Oleg Caetani, the Memoirs of a Conductor

Son of Igor Markevitch, originally from Kyiv and later naturalised as an Italian, he is one of the greatest conductors of our country. "The war in Ukraine? Putin made a huge mistake. But it's foolish to have banned Gergiev from conducting in the West."

Born into a family as multifaceted as a Rubik's cube to be reassembled, Oleg Caetani soon realised what the solution to the puzzle was for him. He would become a conductor, facing the risks that plague the children of renowned parents with comparisons. But he would do so with his mother's surname, Topazia, more to avoid the extinction of a distinguished lineage without heirs than to distance himself from his father Igor Markevitch, originally from Kyiv and later naturalised as an Italian, son-in-law in his first marriage to the legendary dancer Nijinsky, Ukrainian but with French as his first language, which Oleg also learned from the start.

He was born in Lausanne in 1956, studied in France, Italy, and the then Soviet Union, where he learned Russian. He has a deep love for Florence but has resided in Genoa for many years. In forty years of his career, he has conducted in Milan and Melbourne, Tokyo, London, and for the Pope, from symphonic to operatic repertoire; he has worked with great soloists and made recordings, including the only complete cycle of Shostakovich symphonies recorded in Italy; he loves the philosophy of Montaigne. Between November and December, he will return to China for a series of concerts and a master class in Shanghai.

Who was your first teacher?
My father, but at first, I hesitated to study with him. When he was the principal conductor of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, he held a course, and I asked to participate. To better observe the students, he sat between the first flute and the first oboe. When it was my turn to conduct the Egmont overture, I was extremely focused, but at one point, I caught his eye, and he was smiling, a very rare thing. Then we went to lunch with my mother and my sisters, and he announced, 'I have good news for you. Oleg is a born conductor and will be more complete than me because I didn't conduct opera, and he will.' It was a fantastic day, but the statement was met with scepticism.

Why?
A family friend, pianist Nikita Magalov, had convinced my mother that I was tone-deaf. At the time, my father lived in Saint-Cézaire, near Grasse, and when I visited him, he liked to go for walks. Then he would sit on a rock and say, 'Conduct the first movement of the Eroica for me.' I did it by memory, and every now and then, he would interrupt me: 'Here you forgot to cue the second flute... here you gave the fortissimo to everyone a bar early...' I continued my studies at Santa Cecilia with Irma Ravinale, a very strict pupil of Petrassi, and with Franco Ferrara.

The brilliant maestro who would faint on the podium.
A lovely man, an extraordinary violin virtuoso and not just that. Once he replaced a piano teacher and played the Etude in G-flat major by Chopin wonderfully. He became a conductor by chance, like my father, who was a composer. Born to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, he was stranded in Florence at the outbreak of World War II, where he was working on a cantata with text by Lorenzo the Magnificent. Then the Anglo-Americans arrived and convinced him to conduct the first concert with the Maggio orchestra because the anti-fascist maestros were abroad, and they didn't want the fascist ones. From there, his career began, and he went to the Royal Opera House. In Florence, he lived with Vaslav, the son he had with Kyra Nijinsky, who passed away last January.

Was he a musician too?
A painter, but with the physicality of his maternal line: he skied and swam excellently, and despite his name, he had a pronounced Florentine accent. My father stayed with him in a small pension until one day he made friends in a café with art historian Bernard Berenson, who provided him with a little villa in Fiesole.

For you, the stay in the Soviet Union was fundamental. Why did you go there?
The call of origins. I spent two years in Moscow with Kirill Kondrashin and discovered a repertoire I didn't know, studied musicology, and then graduated with the great Ilya Musin in St. Petersburg, which was still called Leningrad. It was said that Musin could even make a chair into a conductor, unparalleled in gesture and smoothness.

How do those with your origins experience the war in Ukraine?
Putin made a huge mistake: wars are no longer fought with weapons. My father hoped for Ukraine's independence and achieved it with Gorbachev, but unfortunately, I don't foresee a happy ending. The country risks disappearing between Russia and Poland. It's a shame for its extraordinary past: it moves me to think of Gogol, who went from Ukraine to St. Petersburg and Pushkin opened the doors to success for him.

This war has also taken its toll on music.
I think it's foolish to have banned Gergiev from conducting in the West. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Are you happy to return to China?
Very happy. I have been working in Japan, China, and Taiwan for decades, and I am convinced that the future of our classical music lies there. Compared to forty years ago, the Japanese have changed a lot, and I have discovered people with a wonderful sense of humour. China has also changed, with enormous orchestral activity. I was in Shenzhen while the anniversary of the revolution was being celebrated, and on the English-language TV channel, they asked a guy: 'You are communists but you are rich?' He replied: 'Neither Marx nor Lenin ever said that communists must be poor.'

Why Caetani and not Markevitch?
There are several Markevitches, including Vaslav's children, while the Caetani would have disappeared. However, Vittorio Emanuele III, a terrible sovereign, established one positive thing: if the last descendant of a lineage is a woman, she can pass on the titles and surname to her male son.

By Francesco Palmieri on “Il Foglio”