Riccardo Muti - conductor

Celebrated maestro shows no sign of slowing down

Riccardo Muti

The brilliant conductor and musical director Riccardo Muti celebrates his 75th birthday today.

Since 2010, Muti has been conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while retaining his directorship of the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, a training ensemble for talent from Italian and other European music schools, based in Ravenna and Piacenza, which he founded in 2005.

Previously, Muti held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.

He was named principal conductor and music director for the Maggio Musicale when he was only 28 and stayed there 12 years.  He was at La Scala for 19 years from 1986 to 2005, his tenure ending amid rancour following a conflict with the theatre's general manager, Carlo Fontana.

Muti was born on this day in 1941 in Naples, although his childhood years were spent largely in the Puglian port city of Molfetta, near Bari. He entered the world in Naples, he says, at the insistence of his mother, Gilda, herself a Neapolitan, who travelled across the peninsula by train in the later stages of each of her five pregnancies in order that her children would also grow up as Neapolitans.  In his case, the trials of the journey had the extra dimension of it being wartime.

His father, Domenico, was considered the musical member of the family, possessed of a beautiful tenor voice but a doctor by profession.  He insisted his children - all boys - had a musical education and Riccardo, despite looking on enviously at his friends playing outside while he practised the violin, revealed his talent as early as seven years old.

Muti studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples, where he also studied philosophy.  He learned the art of conducting at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan.  His influences included the Italian composer Nino Rota, who would become most famous for his movie scores, the conductor Antonino Votto, who was principal assistant to Arturo Toscanini at La Scala, and the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter.

The young Muti at the Guido Cantelli competition in
Milan in 1967, which he won

His career took off after he had won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Milan in 1967. Two years later, as well as accepting the role of musical director at Maggio Musicale, Muti married Cristina Mazzavillani, a young soprano he met at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory.

The couple exchanged vows at a tiny church in Ravenna, Mazzavillani's home town in Emilia-Romagna, with Rota and Richter among the witnesses.  Some 47 years on, they still regard Ravenna as their main home.  They have three children, sons Domenico and Francesco and a daughter, Chiara, a former model and actress who has also directed in the theatre.  Cristina is artistic director at the annual Ravenna Festival.

A prolific recording artist who has worked with most of the world's leading orchestras and many of the most famous opera singers, Muti is particularly associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi.

It was during a performance, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, of Verdi's Nabucco at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera in 2011, that Muti showed his political colours, interrupting proceedings to launch into a passionate speech denouncing severe cuts to arts funding announced by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was in the audience.

Muti had timed his outburst to follow the rousing chorus of Hebrew slaves 'Va, pensiero'. He resumed by inviting the audience to participate in an encore of 'Va, pensiero', which was delivered with such feeling that some of those onstage were moved to tears.  A week later, Berlusconi reversed the cuts.

Among many honours awarded to Muti is the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, which equates to a British knighthood.

Muti shows no sign of slowing down.  He planned to spend his birthday working with young musicians and conductors from his Opera Academy at the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, where they are performing Verdi's La Traviata. while his diary of engagements is full for many months ahead.  Next January, for example, he is scheduled to return to Teatro alla Scala for the first time since his controversial resignation, as leader of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The pretty harbour at Molfetta, on the Adriatic Coast in
Puglia, where Muti grew up

Travel tip:

Molfetta is a port town situated around 35km north of Bari on the Adriatic coast. It has a pretty harbour and a well restored historic quarter full of narrow alleyways. The old cathedral - the Duomo di San Corrado - which overlooks the harbour is notable for two 20-metre towers, one of which served as a watchtower during the years in which Molfetta was an embarcation point for pilgrims heading for the Holy Land.

Travel tip:

Once the capital of the Western Roman Empire, Ravenna is notable for many elegant squares and a wealth of lavish Byzantine mosaics that can be found decorating many of the city's churches, including masterpieces studded with gold, emerald and sapphire renowned for their exquisite beauty. Look out in particular for the Galla Placidia Mausoleum, the Arian Baptistery and the Church of San Vitale.

