The Italian conductor Riccardo Muti surprised opera-lovers during a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco on Saturday night when he asked them to join him in an unusual protest against government budget cuts.
Nabucco was being performed at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome to mark this month’s 150th anniversary of Italian unificiation.
The maestro turned on his podium amid cries for an encore after the cast had performed Va’ pensiero, a song many Italians wish had been their national anthem.
He said he would lead an encore only if the audience joined in.
“On March 9, 1842, Nabucco debuted as a patriotic opera intended for the unity and identity of Italy. Today, March 12, 2011, I don’t want Nabucco to be the funeral dirge of our culture and music,” he declared.
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Almost everyone in the packed house, including four tiers of private boxes, rose to their feet to sing the celebrated song.
Artists, musicians and actors have been protesting at huge cuts to the arts budget by Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition government.
Muti, 69, was returning to the podium just five weeks after undergoing heart surgery following a fall during rehearsals in Chicago, where he is musical director.
Doctors had forbidden him to conduct Nabucco, which lasts three hours, but he defied them.
Nabucco, composed when many parts of Italy were subject to Austrian rule, is credited with helping to inspire the creation of the modern Italian state in 1861.
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“I tell the chorus, the orchestra, the technicians to keep up their work, but their salaries don’t even let them pay their bills at the end of the month,” Muti told reporters after the show.
“Culture is seen like some kind of aristocratic bonus.”