Intermezzo

Pereira in at La Scala

After a seemingly endless search, Alexander Pereira is to become Superintendant of La Scala on Stéphane Lissner's departure in 2015, it has just been announced.

Pereira's current contract with the Salzburg Festival expires in 2016, so quite how the two positions will be juggled remains to be seen. The Salzburg trustees have previously said that he can't do two jobs simultaneously. On the other hand they're now left with precious little time to find a replacement, given the lengthy planning horizons involved.

It has been said that many of the La Scala decision makers would have preferred an native Italian - but after 12 years working for Olivetti early in his career, Pereira at least speaks the language fluently. It seems likely his proven sponsor-finding skills won over the nationalists.

The mayor of Milan, who is also the president of La Scala, said the Board had decided "unanimously" in favour of Pereira after a "comparison that will be useful for the future of La Scala."

The main criteria in the selection were set by the board and included experience as a superintendent or general manager, fund raising capability and a 'significantly lower' cost than Lissner. Pereira's base salary will be "at least 25%"  lower than Lissner's €350,000 - but, like Lissner, he will presumably be able to earn bonuses .

The gatto is out of the borsa

La Scala formally announced its 2013-14 season today, confirming last month's leak.

A full calendar and cast details are now available on the La Scala website.

Another important announcement may be made by La Scala later today.

La Scala race approaches finishing line

So who'll be on top at La Scala after Stéphane Lissner leaves for Paris in 2015?  

The short answer - probably music director Daniel Barenboim, who finds it tough to play #2 to anybody. But there remains a post to be filled, and La Scala's press officer Carlo Maria Cella has just confirmed that a decision will be made by the mayor of Milan later this month. He says there are three neck-and-neck frontrunners amongst the many candidates.

First up is the Austrian outsider Alexander Pereira. In charge of the Salzburg Festival since last year, he ran Zurich Opera for 21 years before that. Previous form includes running Vienna's Konzerthaus and, famously, flogging Olivetti typewriters. Good at raising money and starting fights, bad at being Italian - and his artistic choices are often questioned.

Next is Cristiano Chiarot. A former journalist, his entire operatic career has been with the Teatro la Fenice in Venice. He rose through the press and marketing ranks to become Superintendent in 2010. A vocal critic of public spending cuts.

Finally, we come to Sergio Escobar. Since 1998 he has been Director of Milan's Piccolo Teatro, where he plays a largely administrative role alongside artistic director Luca Ronconi. Before that he held management roles at opera houses in Rome, Bologna, Genoa - and, helpfully enough, La Scala, where he was marketing director and assistant to the general director between 1979 and 1990.  His broad exposure to the opera world is tempered by the fact he's been out of it for 15 years.

Crystal balls to the ready.

La Scala 2013 - 2014 season

The recession has hit La Scala - hard.  To reduce costs, next season will be 20 performances shorter (no, they won't all be strikes), and the number of works presented will reduce from 15 to 10.  It's hoped that this will help avoid a repeat of the 2012 deficit, which totalled 4.3 million euros.

As already widely reported, the season opener on 7 December 2013 is La Traviata, which will be conducted by Daniele Gatti and directed by Dmitri Tscherniakov, with Diana Damrau as Violetta.

Other new productions include Claus Guth's Cavalleria Rusticana, conducted by Daniel Harding, and his Cosi fan tutte, with Daniel Barenboim conducting.  Barenboim will also conduct The Tsar's Bride, Simon Boccanegra and Il Trovatore. 

The Royal Opera House obviously isn't keeping Tony Pappano busy enough - he'll make his La Scala debut conducting the gruesome McVicar Les Troyens. The final new production is Elektra, which will be conducted by Esa Pekka Salonen and directed by Patrice Chereau.

As is customary,  the following season's opener has been announced as well - it's Fidelio, conducted by Barenboim, on 7 December 2014.

No details as yet on the La Scala website - I will provide a link once there's something there.

New Covent Garden Nabucco - a preview

The Royal Opera House's new Nabucco, which opens on 30 March, is a co-production with La Scala, where Daniele Abbado's grimly earnest new staging has premiered to 'mixed' reviews. 

The TV cameras were let in last week, and guess what happened? FF to 4:40 if you're not interested in titles:

Jonas. Lohengrin. Here. Now.

My advice? Download it swiftly, before it gets pulled.

 

*UPDATE* - My heaving mailbag reveals some of you don't know how to download a YouTube video.