More reading:

La Traviata - the world's favourite opera

How Italy mourned the death of Giuseppe Verdi

Toscanini's talent impressed even Verdi himself


(Photo of Riccardo Muti by Andreas Praefcke CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of the young Muti by Gbonaju CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Molfetta Harbour by Michele Zaccaria CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Laura Pausini - singer-songwriter

Grammy Award-winner has sold more than 70 million records

Laura Pausini

One of Italy's best-selling recording artists of all time, pop singer-songwriter Laura Pausini celebrates her 42nd birthday today. The first Italian female performer to win a Grammy Award, she was born on this day in 1974 in Solarolo, in the province of Ravenna.

Pausini's records have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide, more than both Zucchero and Eros Ramazzotti, two giants of Italian popular music.  The figure is all the more remarkable for the fact that Pausini has only scratched the surface of the English-language market, which is by far the most lucrative.

She records mainly in Italian but has also enjoyed considerable success with recordings in Spanish and, more recently, in Catalan. She is the first non-Spanish artist to sell more than a million copies of a single album in Spain.

Pausini's background and upbringing always made it likely she would pursue a career in the music industry.

Her father, Fabrizio, is a pianist who played as a session musician for Abba's Anni-Frid Lyngstad and with a group from which was formed the best-selling Italian band Pooh. Later in his career, after he had established himself as a piano bar artist, he encouraged Laura to sing.  Her first live performance, in front of an audience, came when she sang with her father in a restaurant in Bologna.

More performances followed and after she had taken part in a number of singing competitions her talent came to the attention of an Italian producer, Angelo Valsiglio, who asked her to sing a song that would in time become a Pausini classic.

That song, La Solitudine, was released as a single in February 1993. With it, Pausini won the 43rd Sanremo Music Festival and reached number one in the Italian singles chart.  It also reached top spot in Belgium and charted at number two in the Netherlands.

La Solitudine featured on her debut album, Laura Pausini, released later in 1993.  She has since record 11 more studio albums, the latest of which, Simile, was released in 2015, plus a number of compilations, live recordings and collaborations with other artists. Her last five studio albums have reached number one in the Italian album charts.

Pausini has also had five number one singles in Italy, including Limpido, in 2013, on which she collaborated with the Australian superstar, Kylie Minogue.

Laura Pausini during her 2010 world tour to
promote her album Inedito

A singer with a powerful mezzo-soprano voice, Laura Pausini has been likened by music critics to Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand and Mariah Carey.  Part of her popularity is down to the lyrics of her songs, which have often expressed sentiments with which fans have been able to identify.

The winner of one regular Grammy Award and three Latin Grammy Awards among numerous honours, Pausini was made a Commander Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2006.

She has a three-year-old daughter, Paola, with her partner, the guitarist, composer and music producer, Paolo Carta.

Travel tip:

Solarolo, in Emilia-Romagna, a little under 40 kilometres from Ravenna and about halfway between Bologna and Rimini, is an elegant town of some 4,500 inhabitants, notable for being on the front line of battles between German troops and the British 8th Army towards the end of the Second World War, due to its strategic location close to the River Senio.  Its main sights include the Santuario della Madonna della Salute.

Tagliatelle alla Bolognese

Travel tip:

Bologna, where Pausini made her performing debut, appropriately in a restaurant, is known as the gastronomic capital of Italy, the city that invented tortellini and mortadella and gave the world the meat sauce (ragù) known as bolognese, which is authentically served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti.

(Photos of Laura Pausini by LivePict.com and Valentini17 CC BY-SA 3.0)

(Tagliatelle photo by D Sharon Pruitt CC BY-SA 2.0)

More reading:

Patty Pravo - singer's career spanned 50 years

Ligabue - record-breaking rock star

Little Tony - 60s pop star inspired by Little Richard

Also on this day:

1915: The birth of film director Mario Monicelli

1945: The birth of businessman and former Inter chairman Massimo Moratti


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Sara Errani - tennis champion

Six-times Grand Slam doubles winner reached No 5 in singles

Sara Errani is arguably Italy's most
successful tennis player

Tennis star Sara Errani, who was born in Bologna on this day in 1987, is one of the most successful Italian tennis players of all time.

