Teatro alla Scala, Milano
The Italian press is full of the clash between La Scala’s Music Director Riccardo Chailly and former Music Director Riccardo Muti reported by the Ansa agency. After the concert with the Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Muti, Riccardo Chailly went to greet Muti in the dressing room that, with an act of courtesy, he had given him.
It is said that, upon Chailly’s arrival, Muti first claimed not to know him and asked him who he was and what he was doing there, and when Chailly took off his mask explaining that he had gone to congratulate him for the beautiful concert, he invited him to leave, in one apparently highly graphic language.
Various journalists report that initially it was planned that Muti’s concert would have been the first with the public in the theater after 200 days of Corona restrictions, in the 75th anniversary of Arturo Toscanini’s concert for the reopening after the war and reconstruction. But after some polemics about Muti marking this anniversary, la Scala announced a concert for the previous day with of the choir and orchestra of La Scala directed by Chailly.
After this clash, it is clear that Muti’s return to conduct an opera at La Scala, as Superintendent Meyer would like, is no longer a foregone conclusion.
