Today's la Repubblica certifies that Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and Jacques chirac will indeed appear in Robert Carsen's staging of Candide at la Scala next June 20 as originally planned.
But no more underwear: the heads of state will wear pants.
This, and other changes to the original staging, will be fine-tuned by Carsen and his co-director, Scala General Manager Stéphane Lissner as soon as Carsen comes back from Japan where Maestro Ozawa is conducting Carsen's staging of Tannhauser.
(pictured above, Lissner and Carsen hard at work on their Candide rewrites)