“No conductor today is master of all he surveys as much as Riccardo Muti in Milan. Music director of La Scala for nearly 20 years and still going strong, Muti acts as a symbol for his country’s culture at home and abroad. Where Italian music is concerned, he is proud and protective. He rigorously schools his singers in the traditions he imbibed as a student – traditions which, through his revered teacher Antonino Votto, go back to Toscanini and Verdi himself, traditions that are in danger of being lost as national cultures succumb to the international melting pot of modern life.”