Riccardo Muti
(c) CSO

Today, Italian conductor Riccardo Muti and his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra are performing for inmates at a prison in Milan called Carcere di Opera, so named because it is located in the municipality of Opera, which is part of the Milan metropolitan area. The concert is a charity event organized by several organizations.

One of them is Le Vie dell’Amicizia (The Ways of Friendship) of the Ravenna Festival which has been sowing hope, dialogue, and brotherhood through music since 1997. Indeed, the orchestra is playing on instruments made from the wood of migrant boats created in the violin-making workshops accessible to prisoners of the Opera prison thanks to the commitment of the Casa dello Spirito e delle Arti Foundation and its Metamorfosi project.

So, on Saturday, January 10, in the prison auditorium, Muti conducts the Cherubini Youth Orchestra who use the ‘instruments of the sea’ for a program that opens with Vivaldi’s Concerto in A major for strings and harpsichord and continues with Verdi, from the Nabucco Symphony to the Ave Maria from Otello with soprano Rosa Feola, to ‘Va’ pensiero’, featuring the choir of ‘La Nave di San Vittore’ (one of the activities of the therapeutic department run by Asst Santi Paolo e Carlo), composed of inmates and volunteers from the Associazione Amici della Nave, who will be joined for the occasion by opera singers from the group ‘Ex Scaligeri di buona volontà’. During the event, inmates from Opera, San Vittore, and Bollate will read personal thoughts and poems.