She and former partner Roberta Vinci's career record of five Grand Slam doubles titles is unparalleled.  No other Italian combination has won more than one Grand Slam title.

Errani won her sixth Grand Slam title at the US Open in 2024, winning the mixed doubles with an Italian partner in Andrea Vavassori. In the same year, Errani and her new women's doubles partner, Jasmine Paolini, were runners-up in the French Open and returned to the Roland Garros clay courts two months later to win the women's doubles gold medal at the Paris Olympics.

At the age of 38, Errani announced that the 2025 French Open would be her last singles tournament. Undeterred by failing to qualify for the main draw in the singles, she increased her tally of Grand Slam doubles titles to eight by winning the women's doubles with Paolini and the mixed with Vavassori.

The women's doubles title - her first in a Grand Slam since the last of her successes with Vinci in 2014 - took her ahead of her former partner as the most successful Italian women's doubles player, although she was unable to match the feats of compatriots Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta in winning a Grand Slam singles title.

Among men's players, Nicola Pietrangeli, who was ranked the No 3 men's singles player at his peak, won the French Open championship in 1959 and 1960 and was runner-up in Paris on two other occasions, as well as winning the men's doubles at the French in 1959, with fellow Italian Orlando Sirola. Jannik Sinner became the most successful Italian singles player in Grand Slams when his Australian Open triumph in January 2025 gave him his third title at the highest level.

Errani and Vinci won on all surfaces, achieving a career Grand Slam in 2014 when they triumphed in the women's doubles at Wimbledon, having already won the French and US titles in 2012 and the Australian in both 2013 and 2014.  They are only the fifth pairing in tennis history to complete a career Grand Slam.

Errani also achieved a world ranking of No 5 in singles in 2013, having been runner-up to Maria Sharapova in the 2012 French Open as well as winning five WTA singles titles in the space of 12 months.

Among Italian women players, only Francesca Schiavone has achieved a higher singles ranking, reaching No 4 after winning the 2010 French Open.

Errani and Vinci, who also won five WTA doubles titles, have since ended their partnership, Errani deciding to focus on singles, having dropped out of the top 10 in 2014.  In February 2016 year she won her ninth career singles title, defeating the Czech player Barbora Strycova 6-0, 6-2 in the final of the Dubai Championships.

Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci won five Grand Slam titles

As a young girl, Errani showed talent in several sports, including swimming, football and athletics. But after she was picked to represent Italy in a tennis tournament in France at the age of just 12, her parents, fruit and vegetable trader Giorgio and pharmacist Fulvia, found the money to send her to the renowned Nick Bolletieri Academy in Florida.

She was the youngest ever to stay at the facility without her parents and, unable to speak any English, admitted she was so lonely she cried every day.  Yet, knowing the sacrifice her family had made, she stayed for 10 months.

On returning to Italy, she showed the benefit of Bolletieri's tuition and was Italy's No 1 at 18 years and under before she turned 16. Yet her talent was undervalued at home and it was only after moving to Spain that she was given the support necessary to fulfil her potential.

She won her first WTA tournament in Palermo in July 2008, picking up a second two weeks later in Slovenia, after which she pointedly dedicated her success to "all the Italians who never believed in me as a tennis player and said I would never go anywhere."

Though born in Bologna, Errani grew up in Massa Lombarda, in the province of Ravenna, where she still lives.

This article was updated in April and June, 2025.

Travel tip:

Bologna has a reputation as the gastronomic capital of Italy, the city that invented tortellini and mortadella and gave the world the meat sauce (ragù) known as bolognese, which is authentically served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti.  The best shops to buy fresh food in Bologna can be found in the Quadrilatero, an area adjoining Piazza Maggiore, bordered to the north by Via Francesco Rizzoli, to the south by Via Luigi Carlo Farini and to the east by Via Castiglione. It has a market that has occupied the same location since Medieval times.

