Muti Receives Diagnosis, Will Return For Winter Concerts

By Alexander Hough in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 12, 2010 8:20PM

New Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti, who recently withdrew from his inaugural residency due to an illness previously described as "extreme gastric distress," has been released from San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy. According to the CSO's written statement, the diagnosis was extreme exhaustion that "manifested itself in abdominal pain and other physical symptoms."

Muti will rejoin the CSO as planned in February 2011. For now, he will remain in Italy for one month of rest. As Muti said in the statement, "After a terrible storm, even if the wind dies down and the skies have cleared, it takes a while for the waves to calm down fully."

Now that we have the relatively benign diagnosis, we don't feel so bad for speculating about which part of the gastric distress the wind represents. Thankfully for the boat, and the boats who have to share a dock with that boat, everything is returning to normal.