to Naples, the city where he was born, he studied piano with Vincenzo Vitale, graduating with honors from the Conservatory of San Pietro to Majella. He continued his studies at the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory in Milan, under the guidance of Bruno Bettinelli and Antonino Votto, where he earned a diploma in composition and conducting.

In 1967 the prestigious jury of the "Cantelli" Competition in Milan unanimously awarded him first place, bringing him to the attention of critics and the public. The following year he was appointed music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a post he would hold until 1980. As early as 1971, however, Muti was invited from Herbert von Karajan to the podium of the Salzburg Festival, inaugurating a happy custom that led him, in 2010, to to celebrate 40 years of association with the Austrian event. The 1970s saw him at the head of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London (1972-1982), where he succeeded to Otto Klemperer; then, between 1980 and 1992, he inherited from Eugene Ormandy the post of music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

From 1986 to 2005 he was music director of the Teatro alla Scala: projects of international scope took shape, such as the proposed Mozart-from Ponte trilogy and the Wagner tetralogy. Alongside the titles of the great repertoire, other lesser-visited composers also find space and visibility: precious pages from the Neapolitan eighteenth century and works by Gluck, Cherubini, Spontini, up to to Poulenc, with Les dialogues des Carmélites that earned him the critics' "Abbiati" Prize. His long period as music director of La Scala ensembles culminated on December 7, 2004, in the triumphant reopening of the restored La Scala where he conducted Antonio Salieri's Europe Recognized.

His contribution to the Verdi repertoire was exceptional; he conducted_ Ernani, Nabucco, I Vespri Siciliani, La Traviata, Attila, Don Carlos, Falstaff, Rigoletto, Macbeth, La Forza del Destino, Il Trovatore, Otello, Aida, Un ballo in Maschera, I Due Foscari, I Masnadieri_. His musical direction was the longest in the history of La Scala.

Over the course of his extraordinary career, Riccardo Muti has conducted many of the world's most prestigious orchestras: from the Berliner Philharmoniker to the Bayerischer Rundfunk, from the New York Philharmonic to the Orchestre National de France, the Philharmonia in London and, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic, with whom he has an assiduous and particularly meaningful relationship and with whom he has performed at the Salzburg Festival since 1971. Invited to the podium at the concert celebrating 150 years of the great Viennese orchestra, Muti received the Golden Ring, an honor bestowed by the Vienna Philharmonic as a sign of special admiration and affection. After 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2004, in 2018 he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the fifth time in the prestigious New Year's Concert to Vienna. For this recording, he received a Double Platinum Record in August 2018 for his concerts with the same orchestra at the Salzburg Festival.

In April 2003, a "Journée Riccardo Muti" was exceptionally promoted in France, through the national broadcaster France Musique, which for 14 at uninterrupted broadcasts music from he conducted with all the orchestras that have had and have him on the podium, while on December 14 of the same year he conducted the long-awaited reopening concert of the "La Fenice" Theater in Venice. "Riccardo Muti Day" was revived from Radio France on May 17, 2018, in conjunction with the concert conducted by the Maestro at the Auditorium de la Maison de la Radio.

In 2004, he founded the "Luigi Cherubini" Youth Orchestra formed from young musicians selected from an international commission from more than 600 instrumentalists from from all regions of Italy.

The vast record production, already relevant in the 1970s and now enhanced by the many awards received from specialized critics, ranges from the symphonic and operatic classical repertoire to the twentieth century. The record label in charge of Riccardo Muti's recordings is RMMusic (www.riccardomutimusic.com).

