[1] Muti was born in Naples but he spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast.

His father, Domenico, was a pathologist in Molfetta, as well as an amateur singer and great music lover; his mother, Gilda, was a reserved and severe Neapolitan woman with five children.

He was subsequently awarded a diploma in Composition and Conducting by the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, Milan, where he studied with the composer Bruno Bettinelli and the conductor Antonino Votto.

[6][7] Apart from his work at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, where he was music director for 19 years, Muti has led operatic performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and productions in the principal opera houses of Rome (from 1969), Ravenna, Vienna, London (from 1977), Munich (from 1979), and, finally, in 2010, New York.

His work with the Vienna State Opera has included Aida in 1973, La forza del destino in 1974, Norma in 1977, Rigoletto in 1983, Così fan tutte in 1996 and 2008, Don Giovanni in 1999, and The Marriage of Figaro in 2001.

He conducted productions of rare Italian operas from the 18th century Neapolitan School as well as concerts, with the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, which he had founded.

The academy has as its purpose to pass on to young musicians Riccardo Muti's experience and lessons and to make the audience understand in its full complexity the path to accomplish an opera production.

[13] Deborah Rutter, then president of the CSO saw him in Paris and persuaded him to come guest conduct and tour; he explained later, he thought he was too tired to start a "new adventure", but "immediately it was something that happened between me and the orchestra.

[15] In September 2021, the CSO announced a revision to Muti's contract as its music director, with an extension of the scheduled closing date of his tenure to the end of the 2022–2023 season.

[17] According to classical music critic Zachery Wolffe, his directorship in Chicago was an "enormous success" with "pristine yet intense, powerful yet graceful" performances of operas in concert, canonical orchestral pieces, new premiers, and "rarities of the past".

[18] In 2003, there were reports of artistic and programming conflicts at La Scala between musical director and principal conductor Muti and general manager Carlo Fontana.

[23] Muti was forced to cancel a concert prior to the vote, and some other productions were disrupted at the theatre because of continuing rifts with Fontana's supporters.

[27] On the night of 12 March 2011, Rome's Teatro dell'Opera staged the first in a series of scheduled performances of Verdi's opera Nabucco, conducted by Muti.

After the end of the chorus "Va, pensiero", which contains the lyrics "Oh mia patria, sì bella e perduta" ("Oh my country, so beautiful and so lost"), the audience applauded "heartily."

Muti, breaking with opera protocol and the strict conventions of composer Verdi himself,[28] turned to the audience and delivered a small speech, referring to the severe budget cuts announced by the Berlusconi government[29] which would particularly affect the funding of the arts.

"[28] On 18 March, the performance of Nabucco was repeated in front of the former Italian president Giorgio Napolitano and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.