“I got tired of life. Because it is a world in which I no longer recognize myself. And since I can’t expect the world to fit me, I prefer to get out of the way. As in Falstaff: ‘Everything declines’ “.
This was stated by Riccardo Muti, the orchestra director who will be on July 28th will be 80 years old.
“I was lucky enough to grow up in the 1950s, to attend high school in Molfetta where Salvemini had studied, with non-strict, very strict professors.
I remember a Latin question in middle school. The teacher asked me: ‘Pluit aqua’; which case is aqua? Instead of ablative, I replied: nominative. He grabbed me by the ears and it shook me like a bell rope. Thanks to that professor, I never missed a Latin quote anymore. Today they would arrest him“.
It is not a question of regretting corporal punishment, but, he says, “I regret seriousness. The spirit with which Frederick II had the motto sculpted on the door of Capua, under the bust of Pier delle Vigne and Taddeo da Sessa: “May enter the security owners who want to live ‘; those who intend to live honestly enter with confidence. This is the immigration and integration policy that would serve“.
Muti goes on to say that he no longer even recognizes his profession: “Conducting has often become a profession of convenience. Often young people manage to conduct long and serious studies without studies …. Today many conductors they use the podium for excessive gesticulations, for show, trying to hit an audience more inclined to what they see and less to what they hear “.
And today with the MeToo “Da Ponte and Mozart would end up in jail. They define Bach, Beethoven, Schubert ‘colonial music’: how you do it? Schubert was also a very sweet person “
Right or left? “Neither one nor the other. I was born a free man and so I remain. I grew up with Salvini’s dictates, a non-Bolshevik socialist. I’ve never joined a coven … At my funeral I don’t want applause”.
