World-renowned Maestro Riccardo Muti, who is courted by half the world’s orchestras, is currently conducting a week-long seminar in Malta and in his own words, “is making music with a view to bringing people together”.
The seminar is the opening act of the new Mediterranean Music Academy, one of the latest endeavours of the Tourism and Culture Ministry. The Neapolitan maestro is also the academy’s honorary president.
Speaking to The Malta Independent, Mro Muti pointed out that his music-making has always been a social vehicle, a way of bringing people together, as attested by his most recent prize, the GlobArt Award 2007 – a humanitarian award he won for his Roads of Friendship project at the Ravenna festival. This is an annual concert organised by Mro Muti, which takes place in different disaster or war-stricken areas.
Speaking about the repertoire chosen for the seminar, Mro Muti said Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale has been a perfect choice as it is a masterpiece in the comic opera genre. “It requires top-level singers and musically it is very demanding as it brings out the virtuosity of both orchestra and singers.” The opera, said the maestro, is based on the Italian 18th century as well as the world of Mozart. “It has all the attributes for making the participants realise that that orchestra and singers are not two separate fronts.” As far as the teaching method is concerned, Mro Muti is rehearsing the opera at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, where a concert version of the opera will be performed tomorrow.
“I teach participants how to set up an opera, first on the piano, then by rehearsing the orchestra, then we add the soloists, bearing in mind that the orchestra is not at the service of the singers but together they are a single entity. Orchestras tend to be given minor consideration, but they have to work together to produce what the director is demanding. It was Giuseppe Verdi himself who came up with this concept and Arturo Toscanini has always tried to achieve this concept in his work.”
But why produce a concert version? “Toscanini has produced scores of concert performances of operas in New York and it is quite common in Salzburg. In such productions, the theatrical direction is assimilated by the musical direction.”
The maestro seems quite pleased with his
students. Of the 71 participants, 15 have the status of active participants, that is, for a higher price they can sit just under the maestro’s
podium and listen to each direction he gives to his orchestra – the Luigi Cherubini orchestra – and his singers.
There are two Maltese active participants, sopranos Lydia Caruana and Gillian Zammit. They told this newspaper that this is a very interesting experience and they are trying to absorb every hint they can get from the
maestro.
Mro Muti said he was pleased to meet the 15 active participants at a private meeting on Thursday evening, where he shared ideas with his students and answered “several intelligent questions”. There are also a good number of international participants, including Koreans, Syrians, Britons and Italians.
The maestro is especially pleased with the Syrian participants, because of his enthusiasm for creating bridges across the world.
“You know”, he said, “Damascus has a very important cultural centre, and Malta is right in the middle of a bridge that can be created between East and West to better understand each other.”
Apart from his attachment to Malta’s cultural-diplomatic position, Mro Muti is also very fond of the country, especially its people. “Staying in Malta, for a Southern Italian like me, is like being at home,” he said. He is planning to come to Malta every year.