The easiest way is to use a YouTube built-in downloading tool. First you need to download a piece of free software called Best Video Downloader. Then, go to the video's YouTube page by left-clicking on the title at the top of the video. You will see a 'Download' button just beneath the video. Click on your preferred file type (MP4 or FLV only) and that's it. It's a large file, so it will take a few minutes to download.

La Scala boos La Ceci

A shocking story from Milan.

La Scala's infamous loggionisti revealed they're still the least civilised audience in operadom at Cecilia Bartoli's first appearance there in 19 years last night.

Her concert with Daniel Barenboim and the La Scala orchestra went down well until the very end, when a small group in the upper galleries began booing and whistling and shouting “You don’t sing Rossini like this”, “Shame on you”, etc.

Graham Spicer, who was there, believes the attack was premeditated. Read his report (with photos) here.

Wagner strips

POW!! BAM!!!! HOJOTOHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a neatly-timed tie-in with La Scala's Lohengrin, a new Milan exhibition celebrates Wagner in cartoon form.

Wagner a strisce runs from 30  November to 6 January at Wow - Spazio fumetto.

Jonas, swanless

Ahead of the 7 December prima of Claus Guth's new Lohengrin, La Scala have released a few teaser photos taken at rehearsals of the swan-free production.

The most expensive opera tickets in the world

Due to my exalted status as a 'Ring Subscriber', La Scala have kindly offered me the opportunity to buy tickets for this season's opening night, 7 December, when Daniel Barenboim will conduct Lohengrin with Jonas Kaufmann and (maybe) Anja Harteros.

But the opportunity to flaunt one's diamonds, furs and botox alongside the other waxy orange gargoyles doesn't come cheap. The top price of € 2,400 covers a range of box seating from front row in the 1st circle to second row in the 3rd. Few offer a perfect view. All the lowest price of € 600 will get you is a third-row box seat in the 4th circle, from which little will be either audible or visible.

Yet, as every year, and despite the Italian public's general disdain for Wagner, the show is bound to sell out. Yesterday's rare recital at La Scala by the great Rene Pape on the other hand was far from full. Perhaps the tickets weren't expensive enough.

Royal Opera House's new Die Frau ohne Schatten - a first peek

Claus Guth's new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten comes to Covent Garden next year, but first it premieres at La Scala - on 11 March.

More pictures here.

Milanese cover up

O the chic of it. Tickets for Teatro alla Scala's 2013 Ring cycle arrive tucked into their own embossed leatheresque wallet.  What budget crisis?

La Scala 2013 Ring Cycle booking opens

Many thanks to reader Vecchio John for pointing out that booking opened this morning for La Scala's June 2013 Ring cycle.

There are two cycles, beginning 17 June and 24 June. Tickets range from €435 (top balcony) to €1,200 (best stalls), and there were plenty left in all price ranges at the time of writing. They are currently being sold only as 'packages'. These include all four operas and various extras like free drinks and theatre tours. If you're thinking of buying the cheapest tickets, bear in mind that the balcony is a looong way up.

Although Guy Cassiers' production has been slated, there are musical compensations. Casting includes Rene Pape and Michael Volle as Wotan, Irene Theorin as Brünnhilde and  Waltraud Meier as Sieglinde - and of course Daniel Barenboim conducts.

Warning - the purchase process is a bit 'Italian', and you need to enter your personal details before you can select seats. If you pay by Visa or Mastercard, you will need to pre-register on a completely different site. And there is a commission charge.

Daniel Barenboim's new hat

Daniel Barenboim is to become music director of La Scala from 1 December, it was announced today. His contract, which runs to 31 December 2016, will see him at La Scala for about 15 weeks per year, and includes opera, concerts and tours.

Barenboim has been the de facto boss at La Scala since 2006, when he agreed a five year working relationship with the opera house to run alongside his other job as general music director of Berlin's Staatsoper. That agreement, which came without a title, involved him conducting at least two opera productions each season for La Scala,  directing concerts and performing as a soloist, as well as sharing productions between the Staatsoper and La Scala. It doesn't appear as if the new agreement will involve a significant increase in that current workload.

La Scala have been without a formally-titled music director since Riccardo Muti's controversial departure in 2005.

HunkenCarmen

There was wall-to-wall applause after tonight's Carmen premiere at La Scala - except for director Emma Dante, whose appearance provoked an eruption of loud boos. From my seat in the Covent Garden Odeon it was hard to understand why. Perhaps the heavy dose of Catholic symbolism offended. Or the rapey ending - but frankly that loooong final duet needs something to liven it up, and her solution is a plausible one. Or maybe it was the shortage of castanets and thigh-rubbing. Who knows.

