Riccardo Muti

Riccardo Muti (born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor. He is current music director of the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. Muti has previously held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was named Music Director Emeritus in Chicago in 2023.

A prolific recording artist, Muti has received numerous honours and awards, including two Grammy Awards. He is especially associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi. Among the world's leading conductors, in a 2015 Bachtrack poll he was ranked by music critics as the world's fifth best living conductor. Muti was born in Naples but he spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast.

His father, Domenico, was a pathologist in Molfetta, as well as an amateur singer and great music lover; his mother, Gilda, was a reserved and severe Neapolitan woman with five children. Muti graduated from Liceo classico (Classical Lyceum) Vittorio Emanuele II in Naples, then studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Vincenzo Vitale; here Muti was awarded a diploma cum laude.