His civic commitment as an artist is evidenced by the concerts offered as part of Ravenna Festival's "The Ways of Friendship" project in some "symbolic" places of history, both ancient and contemporary: Sarajevo (1997), Beirut (1998), Jerusalem (1999), Moscow (2000), Yerevan and Istanbul (2001), New York (2002), Cairo (2003), Damascus (2004), El Djem (2005), Meknes (2006), Rome (2007), Mazara del Vallo (2008), Sarajevo (2009), Trieste (2010), Nairobi (2011), Ravenna (2012), Mirandola (2013), Redipuglia (2014), Otranto (2015), Tokyo (2016), Tehran (2017), Kiev (2018) and Athens (2019) with the La Scala Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the "Musicians of Europe United," a formation made up of the first parts of the most important European orchestras, and recently with the Cherubini Orchestra.

Among the countless honors he has received from Riccardo Muti throughout his career are: the Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Italian Republic and the Grande Medaglia d'oro of the City of Milan; the Verdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany; the Legion of Honor in France (formerly a Chevalier, in 2010 President Nicolas Sarkozy awarded him the title of Officer); and the title of Chevalier of the British Empire conferred on him by Queen Elizabeth II. The Mozarteum Salzburg awarded him the Silver Medal for his efforts on the Mozart side; the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle and the Wiener Staatsoper elected him an Honorary Member; Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship; and the state of Israel honored him with the "Wolf" award for the arts. He won the 2018 Praemium Imperiale for Music, a highly prestigious Japanese honor bestowed on him to Tokyo on Oct. 23.

More than 20 honorary degrees Riccardo Muti has received from the world's leading universities.

He conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the concert that opened the 250th anniversary celebration of Mozart's birth at the Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg. The ongoing and unbroken collaboration between Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic reached 49 years in 2019. to Salzburg, for the Whitsun Festival, to starting in 2007 together with the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra has tackled a five-year project aimed at rediscovering and enhancing the musical heritage, both operatic and sacred, of 18th-century Neapolitan music.

from September 2010 is Music Director of the prestigious Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In the same year he was named "Musician of the Year" in America by the leading magazine "Musical America." In February 2011, following the performance and live recording of Verdi's from Requiem Mass with the CSO, Maestro Riccardo Muti won the 53rd Grammy Awards with two awards: Best Classical Album and Best Choral Album. In March 2011, Riccardo Muti was proclaimed the winner of the prestigious 2011 Birgit Nilsson Award which was presented to him on October 13, to Stockholm at the Royal Opera in the presence of the Swedish Royalty, their Majesties King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. to New York in April 2011 he received theOpera News Award. In May 2011 he was awarded to Riccardo Muti the "Prince Asturia Prize for the Arts 2011," Spain's highest artistic award, presented from by His Royal Highness Prince Felipe of Asturia to Oviedo the following fall. In July 2011 he was named an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic and in August 2011 Honorary Director to life of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome. In May 2012 he was awarded the Grand Cross of St. Gregory the Great from His Holiness Benedict XVI. In 2016 he received the Gold and Silver Star of the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government.

In July 2015, Maestro Muti's desire to devote himself even more to the training of young musicians was realized: the first edition of the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy for young conductors, collaborating masters and singers was held at the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna and was attended by young musical talents and an audience of enthusiasts from from all over the world. The objective of the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy is to transmit the experience and teachings of Riccardo Muti to young musicians and to make them understand in all its complexity the path that leads to the realization of a'opera.

The first edition, dedicated to Falstaff, was followed by Academies on _La Traviata _in 2016 (also to Seoul, as well as to Ravenna), Aida in 2017, Macbeth in 2018, Le nozze di Figaro in 2019 and Rigoletto to March 2019 for the first Italian Opera Academy to Tokyo, _Cavalleria rusticana _and _Pagliacci _in 2020. info: www.riccardomutioperacademy.com.

Founded from Riccardo Muti in 2004, the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra has taken the name of one of the greatest Italian composers of all time active in the European sphere to emphasize, along with to a strong national identity, its own inclination to a European vision of music and culture. The orchestra, which stands as a privileged instrument of conjunction between academia and professional activity, divides its headquarters between the cities of Piacenza and Ravenna. The Cherubini consists of from young instrumentalists, all under the age of 30 and from from every Italian region, selected through hundreds of auditions from a commission made up of the first parts of prestigious European orchestras and chaired by Muti himself. According to a spirit that imparts to the orchestra the dynamism of continuous renewal, the musicians remain in the orchestra for only three years, after which many of them have the opportunity to find their own place in the best orchestras.

