Corriere della Sera's December Style Magazine grabs a piece of 33-year-old Italian conductor Michele Mariotti with a "Legends of the Podium" feature. The Urbino-born, Pesaro-educated conductor just closed La Traviata for Teatro di San Carlo's 2012-13 season opener with Book of Revelation-sized expressionism that made Verdi take off his top hat and punch a hole straight through. Here I am baby, signed, sealed, delivered. After the holidays, he takes his second bite of the Big Apple for a set-in-the-1960s-Las-Vegas-Rigoletto, opening on January 28 at The Metropolitan Opera.
The principal director of Bologna's Teatro Comunale is eager to prove his worth independently from his father, Gianfranco Mariotti, intendant of the Rossini Opera Festival, in a country that equally treats famous offspring with morbid adoration and scoffed criticism.
"So what about family competition?" asks Corriere della Sera jouranlist Pierluigi Panza. "Only on the tennis courts," volleys Mariotti and continues, "Without being a hypocrite, I'll admit that it's been a privilidge to grow up in a theater house environment. But we don't choose who we want to be the kids of. Anyway this aspect was never a burden or a debatable point to for me. It's right to judge someone based on a level playing field, without these kinds of prejudices or age biases, without advantages or disadvantages."
Newleywed Mariotti recently put a ring on Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko, who he had met in 2010 while working on Rossini's Sigismondo. The local papers ran photos. -- if you look closely, you'll see VIP guests such as Juan Diego Florez and la Trappe. The couple live together near Bolgona and in his free time, Mariotti straps on his Air Jordans and plays basketball, tennis and he cooks with his wife.
He references Mozart as a composer who can "move me [emotionally] and scare me. For now, I wouldn't conduct Don Giovanni because I don't feel like I'm ready. Let's just say that Rossini's in my DNA and Verdi I love for his theatrical capacity."