Bologna hotels from Expedia.co.uk

The interior of the Basilica di San
Vitale is notable for beautiful mosaics

Travel tip:

No visit to Ravenna would be complete without taking in the stunning art of the octagonal Basilica di San Vitale, which dates back to the sixth century and contains some of the finest examples of Byzantine mosaics in the world, particularly those decorating the ceilings of the choir and apse. There are more mosaics in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, across the courtyard from the Basilica.

More reading:

How Roberta Vinci reached a US Open singles final

Francesca Schiavone - the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam tournament

The rise to number one of Camila Giorgi

Also on this day:

1675: The birth of painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

1945: Brazilian troops liberate town of Fornovo di Taro


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Arrigo Sacchi -- football coach

AC Milan manager's tactics revolutionised football in Italy

Arrigo Sacchi, former coach of AC Milan who
led Italy to 1994 World Cup final

Arrigo Sacchi, the football coach who led AC Milan to back-to-back European Cups and steered Italy to a World Cup final, was born on this day 70 years ago in Fusignano, a small town not far from Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.

Unusually among top coaches, Sacchi never played football as a professional.  Aware of his limited ability, he quickly decided he would concentrate instead on becoming a manager, taking charge of a local amateur team, Baracca Lugo, when he was just 26.

Literally, he worked his way up from the bottom, making a living as a shoe salesman while training his players in his spare time.

Yet step by step he ascended to the very top of the game, landing jobs on the coaching staffs at Cesena, Rimini and Fiorentina before Parma, then in the third tier of the Italian football pyramid, made him head coach in 1985.

He won promotion to Serie B in his first season and finished only three points short of promotion to Serie A in his second year, when Parma also pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the season, knocking AC Milan out of the Coppa Italia, which is Italy's equivalent of England's FA Cup.

Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former Prime Minister who still owns AC Milan, was so impressed he invited Sacchi to become Milan's manager from the start of the 1987-88 season.

Despite much scepticism in Italy's football press, many of whom believed that a man who had never played above amateur level could not possibly coach a team of Milan's standing, the appointment was a massive success. The rossoneri were Serie A champions for the first time in nine years in Sacchi's first season, after which they won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990.

In four years at San Siro he won eight trophies, a record worthy of enormous respect in any circumstances.  What was even more impressive was that he achieved this success while breaking the mould as far as Italian football was concerned.

More reading:

How fate was unkind to record Milan signing Gianluigi Lentini

Italy's heartbreak at Italia '90

The game in Italy had become ultra defensive, teams opting for stifling tactics designed solely to avoid defeat.  Yet Sacchi, inspired as a young man by the great attacking teams of Honved and Real Madrid in the club competitions and by the football played by Brazil and The Netherlands at international level, wanted Milan to be more like them.

He trained his players to be adept in every position, so that forwards could defend and defenders could attack, and introduced a high-tempo, pressing style.  He turned Milan into one of the most exciting teams to watch, built around the brilliance of three Dutch players, Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit.  

In the first of the two European Cup triumphs, Milan beat Real Madrid 6-1 on aggregate in the semi-finals, which was seen as a symbolic moment in their development, before trouncing Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the final, with Gullit and Van Basten scoring two goals each.

Roberto Baggio bows his head after his miss in the
penalty shoot-out handed the 1994 World Cup to Brazil

The former shoe salesman was hailed as a genius and a football revolutionary. After Sacchi left Milan to become the new national coach, his succes- sor Fabio Capello won four league titles and another European Cup by continuing to play in the same attacking fashion and other coaches followed suit.  Even today, Sacchi's pressing game has high-profile disciples, among them Rafa Benitez, the former Liverpool, Chelsea and Real Madrid manager now with Newcastle United, and Jurgen Klopp, who won the German Bundesliga title with Borussia Dortmund and is now at Liverpool.

Sacchi might also have won the World Cup had Roberto Baggio, exhausted and stricken with a hamstring injury, not missed the crucial kick in the penalty shoot-out that settled the 1994 final against Brazil in the United States.  As it was, Sacchi had demonstrated his adaptability, tweaking his tactics to give full rein to Baggio's creative talents and inspiring from his team a performance that almost mended the heartbreak of 1990.

