[Dixielandjazz] Band Leaders & Artistic Temperament

[Steve barbone]

CAVEAT - LONG & NOT OKOM   But it is somewhat relevant to the recent thread
on Band Leaders, Bands and Artistic Temperament. How similar the environment
is, whether in classical music or jazz.

Ricardo Muti? Hey man, Philadelphia musicians love you. Come on back. The
hell with those musicians at La Scala.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone 
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April 3, 2005 Mutiny at La Scala - NY Times
By DANIEL J. WAKIN and JAMES R. OESTREICH

On Saturday morning, Riccardo Muti, the conductor of the famed La Scala
opera house in Milan, ended an ugly battle with his musicians by resigning.

EVEN by operatic standards, the plot turned with stunning swiftness. Not two
months ago, Riccardo Muti seemed the unshakable master of the Teatro Alla
Scala, the legendary opera house in Milan. But now, besieged in the
political arena and denounced by the orchestra he so lovingly molded over
two decades, he has all but lost his grip on the company.

New twists arise almost daily. But at least at press time, Mr. Muti, the
house's music director, was scheduled to conduct the Scala orchestra and
chorus in a program of Beethoven and Schubert starting on Thursday. With the
first rehearsal scheduled for tomorrow, many in the music world were
wondering whether the musicians would strike, as they have done periodically
since mid-February, perhaps this time unseating Mr. Muti and tipping a
deeply muddled situation into outright chaos.

How long will Mr. Muti, 63, who is as proud and stubborn as he is brilliant
and charismatic, continue to weather insults intended to force his departure
from the position he has held since 1986?

Repeated attempts to reach Mr. Muti were unsuccessful; he was said to be on
vacation, phoneless in Cortina, Italy.

The question of what happens next for this celebrated maestro has both
immediate and long-range implications not just in Europe but in America,
too. Mr. Muti is scheduled to conduct the New York Philharmonic beginning on
April 14. It should surprise no one if, amid the turmoil, he cancels.
(Philharmonic management said early last week that it was not expecting a
cancellation or looking for a backup.)

But more important, Mr. Muti, who turned down the music directorship of the
Philharmonic in 2000 after a steamy courtship, will surely figure in the
search for a successor to Lorin Maazel, whose contract expires in 2009. Mr.
Muti has already agreed to conduct the orchestra in four concerts a season,
beginning in 2006-7.

"Everybody's interested in somebody of that caliber," Zarin Mehta, the
Philharmonic's president, said of Mr. Muti, whom he had lunch with in
December. "But I don't want to get in trouble and say he's on a short list."

Mr. Mehta added that he was surprised by the drastic turn of events at La
Scala: "He basically talked about how wonderfully things were going. The
orchestra was his pride and joy."

MR. MUTI had reason for optimism. He had just presided over what was widely
proclaimed the cultural event of the year in Europe on Dec. 7, the reopening
of La Scala after a three-year restoration and renovation. The project had
encountered protests from preservationists and the usual construction
delays, but the finished house was widely regarded as a masterpiece, with
its new stage contraptions functioning smoothly and its venerable décor
glistening afresh.

Yet even then, storm clouds were gathering, with widespread displeasure at
Mr. Muti's anticlimactic choice to reopen the house. He opted for historical
resonance over glamour, with the utterly obscure opera "Europa Riconosciuta"
by Antonio Salieri, the work that had originally opened the house, in 1778.

But it was the dismissal of Carlo Fontana - who had overseen the renovation
and who, since his installation in 1990, had increasingly fallen out with
Mr. Muti - as general manager and his replacement by Mauro Meli in February
that unleashed the tempest. Mr. Meli, the former director of the theater
division, is an ally of Mr. Muti, and the orchestra portrayed the shift as a
power grab, with Mr. Muti deeply involved. The orchestra, which operates
separately as the Filarmonica Della Scala, and hundreds of workers in the
house, saw this as a threat to their job security. The orchestra started a
series of strikes directed at Mr. Meli and Mr. Muti, forcing cancellation of
the first performance of each stage production and wiping out one new double
bill completely. Mr. Muti, in turn, canceled orchestral concerts. The
orchestra and workers voted overwhelmingly that he should resign.

The rebellion is said to have left Mr. Muti deeply pained, even bitter. Like
his model, Arturo Toscanini, he has always been a purist as a musician,
searching out the letter of the score and the intention of the composer. But
that purity might have had a cost: with his relentless devotion to the
music, he cultivated few close relationships with his musicians. He never
became the glad-hander or the politician that some maestros are, and at La
Scala, especially, he seems not to have developed the strong relationships
and the emotional loyalty that could have protected him during such extreme
turmoil.

"After so many years at La Scala, he wasn't expecting this," said Barbara
Frittoli, a Milanese soprano who has worked with Mr. Muti for 10 years.
"Muti is La Scala," she added, saying that if he left the house, "it would
be like losing its identity."

