Born in Naples on July 28, 1941, Riccardo Muti is one of the greatest conductors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The son of a doctor and a Neapolitan singer, he studied violin at the age of 8, then piano at the San Pietro a Majella conservatory in Naples, after spending his childhood on the Adriatic coast in Molfetta, near Bari. After studying philosophy, he took up composition with Nino Rota and conducting at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, with composer Bruno Bettinelli and conductor Antonio Votto. After passing the first round of the Guido Cantelli Competition in Milan in 1967, he was appointed Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Mai Musical Florentin for ten years. A regular contributor to the Salzburg Festival since 1971, two years later he succeeded Otto Klemperer as conductor of London's Philharmonia Orchestra (1973-1992), with whom he recorded numerous operas. In 1986, Riccardo Muti took over as principal conductor of Milan's Teatro alla Scala, from where he was forced to resign in 2005 after a conflict with the orchestra's musicians and its administrative director Carlo Fontana. He succeeded Eugene Ormandy at the helm of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he remained for twelve years, until 1992. President of the jury of the 2 Agosto International Composition Competition since 1995, the Italian conductor regularly collaborates with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, two of classical music's greatest institutions. In addition to world tours with the Vienna orchestra, he has conducted the New Year's Concert seven times, in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2018, 2021 and 2025. Appointed principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he took up his post in 2010, and continues to be guest conductor of numerous orchestras, with whom Muti has recorded the greatest operas by Mozart, Verdi, Rossini and Puccini, the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin, and numerous works by other composers including Haydn, Mahler, Cherubini, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel and Richard Strauss. On March 12, 2011, he conducted Verdi's opera Nabucco at the Rome Opera, where he was named honorary conductor for life on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Italian unity. In 2015, he founded the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy, dedicated to the training of young musicians, singers and conductors. In 2023, he will retire at the end of his contract as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has just recorded the album Contemporary American Composers, including Philip Glass's Symphony No. 11. A 91-CD boxed set, The Complete Warner Symphonic Recordings, featuring recordings made between 1973 and 2007, was previously released.