Her production wasn't always coherent, but there was plenty to cheer. She drew superb acting from the whole cast - the mark of a solid theatre director. I loved what she did with that perennial problem Micaela, turning her into the messages she bears Don Jose - first the bride, then his sick mother. And even scenery fetishists can't have been too disappointed with the mostly realistic locations and the intricate, colourful costumes.

Jonas Kaufmann's Don Jose was the big draw though, and he didn't disappoint. Beneath his billowing shirt, an immaculately waxed chest was revealed by Act 2's close up cameras, as expertly pummelled by Anita Rachvelishvilli's surprisingly terrific Carmen below. Oh, and he sang pretty well too.

The secondary attraction, Erwin Schrott's Escamillo, was less successful. Too many notes off target, and too many clothes.

With multiple camera angles and zooms sensitively deployed, it was technically the best live opera screening I've seen. Pit close-ups revealed the principal flautist's werewolf hands and even better, Barenboim tweaking out a wedgie (at agonising length) before settling in for the prelude. And the cameras' silent zoom around La Scala's plush-lined burrows and their jewel-draped occupants was far more revelatory than a fancy Met-style 'intermission feature'.

Pity about the sound, which was too low in the first act and too loud afterwards, but I suspect that was the Odeon's fault not the film crew's. Of course no cinema acoustics can possibly hope to replicate the live sound - the big drawback of all movie-opera.

First review of the new La Scala Don Carlo

Naughty Marie-Aude Roux of Le Monde has broken the critics' golden rule and - gasp - reviewed a production before press night. The show in question is La Scala's new Don Carlo, which has its official grand prima on 7 December. Presumably she caught the under-26's preview show on Thursday. Only the stalls and upper levels were reserved for the kids, with journalists joining a select group of guests in the boxes. But they were supposed to be reporting on the youthful quirks of the audience, not the show itself, so a big slapped wrist for M-A.

Anyway, she's not impressed, saying it won't go down in history. The main reason is the pushed and sloppily-styled vocalising of the tenor lead, Giuseppe Filianoti [time to wheel out - not without regret for a once-promising career - my told ya so from June.] Perhaps unknown to Marie-Aude at the time of writing, Filianoti has now pulled out from la prima and unofficially from the rest of the run too.

But she does praise Dolora Zajick as Eboli, Fiorenza Cedolins as Elizabeth, Dalibor Jenis as Posa and the Grand Inquisitor of Anatoli Kotcherga. And she found old-hand Ferruccio Furlanetto's Philip particularly moving.

However Stéphane Braunschweig's staging seems to have sunk under the weight of La Scala tradition. With its sumptuous period costumes and stock gestures, it has none of the rigour and purity which distinguished his Jenufa and Wozzeck for Lissner back at the Châtelet in Paris. Instead it kind of follows on from his recent Siegfried in Aix by exploring the impact of childhood. Silhouettes of Don Carlo, Posa and Elisabetta as children appear at crucial moments, underlying the cruel loss of the paradise of undying love. [This seems odd to me, as they're doing the four act version. And without the lovey-dovey Fontainebleau act added on, the opera's focus is surely on Power and Manly Friendship. But whatevs.]

Marie-Aude finishes by proving she's not a total grouch. She praises the finesse and sensuality of Daniele Gatti's conducting, and says he holds nothing back in the dramatic passages.

The message I take from this is - best listened to on the radio. With fingers in the ears where necessary. Glad I didn't fork out £25 for a ticket to the Chelsea Cinema now.

La Prima Segreta - La Scala's real first night

La Scala's season officially opens with the glittery la prima of Don Carlo on December 7.

But last night, inspired perhaps by the Royal Opera House's Sun reader special, there was an anteprima giovani: a special preview of Don Carlo for under-26s only.

1700 hundred tickets, marketed via Facebook, were priced at just 10 euros (compared with €2,000+ for December 7) and sold out in 6 hours.

The Italian papers are a bit sniffy about all the jeans'n'chucks on display. But they report (with some surprise) that the audience were quiet and attentive, clapped only in the right places, and applauded loudly at the end. Further evidence for my contention that it's the oldsters who cause all the trouble.

GM Stéphane Lissner is apparently so chuffed that something in the House of FIALS has actually run smoothly that he's planning to repeat the experiment in 2009 with Daniel Barenboim's Carmen. Diary date - December 4 2009.

 

 

Matti Salminen and Ferruccio Furlanetto at the dress rehearsal: 

La Scala season to open in London cinemas

     

7 December marks the opening performance of La Scala's 2008/09 season, which for the first time ever will be simulcast live around the world.