Mr. Muti, for his part, made his distress known in an open letter to the
Corriere Della Sera newspaper in Milan, but he has given no indication that
he intends to leave willingly.

THE crisis in Milan, which has been front-page news around Italy and become
the talk of the classical music world, is rooted not only in the
politicized, sometimes anarchic atmosphere of Italian opera houses but also
in the complex personality of Mr. Muti.

He was born in 1941, in Naples, a fact perhaps not incidental to the Scala
conflict, in a country where north-south stereotypes abound. Naples, to the
south, and Milan have long been cultural and social rivals, and Mr. Muti,
who studied in both cities, unites certain of their supposed musical
characteristics.

He has the meticulousness stereotypically applied to northern Italians, said
Vincenzo de Gregorio, a fellow student of Mr. Muti's at the Conservatory of
San Pietro a Majella in Naples, which he now directs, but a southerner's
ability to transmit "the intrinsic passion of the score."

For all the renewed glory Mr. Muti has brought to La Scala, he seems, by
most accounts, to have remained a social outsider.

"Riccardo comes from Naples," said Anna Crespi, a Milanese aristocrat who
oversees the foundation Amici Della Scala (Friends of La Scala). "He has a
personality that is very happy when he speaks with people, but he is very
closed with his life. Muti is a person more alone."

Though he does not lack sycophants, he seems not to have a strong support
system outside the orchestra. Those who know Mr. Muti well (like one of
these reporters, whose wife worked for the Philadelphia Orchestra during Mr.
Muti's final years there) can vouch for a keen, even earthy, sense of humor
and considerable personal warmth, but he maintains a limited circle of
friends.

Mr. Muti's career trajectory has been as simple as his emotional makeup is
complex. He scored early successes in Florence, at the May festival and the
Teatro Comunale, and served as principal conductor of the New Philharmonia
(now, simply Philharmonia) Orchestra in London from 1973 to 1982.

He first conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1972, at 31, became its
principal guest conductor in 1977 and its music director in 1980. He was
certainly not a surprise candidate, having spent so much time in
Philadelphia, but neither was he the obvious choice. No matter; he was
Eugene Ormandy's favorite.

"He had a very difficult challenge, taking over from Ormandy after 44
years," said Joseph H. Kluger, now the orchestra's president. "He made some
fairly radical changes."

Into the midst of starchy Philadelphia society, Mr. Muti, with his glowering
good looks and his leather jackets, carried the aura of a street tough,
becoming an object of more than musical fascination. After Wolfgang
Sawallisch had been named to succeed him, at 70, a Philadelphia newspaper
published a cartoon showing a dowager watching, successively, Ormandy, Mr.
Muti and Mr. Sawallisch conduct. The thought-balloons above her head with
Ormandy and Mr. Sawallisch, showing music, gave way to a dream-balloon with
Mr. Muti: the conductor as a satyr in hot pursuit.

Perhaps because he exuded glamour, Mr. Muti sometimes had a hard time being
taken seriously on musical terms. Mr. Kluger recalls how Mr. Muti seethed
when, immediately after an intense performance of Bach's B minor Mass in
1985, a woman from the audience asked, "Who does your hair?"

In a deliberate attempt to counter that perception, he affected a dour mien
in public and often refused to smile for publicity photographs. Several
Philadelphia musicians described him as somewhat aloof, though his musical
endeavors were filled with a sense of mission.

That aloofness, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, also fed into a lasting
reputation for what could kindly be called reserve but has more often been
termed arrogance. Some called it a specifically European kind of
courtliness. Mr. Muti never really settled into Philadelphia - or for that
matter, America.

"He really values music as a great way of communicating with people," said
Barbara Govatos, a violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra. "When it's not
considered art, he gets personally offended. He's had some trouble with the
American way of life. He hates the fact that Americans think of culture as
entertainment."

Musically, his Philadelphia tenure was generally accounted a resounding
success. Philadelphia traditionalists who pined for the sonic splendor of
the Stokowski and Ormandy decades might not always have liked the leaner,
more incisive sound he achieved, but they could hardly fault the level of
performance.

Mr. Muti's sheer musical equipment is prodigious. Philadelphia players were
amazed at his remarkable ability in solfège, the syllable-singing technique
more widely stressed in Europe. He could fire out rapid 16th-note passages,
hitting each note with the right do-re-mi syllable.

IT came as a surprise when Mr. Muti announced his intention to leave
Philadelphia in 1992 to concentrate on La Scala, where six years earlier he
had succeeded his compatriot and longtime rival Claudio Abbado as music
director. By all accounts, Mr. Abbado, in general a gentler creature than
Mr. Muti, had also met with a rude end, though nothing like the current
fracas.