In recent years the Orchestra, under the baton of Riccardo Muti, has tried its hand at a repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the twentieth century, alternating between concerts in many Italian cities and major tours in Europe and around the world during which it has been featured in theaters in Vienna, Paris, Moscow, Salzburg, Cologne, St. Petersburg, Madrid, Barcelona, Lugano, Muscat, Manama, Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires and Tokyo, among others.

The debut to Salzburg, at the Pentecost Festival, with Cimarosa's Il ritorno di Don Calandrino, marked in 2007 the first stage of a five-year project that the Austrian festival, in co-production with Ravenna Festival, has carried out with Riccardo Muti to rediscover and enhance the musical heritage of the Neapolitan eighteenth century and in which Cherubini has been featured as resident orchestra.

to Salzburg, then, the orchestra returned in 2015, making its debut - the only Italian ensemble invited - at the most prestigious summer festival, with Ernani: to conducting it again was Riccardo Muti, who had also led it in the memorable concert held at the Golden Hall of Vienna's Musikverein in 2008, a few months before Cherubini was awarded the authoritative Abbiati Prize as the best musical initiative for "the remarkable results that have made it an ensemble of excellence recognized in Italy and abroad."

In addition to its intense activity with its founder, the Cherubini has had many collaborations with artists such as Claudio Abbado, John Axelrod, Rudolf Barshai, Michele Campanella, James Conlon, Dennis Russel Davies, Gérard Depardieu, Kevin Farrell, Patrick Fournillier, Herbie Hancock, Leonidas Kavakos, Lang Lang, Ute Lemper, Alexander Lonquich, Wayne Marshall, Kurt Masur, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Kent Nagano, Krzysztof Penderecki, Donato Renzetti, Vadim Repin, Giovanni Sollima, Yuri Temirkanov, Alexander Toradze, and Pinchas Zukerman.

Challenging and of unquestionable importance were the "trilogies" projects, which at the Ravenna Festival saw it as the protagonist, under the direction of Nicola Paszkowski, of the celebrations for Verdi's bicentennial, on the occasion of which the Orchestra was called upon to perform no less than six operas at Teatro Alighieri. In 2012, in the span of just three days, Rigoletto, Trovatore and Traviata; in 2013, again one after the other to close comparison, Verdi's "Shakespearean" operas Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff. For the 2017 Autumn Trilogy, the Cherubini, conducted from Vladimir Ovodok, performed Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci and Tosca; in 2018, it measured itself with an extraordinary new Verdi adventure, led from Alessandro Benigni for Nabucco, Hossein Pishkar for Rigoletto and Nicola Paszkowski for Otello; and again, in 2019, with masterpieces such as Carmen, Aida and_ Norma_. In recent years, the opera repertoire has also been regularly tackled by the Orchestra in co-productions that see the Teatro Alighieri of Ravenna alongside other major Italian theaters of tradition. From 2015 to 2017 the Cherubini also participated in the Spoleto Festival, under the baton of James Conlon, performing the entire "Mozart-from Ponte" trilogy. The connection with Riccardo Muti led her to to take part in the Italian Opera Academy for young conductors and collaborating masters, which the Maestro founded and undertook in 2015: if in that first year Cherubini had the opportunity to measure herself with Falstaff, the following years the focus was on Traviata, Aida, Macbeth and the Nozze di Figaro.

At the Ravenna Festival, where the intense experience of the summer residency is renewed every year, Cherubini is regularly featured in new productions and concerts, as well as, since 2010, in the project "The Ways of Friendship," which has seen her perform, among other destinations, to Nairobi, Redipuglia, Tokyo, Tehran, Kiev and, in 2019, in Athens, again conducted from Riccardo Muti.