Breaking La Scala news!! (NOT about Alagna)

Opera Chic has just learned that Leonard Bernstein's Candide, which was to be heralded with an exciting new staging for the upcoming 2007 season at Teatro alla Scala by Robert Carsen, has been cut and cancelled from the 2007 program.

Background on the new production from La Stampa is here: La Stampa only wrote about the upcoming production a few days ago, with a broad review (btw, the image above is also taken from La Stampa).

The reason? GM and Artistic Director Stéphane Lissner made the decision to cut it after an “anti-Berlusconi” scene in Robert Carsen’s new production was drawing too much criticism. You can see in the picture that Carsen places Berlusconi in the company of other international leaders as Bush, Blair, Chirac and Putin, all appearing drunk, clothed in only underwear and neckties...and apparently Putin vomits after the troop arrives in Venice, then parties at a casino. heh.

The June 20th La Prima was supposed to include John Axelrod conducting. Candide was supposed to be sung by William Burden, and Cunegonde by Anna Christy.

More from Opera Chic as the story continues to break...

UPDATEvvvvv:

An article in English here from the International Herald Tribune that gives great background to Carsen's very controversial production.

The native-Canadian Carsen has tagged his new production of Candide with an overt anti-United States bias, stating:

"I felt we could parallel Candide's loss of optimism and the way the world has lost its optimism about an idealized America since the death of John F. Kennedy," Carsen said in a telephone interview just hours after his production was given a rapturous reception at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on Monday evening [after the premiere in Paris]."

Comments

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

Thank you for the lovely commentary on the life and art of Carlo Maria-Giulini. I was blessed to hear him perform in Chicago with the CSO when he was co-musical director with Solti for a number of years. He was a true aristocrat in his person and in his music. I remember best of all his performance of Mahler's 9th--a mystical experience. He was a very special man--full of human tenderness that informed his art.