WHEN Venice’s fabled opera house, La Fenice (“The Phoenix”), rose from the ashes in December 2003, eight years after it been destroyed by fire, its music director since the previous year, Marcello Viotti, did not conduct the opening concert. That pleasure fell to Riccardo Muti, who led a gala offering to initiate an eight-day inaugural festival.
But it was characteristic of Viotti that he had in the interim been bursting with ideas for the resurrected opera house. A man steeped in the grand opera repertoire, he had nevertheless commissioned an orchestral work from the 29-year-old Sicilian conductor Emanuele Casale to mark the week of musical celebration, and this received its world premiere on December 18.
Among other new productions for which he had plans were little- performed 19th and early 20th- century French works: Le Roi Arthus by Ernst Chausson, and Paul Dukas’ only opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleu. A programme of works by composers who are germane to Venice’s history was also dear to his heart: “Like Salzburg is for Mozart, Bayreuth is for Wagner, Venice is the city for Baroque music,” he declared. “Cavalli, Monteverdi, Vivaldi — if we don’t make a festival for Baroque music, we are totally crazy.”
In a career which had begun with his conducting a wind ensemble at Geneva in his native Switzerland, Viotti made a reputation for the vitality of his handling of Italian operas in houses all over the world, notably the Metropolitan Opera, New York. He also championed the works of the French operatic repertoire, particularly those of Massenet, whose Thaïs was his first new production as music director in Venice. Last December he had presented Massenet’s Roi de Lahore in a new critical edition he had prepared.
Marcello Viotti was born in 1954 of Italian parentage in Lausanne, where he studied piano, singing and cello. After his conducting debut in Geneva, in 1982 he came to notice when he won the Gino Marinuzzi competition in Italy, which gave impetus to his career in the country and elsewhere.
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He was chief conductor at the Turin opera house; artistic director at the Lucerne Stadttheater; general music director of the City of Bremen Orchestra; and chief conductor of the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra. From 1996 to 1999 he was one of three chief conductors of the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. Guest appearances included Berlin, Vienna, San Francisco and the Met, where he conducted Aïda last autumn.
In 1998 he was appointed chief conductor of the Munich Radio Symphony Orchestra. He resigned over budget cuts, but had been honouring his contractual engagements, and was rehearsing for a concert performance of Massenet’s Manon when he suffered a stroke. He was due to conduct Parsifal at La Fenice in March.
Marcello Viotti, conductor, was born on June 29, 1954. He died after a stroke, on February 17, 2005, aged 50.