless you're a subscriber, the story is behind a paywall).
But the Muti deal was genuine, and it all boiled down to creating the right circumstances -- a new General Manager, a new board of directors, real chances of an increased flow of cash -- all of which have eventually happened. And five months, in Italian politics, are actually an impressively fast accomplishment when it comes to razing to the ground a power structure in a major opera house and creating an entirely new administration with a very high-profile conductor at the helm.
An older, long news analysis of what happened behind the scenes -- a 1,782 words monster post -- is here, and still quite valid. The only significant change is that the receivership has been used as a battering ram to place Catello De Martino as the new General Manager, instead of other names -- administrators from Venice's Fenice and Cagliari opera -- that had been floated.
What happens now?
Three weeks from now, the receivership will end, a new GM (well, De Martino, who's the provisional GM of the opera house will succeed himself so to speak) will take charge, as well as a new board of directors (never underestimate the uber-canny Bruno Vespa, the incredibly powerful TV journalist/talk show host /best-selling author who was the real power broker behind the entire deal -- imagine, in the US, a man with the media clout of Larry King + Brian Williams + Letterman + huge connections with government officials + a very powerful wife with a key role in the Justice Department: that's Bruno -- no umlaut -- Vespa).
Mayor Alemanno has promised fresh euros, the unions seem to like De Martino and no one in their right mind between orchestra or the workers can argue than Muti will give the opera house 100 times the media exposure they used to get with Maestro Gelmetti (whom Opera Chic likes, and who did a very good job, often leading difficult works, and he deserves a big round of applause and a thank you for his service, same as former GM Francesco Ernani, a real gentleman if there ever was one, and a kind reader of Opera Chic). Alemanno has also promised to spruce up the streets around the opera house, trying to turn it into a big attraction for tourists.
Muti will conduct at least two operas and two concerts per season, hire new orchestra players, do auditions, set up co-productions, choose the casts and have a say on the names of the guest conductors; he is also committed to conduct three season openers at Teatro San Carlo in Naples for the next three seasons, thus creating an impressive Rome-Naples axis in Central and Southern Italy.
Is this his revenge against la Scala?
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Well, it's been little more than four years since the orchestra and workers there at Scala ousted him, right after he had outmaneuvered the GM he constantly fought with, and right before the "anno Mozartiano" of 2006 he cared so much about. Four years and change later, he's MD of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, arguably the best symphonic orchestra in the world, he's running the Whitsun Festival in Salzburg and Opera di Roma, he conducts a big opera each summer at the Festspiele in Salzburg, he works with the kids of his Orchestra Cherubini. He freelances in Paris, London, and elsewhere. He has played a handful of really cool concerts in New York, with the same NYPhil he kind of dissed, choosing the CSO instead after an impressive courtship.
Last year, he even conducted Otello in Rome on December 6, one day before the big opening night of la Scala (the unlucky Don Carlo of the Filianoti firing and the boos).
La Scala still has no Music Director -- Daniel Barenboim flies in and out of the city to conduct one or two operas each year with the honorary title of Maestro Scaligero, the same as Wilhelm Fuertwangler's, his old mentor, but he's just not the MD there -- and all the power is in GM Stéphane Lissner's hands.
Riccardo Chailly, the man who probably deserved the job the most, hasn't really been considered. Daniele Gatti has been considered, then unceremoniously dropped -- he's now MD in Zurich. And most other names out there really don't have a chance.
Whether Muti's Rome-Naples axis -- with massive media support from Vespa's RAIUNO and other media outlets -- will change anything at la Scala, is hard to say.
Lissner's long, much hyped, eventually successful courtship to bring back Claudio Abbado for a few concerts -- that will indeed be a worldwide event, obviously -- kind of means that the GM doesn't really stand a chance of attracting Muti back anytime soon. If Muti wants, he can come back in 2013, to conduct a Verdi opera of choosing in Verdi's -- and Wagner's -- memorial season.
The smart money's against him taking that one-time Scala commitment for Verdi in 2013 -- he ran the place for almost twenty years, after all. It's doubtful that he's eager to make Stéphane Lissner the GM who brought back to la Scala both Abbado and Muti, the old duelists, the two greatest European conductors of their generation. And it's not that he really needs any more commitments anyway, now. After Maggio Musicale, the Philharmonia after Klemperer, 38 years and counting as of 2009 of appearances at Salzburg after being personally selected at 29 by Karajan, Philly after Ormandy, la Scala for twenty years. The Carl Otto Nicolai gold medal from his beloved Wiener Philharmoniker (the other recipients: Bruno Walter, Karl Boehm, Lenny). The new year's concerts in Vienna, the year 2000 included. His face on an Austrian postage stamp. And now the guest spot at the NYPhil, the CSO top job, and Opera di Roma. Naples.
There's nothing else he really wants, or needs, no job he still covets at this point in his career.
Except, of course, Principal Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker.