We wish a very happy birthday to the outstanding Italian conductor, Riccardo Muti, who turns 80 today, 28 July.

The celebrated maestro studied piano at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples and philosophy at the University of Naples. He continued his studies in Milan, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in composition and conducting at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory. In 1967, he won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition, which launched his brilliant career as a conductor.

He is known as a great connoisseur of Giuseppe Verdi and, during his rich career, he has conducted at major opera houses around the world, where he has led some of the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and the French National Orchestra. He has also maintained a close relationship with the Salzburg Festival. He is currently the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. Before that, he was the principal conductor and music director of the Maggio Musicale festival in Florence, served as the principal conductor of the London Philharmonic for a short while during the 1970s (succeeding Otto Klemperer), and was the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980 to 1992.

He has appeared as a guest conductor in Slovenia three times: the first in 2003, when he opened the 51st Ljubljana Summer Festival; a year later, when he conducted the Slovenian Philharmonic at the concert dedicated to Carlos Kleiber; and the last time in 2014, when he paid tribute to the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the First World War with Verdi’s Requiem at the 62nd Ljubljana Festival.