Myung-Whun Chung to be new Music Director at La Scala
La Scala‘s CEO, Fortunato Ortombina, has announced that Myung-Whun Chung will be the successor of Riccardo Chailly as Music Director of Teatro alla Scala. Chung’s tenure will run from the end of Chailly’s contract at the end of 2026 until Ortombina’s contract expires in February 2030.
Over the years, Chung has developed a close relationship with the orchestra and chorus of the opera house, as well as the Filarmonica della Scala, which has appointed him its Conductor Emeritus, the first Maestro to hold this role.
One of his teachers, Carlo Maria Giulini, conducted the first tours of La Scala’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chung led the orchestra on one of its last international opera tours conducting Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 2016, while a new orchestral tour in Asia will be announced soon.
Maestro Chung, who in addition to being a conductor is active as a pianist, has been a constant presence on La Scala programmes in Milan and on tour since 1989, conducting nine operas, for 84 performances, and 141 concerts, making him the conductor with the highest number of appearances except for the music directors.
Although known especially for Verdi, he has a vast repertoire and in Milan has conducted operas by Dmitrij Shostakovich (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, 1992), Richard Strauss (Salome, 1995), Giacomo Puccini (Madama Butterfly, 2007), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Idomeneo, 2009), Giuseppe Verdi (Simon Boccanegra, 2016 and 2018; Don Carlo, 2017; La traviata, 2019), Carl Maria von Weber (Der Freischütz, 2017) and Ludwig van Beethoven (Fidelio, 2018).
On tour, Chung has conducted the Philharmonic along the Italian peninsula in Bologna, Brescia, Cremona, Florence, Genoa, L’Aquila, Modena, Palermo, Perugia, Rimini, Stresa, Taormina, Turin, Trieste, Udine and Verona; and abroad in Athens, Basel, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Hyogo, Las Palmas, Le Havre, Ljubljana, Moscow, Munich, Muscat, Oviedo, Beijing, Rouen, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Valencia, Valladolid, Warsaw and Zagreb.
Among the numerous positions held by Chung are Principal Guest Conductor of the Staatskapelle in Dresden (the first ever to hold this position); Honorary Music Director of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris and the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System); the recent appointment as Artistic Director of the new Busan Opera and Concert Hall in South Korea.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
