Riccardo Muti leads musical protest at Villa Verdi to demand swift restoration
Conductor Riccardo Muti performed outside Giuseppe Verdi's neglected estate at Sant'Agata, urging Italian ministers to accelerate a 6.5 million euro restoration project.
Musical protest at Sant'Agata
On 12 September 2026, conductor Riccardo Muti led an open-air performance in the garden of Villa Verdi at Sant'Agata di Villanova sull'Arda. The 85-year-old conductor described the event, titled Notturno, as a musical meeting rather than a formal concert, aiming to press Italian authorities to expedite restoration work on Giuseppe Verdi's former residence. Muti accompanied a group of vocalists on an acoustic Fazioli piano without a stage. The vocal lineup included soprano Damiana Mizzi, mezzo-soprano Mara Gaudenzi, tenor Giovanni Sala, baritone Luca Salsi, and bass Michele Pertusi, with flutist Bianca Fiorito performing on the Notturno vocal trio.
The program featured a selection of Verdi arias from operas including Nabucco, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and Falstaff. Muti used the performance to confront political inertia surrounding the maintenance of the estate.
This is not a concert, but a gathering of a group of musicians who sit in front of Verdi's villa and say to the world, and above all to ours: will you get a move on, do you want to wake up? This place must resound with the notes born here.
Dispute and state acquisition
Giuseppe Verdi lived and worked at the Sant'Agata estate for approximately 50 years alongside his second wife, Giuseppina Strepponi, residing there from the late 1840s until his death in 1901. The property, surrounded by a six-hectare park in the province of Piacenza, served as the birthplace of operas such as La traviata, Il trovatore, Don Carlos, Aida, and Otello. Beyond his composition, Verdi actively managed the estate's agricultural lands, irrigation channels, and livestock, while funding a local hospital and residential housing for farm workers.
- Villa Verdi closes to the public following a legal dispute among heirs
- The Italian Ministry of Culture expropriates the estate for public ownership
- Riccardo Muti leads the Notturno musical protest in the villa garden
The villa preserved original furniture, documents, and personal possessions but closed its doors to the public in 2022 because of an inheritance dispute among Verdi's heirs. To prevent a private auction and secure temporary access, the non-profit organization FAI organized extraordinary openings before the state intervened. In late 2024, the Ministry of Culture issued an expropriation decree to take public ownership of the property.
Restoration plans and government response
Following the expropriation, the Italian government allocated 6.5 million euros to fund comprehensive restoration work. The planned interventions target the building's facades, window fixtures, interior chambers, and the surrounding gardens. The Ministry of Culture aims to integrate the Sant'Agata estate into a broader Verdi tourism route connecting the composer's birthplace in Roncole, the Giuseppe Verdi Theatre, and Palazzo Orlandi in Busseto.
Attending guests for the evening included Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli, Tourism Minister Gianmarco Mazzi, and European Affairs Minister Tommaso Foti. In response to Muti's criticism regarding years of political neglect across successive administrations, Giuli stated that investment measures had commenced to return the property to public use.
We have already started a path of investments, soon it will be usable.
Muti acknowledged that he had not been aware that initial works were already under way, while reiterating that the preservation of the site remains an urgent international cultural duty.