Mr. Muti made no secret of his feeling that standards of performance needed
serious improvement, and he threw himself into the project. Again, whatever
anyone may have thought of his working style, few would deny his consummate
musicianship.

That musicianship was displayed at La Scala most conspicuously, perhaps, in
1995. When an orchestra strike ('twas ever thus) threatened a performance of
Verdi's "Traviata," Mr. Muti - without rehearsal - stepped in to play the
entire accompaniment on piano while conducting the singers. He saved the
day.

But he has always held fellow performers to his own high standards,
sometimes dealing with them harshly. Philadelphia players recall that Mr.
Muti angrily put down his baton and walked off the stage during a rehearsal
when he saw a musician with little to play reading a book.

Occasionally, he will even upbraid an audience for applauding in the wrong
place or rattling programs, as he did in a performance of Tchaikovsky's
"Pathétique" Symphony in Philadelphia in 1989.

And like Toscanini, Mr. Muti can seem belligerent in his insistence on
fidelity to the score. He has alienated many a star singer, at least
temporarily, for refusing to allow high notes traditionally added to show
off the voice.

"You would see a very authoritarian side," said John Koen, a cellist in the
Philadelphia Orchestra. "As a conductor, you have to convince the orchestra
that your way is the right way, and he had that down."

Still, Mr. Kluger, the Philadelphia president, said: "I have never found him
to be arrogant. Opinionated? Yes. Demanding? Yes."

But for all his seeming aloofness, it is another side of Mr. Muti's
personality, his fierce loyalty to orchestra members and colleagues, that
makes the current situation in Milan so poignant. In February, for example,
he traveled to Philadelphia to conduct a benefit concert for the orchestra's
endowment fund. The players asked him to come, and he did so, despite
tensions gathering in Milan.

And it was loyalty to a director, Hugo de Ana, and to La Scala itself that
put him in the international news last October. When the Royal Opera House
in London belatedly announced that it would have to alter Mr. de Ana's sets
for a staging of Verdi's "Forza del Destino" imported from La Scala, Mr.
Muti withdrew from the production, saying it no longer met Scala standards.
Typically, many attributed his departure to personal arrogance.

Norman Lebrecht, a British critic who shoots from the hip and sometimes aims
below the belt, recently condemned Mr. Muti's actions of recent months: "A
Neapolitan of modest origins, in ever-black designer hair and suits so sharp
you can cut a finger on the crease, he tempers feral energy and vicious
tantrums with a magnetic warmth that he switches on and off at will."

If it all seems dangerously overheated, it is. The atmosphere of Italian
opera and La Scala in particular can be so supercharged, in fact, that it's
hard for Americans to comprehend.

At La Scala, where impassioned fans do not hesitate to hoot or hiss during a
performance, no one is neutral. Supporters and antagonists have rained down
fliers during performances. At a recent concert, one faction booed the
orchestra players for their role in the conflict.

"Opera is the Italian equivalent of baseball," said Deborah Borda, the
president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who was the executive director of
the New York Philharmonic when it was courting Mr. Muti. "It's sport.
Riccardo is a sporting man, and he's participating in this game."

Sandro Malatesta, a veteran trumpeter in the Scala orchestra, also suggests
gamesmanship on Mr. Muti's part: "Maestro Muti doesn't talk to the
musicians. He only writes a letter to them through Corriere Della Sera."

"For us the institution is more important than the man," he added.
"Toscanini and Abbado and great names have been here, but La Scala always
remains La Scala."

The situation at La Scala is also suffused with political overtones. The
unions representing the musicians and Scala workers are leftist, and the
theater's chairman is the mayor of Milan, Gabriele Albertini, who belongs to
the center-right Forza Italia coalition, led by Italy's premier, Silvio
Berlusconi. Though Mr. Muti is generally seen to be neutral, his support has
come from the mayor and his ilk, making him an inviting target for the
unions.

So how much are Mr. Muti and his style to blame for this morass? Could the
same difficulties have befallen the gentlest of conductors? Even Italians
seem hard put to sort it all out.

"During my tenure as La Scala artistic director," said Roman Vlad, a
composer who worked at the house from 1994 to 1997, "Muti's relationship
with the orchestra was always perfect, absolutely perfect, so this is
shocking to me. I am at a loss."

Heavy-breathing reports out of Italy have suggested that if Mr. Muti should
leave La Scala or be forced out at this juncture, no major musical
institution would ever touch him. But to anyone not directly involved in the
dispute, such speculation is almost comical. "If the next act of his life is
not to be at La Scala," Ms. Borda of the Los Angeles Philharmonic said, "he
will be able to write his own script."

The question might better be turned on the institution. Will any world-class
maestro be tempted to take over La Scala any time soon?


Reporting for this article was contributed by Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome
and Angela Frucci from Milan.