Throughout all this, Sacchi almost revelled in his lack of a playing pedigree, particularly in his early days at Milan when journalists openly questioned his credentials, once flooring an inquisitor with the famous reply: "I didn't realise that to become a jockey you first had to have been a horse."

The sixth century Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna
(Photo: Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

Travel tip:

Much of Fusignano's history was destroyed during World War Two, when it found itself on the front line in a major battle between allied forces and the retreating Germans. Nearby Ravenna, however, has many attractions, including the magnificent sixth century Basilica of San Vitale, the tomb of the poet Dante Alighieri in the Basilica of San Francesco, and the pretty Piazza del Popolo.

Travel tip:

On a visit to Milan, football fans can learn more about Arrigo Sacchi's success and that of all the teams in the club's 117-year history by looking round the Mondo Milan Museum, which has a large collection of historic memorabilia as well as many interactive features.  It can be found within the Casa Milan, the club's new city headquarters - not to be confused with its stadium - in the Portello district of Milan.  Casa Milan is generally open from 10am to 7pm.  For more information, visit www.casamilan.acmilan.com/en

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Arcangelo Corelli – musician

Baroque composer had a major influence on the development of music

 

The composer Arcangelo Corelli

Violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli was born on this day in 1653 at Fusignano, a small town near Ravenna.

He is remembered for his influence on the development of violin style and for his use of the genres of sonata and concerto. Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi established the concerto grosso as a popular medium of composition.

Named Arcangelo after his father, who died a few weeks before his birth, he studied music with the curate of a neighbouring village before going to the nearby towns of Faenza and Lugo to learn musical theory.

Corelli later studied with Giovanni Benvenuti, who was a violinist at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna and in 1670 he started at the Philharmonic Academy in Bologna.

He moved on to Rome where to begin with he played the violin at a theatre. It is known that by 1677 he had written his first composition, a Sonata for Violin and Lute.

By 1675 Corelli was third violinist in the orchestra of the chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi and by the following year he had become second violinist.In 1681 his 12 Trio Sonatas for two violins and a cello were published and the following year he became first violinist in the San Luigi dei Francesi orchestra.

In 1687 Corelli became musical director at the Palazzo Pamphili, where he performed, conducted and organised important musical occasions.

On one occasion he conducted a large orchestra of stringed instruments to entertain the British ambassador, who had been sent to Rome by King James II of England to attend the coronation of Pope Innocent XII.

Corelli was also a brilliant teacher and among his many students was the young Antonio Vivaldi.

Considered to be the best violinist of his time, Corelli was invited to Naples in 1702 to perform a composition by Alessandro Scarlatti in the presence of the King.

Corelli died in Rome in 1713 and his 12 Concerti Grossi were published the following year in Amsterdam. Both Bach and Handel are said to have studied his work and been influenced by him.

The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna
Photo: 0mente0 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Travel tip:

Fusignano, where Corelli was born, is a comune (municipality) in the province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region. Ravenna was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until its collapse in 406. The city’s Basilica of San Vitale is famous for its wealth of Byzantine mosaics, the largest and best preserved outside Turkey, and the church is on the Unesco World Heritage list. Arguably, Fusignano's most famous citizen is football manager Arrigo Sacchi, who won two European Cups as manager of AC Milan.

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Travel tip:

Corelli is buried in the Pantheon in Piazza della Rotonda in Rome . Considered to be Rome’s best preserved ancient building, the Pantheon was built in AD 118 on the site of a previous building dating back to 27 BC. It was consecrated as a church in the seventh century and many important people, including Victor Emanuel II, Umberto I and his wife, Queen Margherita, are buried there, along with the painters Raphael and Annibale Carracci, the architect Baldassare Peruzzi and the writers Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Émile Zola.

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More reading:

Why Alessandro Scarlatti was ahead of his time

The Baroque composer who enjoyed the patronage of a Swedish queen

The Venetian musician who inspired the spread of the Baroque style

Also on this day:

1600: The death of Bruno Giordano, 'martyr of science'

1796: The birth of opera composer Giovanni Pacini

1916: The birth of actor Raf Vallone

(Picture credits: Basilica of San Vitale by 0mente0; Pantheon by Roberta Dragan; via Wikimedia commons)

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