RAVENNA ā Conducting a joyful Mozart motet, Riccardo Muti sent a resounding message Sunday night, that live classical music has returned to the Italian stage after the coronavirus lockdown.
A full summer festival program is planned in his adopted home of Ravenna, even as the musical outlook remains grim in the United States, where he also conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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The 78-year-old renowned conductor said the coronavirus had āādestroyed music,āā with shuttered venues depriving the world of āāspiritual foodāā as it faced a pandemic that still threatens uncalculated economic repercussions beyond the lives lost.
Even during two world wars, Muti noted, theaters stayed open to provide cultural relief except during the worst of the bombings.
āāIn that sense, this virus was even more devastating than bombs,āā Muti told The Associated Press before the inaugural concert for the Ravenna Festivalās 30th anniversary season, in which he conducted the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra that he founded in 2004.
The festival, founded by Muti's wife, salvaged its season by scheduling its nearly 50 events in outdoor venues with limited audiences, and spacing musicians at least a meter apart ā challenging what Muti noted was the literal symphonic order of āāplaying together.''
āāIn the message of solidarity that I send to the entire cultural world, I give a signal from Ravenna, that at a certain point you can restart, you must restart, with caution and with care,āā said Muti, who has been at the helm of some of the worldās most famous theaters, including Milanās La Scala and Londonās Philharmonia Orchestra. In the United States, he won accolades leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 1980s and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2010.
āāYou pay a high price for the absence of culture,'' he said.
The Ravenna Festival program, which runs through July, is another signal of the gradual reawakening of European classical music after strict closures to slow the spread of coronavirus. In a sign of its symbolic importance, Italyās Senate president and culture minister attended, along with the head of the UNESCO world heritage center, in recognition of the small city of Ravennaās outsized role in world history as a three-time ancient capital with eight protected monuments, and the final resting place of poet Dante Alighieri.
In other signs of cultural life, Muti conducted Cimarosa, Mozart and Schubert earlier this month with the Vienna Philharmonic, with a full orchestra at a normal distance thanks to regular virus testing, while theaters in Florence and Venice have staged concerts with small audiences. Milanās La Scala will signal its re-emergence with a few musical evenings in July ahead of its official reopening in September.
After leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on a European tour in January, Muti spent Italyās lockdown in Ravenna, studying for what is supposed to be the CSOās September season-opening of Beethovenās āMissa solemnis.ā But the start of the season remains in question, as U.S. cultural landmarks like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York and Philadelphiaās Kimmel Theater have announced their closure through the end of the year due to the virusās threat.
āāIt is too easy to say: āClose.ā But ... there are thousands of people who no longer provide culture and spiritual food to the public, and who, at a certain point, wonāt have even a salary to live on,āā Muti said.
Muti suggested that concerts could be held in Chicagoās Memorial Park, with 2,000 guests instead of the 30,000 capacity, and by first testing musicians for the virus and possibly sticking to a repertoire that limits the number of musicians on stage.
During part of the CSO's season that was canceled, Muti was to have conducted in April a symphony by African American composer Florence Price, which the program said āgives powerful voice to the African American experience.ā Muti, who has been watching the Black Lives Matters protests from afar, said classical music must do more to integrate people of color.
In Chicago, he works with the orchestraās African American network to bring the local Black community to concerts and rehearsals, growing to 3,000 members since 2016. But he also recalls a 1991 concert he conducted in Philadelphia in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., where for the āfirst and only time I saw the Academy of Music filled 90% with African Americans.ā
āMy dream would be to have many more African Americans in orchestras, choruses and in audiences,ā Muti said.
āBut this was also our own fault, by giving the sensation that our musical culture is a culture of an elite, a culture of superior people, of very refined people. It is not true. We must open our arms, as we have done and will continue to do in Chicago.ā