FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
July 10, 2013
Press Contacts:
Rachelle Roe
Maggie Berndt
PARLA ITALIANO? MAESTRO RICCARDO MUTI OFFERS
FREE LECTURE ON VERDI’S NABUCCO THIS FRIDAY
CHICAGO—On Friday, July 12 at 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. (CDT), classical music fans who
comprehend Italian may enjoy a free two-hour video stream of a talk by Riccardo Muti,
music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, on Verdi’s Nabucco.
The online stream, at http://RiccardoMutiMusic.com, is a rebroadcast of a free lecture that
Maestro Muti gave at the Rome Opera (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma) on July 8, 2013. The
lecture was attended by some 2,000 people; those that could not fit into the hall viewed it
on a large screen outside of the Opera.
Maestro Muti has been lauded for his act of “engaged artistry” when in December 2011
during a performance of Nabucco at the Rome Opera, he invited the audience to sing the
lyrics to a chorus from that opera—“Va, pensiero,” the unofficial anthem of the historic
Italian unification movement—as part of a rare mid-performance encore. The Harvard
Business Review website and others described it as a protest of “the Italian government's
recent cuts to funding for education and the arts, which, [Muti] argued, would lead to the
fatal loss of a defining feature of Italy's national identity—its culture.” The encore has
drawn more than 2.4 million views on YouTube.
Find more about Maestro’s busy summer on the events calendar at his site,
RiccardoMutiMusic.com. Read about his two recent awards here.
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