When OC decided to ditch la prima of The Gambler at la Scala, she knew she wasn't going to miss it, but really, reading the reviews in today's papers was kind of shocking. The production that debuted in March at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter Den Linden, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov and conducted by Daniel Barenboim has been copied-and-pasted at the Milanese opera house.
"Dostoyevsky In Montecatini, What A Mistake", is the headline of Milan's august Corriere della Sera, where the reviewer rips apart the staging by mocking the choice of moving the action to a petit bourgeois resort that reminds the reviewer of the quite lame Montecatini resort in Italy.
And Il Giornale pummels even harder. The headline: "To Follow The Gambler Is An Enormous Burden", and then the reviewer goes for the kill, explaining that, since 12 years ago la Scala had staged the superior production of the same opera directed by Tsypin and conducted by Gergiev, "it's not surprising that the priority is to help rescue Berlin's Staatsoper, in agreement with Daniel Barenboim, with co-productions".
ZING!