From the Chicago Tribune:
It was Riccardo Muti’s 600th concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and he was not happy.
Nearly 20 minutes into the milestone concert on March 20 — a concert of opera excerpts squarely in Muti’s 19th-century Italian wheelhouse — a burst of late arrivals shuffled onto the main floor. Soprano Lidia Fridman had just arrived onstage to sing “Ebben? … Ne andrò lontana” from “La Wally,” the seldom-staged opera by Alfredo Catalani that was once a favorite of Muti’s idol, Arturo Toscanini.…