May 11--The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Riccardo Muti will make their first joint appearances at Milan's famed Teatro alla Scala, the conductor's former operatic and symphonic bailiwick, as part of a joint, 11-concert European tour Jan. 13-27, the CSO announced early Wednesday.
The concerts in Milan on Jan. 20-21 will mark Muti's first performances at the prestigious international opera house since 2005, when he abruptly ended his 19-year tenure as music director amid political acrimony.
The tour, Muti's sixth European trip with the orchestra and the CSO's 33rd visit to the Continent, will begin in Paris and end in Frankfurt, Germany. Other tour cities include Hamburg; Aalborg, Denmark; Vienna; and Baden-Baden, Germany.
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Concerts will mark the orchestra's first perfomances at the new Philharmonie de Paris; its participation in the opening week of perfomances at Hamburg's new Elbphilharmonie, the first concerts there by a foreign orchestra; its debut in Aalborg; and its first appearances since the 1990s at the Festpielhaus in Baden-Baden and the Alte Oper in Frankfurt.
Tour repertory will include symphonic works by Hindemith, Elgar, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Richard Strauss. CSO musicians also will lead master classes for music students anf give community chamber performances in tour cities.
La Scala's general manager, Alexander Pereira, was quoted by the Associated Press as calling Muti's return to the theater "a moment long-awaited by the city and all music lovers." Muti, he said, "has entered into the history of the theater with an extraordinary musical contribution."
La Scala also is opening an exhibit on Muti's tenure in June to celebrate the maestro's 75th birthday on July 28.
Muti and the CSO toured Europe for the first time together in 2007 and most recently in 2014. Together they also have performed in Russia, the Canary Islands and Mexico. They made their first joint tour of Asia in January.
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