Since she's back to the US for a visit, Opera Chic won't be able to check out personally La Scala's Lohengrin -- not to mention, she does have some issues, musical and nonmusical, with Herr Wagner, but we'll leave that to some other post in the future. The coverage in the Italian press and the comments of Opera Chic's Milanese friends anyway do seem to converge: big kudos to young Milanese conductor Daniele Gatti (Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of Teatro Comunale di Bologna's orchestra), mad props to signora Waltraud Meier's devilish Ortrud (the diminishing power of the voice she so generously put on the line for all her career notwithstanding). The production's problems? Well, Robert Dean Smith's Lohengrin (in an opera called Lohengrin, after all, this is probably not the smallest issue) does seem to have too small a voice -- not to mention his voice cracked at least once during la prima -- and the costumes designed by Bettina Walter (Lohengrin sports a shiny metallic suit for no apparent reason) are indeed problematic.
The director's decision to place the action in the 1940's, again for no apparent reason, has raised eyebrows (not to mention HELLO TEHRE IS NO SWAN WTF WHARES TEH SWAN)?
And the sets? Well, our loggionisti friends would have loved to see everything better, but apparently a lot of the action happens to be placed waaay too deep inside the stage; so if you have seats in the galleria, you are SOL. LOL GET SOME MOAR XPENSIVE SEATS THEIR ONLY 240 BUX OR SOMETHING GET A MORTGAGE OR SOMETHING IF YOU WANNA SEE OUR LOHENGRIN OR WAIT 4 TEH OVRPRICED DVD K THX BI lol Go ask your parents for more allowance money. I'll be standing over here with my 40-digit salary, buying-out all the seats in La Scala for a private performance.