This year's Italian job is a new production of Verdi's Don Carlo, directed by Stéphane Braunschweig and conducted by Daniele Gatti. Fabulous Ferruccio Furlanetto plays Philip II, as he did to all-round satisfaction in the recent Covent Garden production. Giuseppe Filianoti, Dalibor Jenis, Matti Salminen, Fiorenza Cedolins and Dolora Zajick bask in the glow of his star powah.

Participating cinemas in London are the Curzon Chelsea and Curzon Richmond. Tickets cost an eyewatering £25 - no wonder they haven't sold out yet - and can be purchased online here.

Anyone thinking of going needs to be aware that one of the Italian stage unions may scupper the show by going on strike. Check out Opera Chic for the latest news.

Barenboim's Tristan und Isolde in Milan

Tristan und Isolde - Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 28 December 2007

   

The first night of Tristan und Isolde at La Scala was recorded for broadcast, so I was able to check out some quality clips on YouTube (here) before my own visit. This turned out to be quite useful, as my second-row box seat, though hugely €€€, didn't have the greatest of views:

Though with the whole run sold out weeks in advance, I was lucky to get anything at all by booking a mere few days ahead. I just grabbed the only return available.

The square outside the theatre was lit up for the holidays, with falling snowflakes and multi-lingual messages of festive cheer projected on to the buildings' facades :

La Scala really went to town on the programme, a 400 page brick of a hardback book (left) complete with full libretto, 100 pp. of watch ads, cast lists for every La Scala Tristan production evah, etc, etc. Irresistible - so I dropped the required €20.

Before curtain up, an announcement that Ian Storey (Tristan) was indisposto generated an audible collective sharp intake of breath - hope perhaps that he might be replaced by someone the audience had actually heard of? - followed by a collective sigh as the announcer went on to say he was going to soldier on bravely. Bah. 

Vocally, though he was rather uneven, the crux of his ailment seemed to be amnesia - he was loudly prompted through a chunk of the last act.

From the expression on his face at the end, you'd think he was being handed a twenty year sentence without parole rather than the warm applause he actually received. I don't think he's anyone's ideal Tristan, but given the world heldentenor shortage and the barrel-scraping other houses have been forced into, he's really not that bad. And it's hard to fault him as an actor - he hardly twinkles with star quality, but he's a solid and credible performer.

Waltraud Meier made a rather more reliable Isolde, only the very highest notes eluding her. Her steely presence was arresting, though it lacked the vulnerable edge that would have made it touching. Perhaps the curiously well-rested appearance of her forehead (as first spotted by the eagle-eyed OperaChic) creates difficulties in projecting the necessary emotion, hmmm.

A surprise weakness in the cast was the normally reliable Matti Salminen, whose König Marke was more like a befuddled grandad woken inopportunely from a nap than the wronged husband and betrayed friend.

Patrice Chéreau's ohso predictable production caused no offence, but other than camouflaging a few corpulent Wagnerian frames in flattering overcoating, did no real favours either.

The only really interesting touch was in the detail of the set. Chéreau's usual grim indeterminate wharfside environment was tweaked into a fittingly North Italian ambience with ruddy clay Roman walls and pointy cypress trees. It reminded me of those Italian Renaissance paintings where everything from the birth of Jesus to St Jerome in the wilderness seems to be taking place on a small hillside outside Florence.

If only we could have had some Piero pastels for the costumes instead of, once again, the drab Echo & the Bunnymen rags. Once, this style must have looked new and exciting, but now when every other Wagner production borrows it, isn't it time to try something different?

At least Barenboim was there to save the day (sort of). His long acquaintance with the score paid off in a monumentally structured orchestral performance of immaculate Wiener-like finesse. If at times Barenboim's tempo seemed languorous, it was justified later in framing the contrasting sections, forever inching inexorably to the finishing line.

It was sometimes hard to believe this was 'just' an opera house orchestra, with their lush string sound, polished brass and exquisite balance. The three Vorspiele were an opportunity to just sit back and luxuriate in the sound of the orchestra without the distraction (and that's what it often was) of singers and movement. These were for me the only truly engaging episodes in the whole evening. The orchestra joined Barenboim on stage to take a bow at the end, something they deserved rather more than certain of the singers.

 

Wanted - Opera House with GSOH

Failing to find anyone of their own size to pick on, La Scala's in house lawyers have 'politely requested' blogger OperaChic to get a new logo on the grounds that someone might mistake her consistently witty and informative site for their own dull creaky effort.

Clearly they only want the publicity they've paid for out of their own deep and ohso honest pockets...........