Out with the old in with the new for La Scala's 2010-11 season, the Italian opera theater revamped their website with an interactive and media-driven version. Just what the kidz want am i rite?
We haven't finished poking through all the features -- and although Scala 2.0's navigation is much simpler and more organized than Scala Beta's -- we're going with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" The endearingly Scalaese site has gone corporate.
Anyway, click the link below to discover a Teatro alla Scala souvenir that Opera Chic just brought home!
When we originally saw the diva-struck advertisement in Corriere della Sera's special la prima insert, we posted it to our facebook account. Now elegant Japanese make-up giant Shiseido and burly Italian opera theater Teatro alla Scala officially announce a three year partnership, which kicked off on December 7 with the inauguration of La Scala's new season. All of the artists, including the ballerinas (and possibly the orchestra?) will find Shiseido products backstage.
A recent story in Vanity Fair Italia served as the usual "meet & greet a star at their hotel and describe cool and/or quirky stuff" profile on Eleonora Abbagnato, the young, Palermo-born, Dolce & Gabbana clad, prima ballerina at Paris' Opéra Garnier. But after all the /words words words/ of the article, we were left with an uncanny anecdote about the prevalence of feet in Ele's world:
Chiudo il blocco e sto per mettere via anche la penna, quando lei con un tono di colpo attento e quasi preoccupato, mi dice: "Hai i piedi bagnati!" Guardo le mie scarpe, sono umide, c'e' acqua sul pavimento della terrazza. I suoi piedi invece sono al riparo, sospesi su una gamba del tavolino. Lei non danza, e' la danza, cosi e' fatta la sua testa: i piedi sono importanti, tutti, anche quelli degli altri.
In brief, as the interview was concluding, Eleonora noticed the wet shoes of the author (from the rain) which elicited a dramatic response about the Italian ballerina: "She's not just a dancer -- she *is* dance, and like this it's marked in her head that feet are important, all of them, even everybody else's feet."
Opera Chic loves Milan's Bulgari Hotel, especially for the countless times she's refreshed at the bar -- either warming up with an infusion or chilling with a cocktail. Tucked away on a private road not far from her house, she passes the Italian design store Skitsch on the way in or out (depending how badly she needs that drink!) where innovative, playful design (and the store's immense glass window displays) always lure us in.
O.C. picked up a special, auxiliary catalog on a recent visit where she saw a page for French designer/Skitsch collaborator Jean Marie Massaud and design maven Cristina Morozzi, referencing the Duke's famous aria La donna è mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto. Design meets opera -- how sweet is that?
This is what happens when you take the ballerinas out of the studio, away from the stage, and put them into urban spaces. Some of our recent favorites below, from the NYC-based Ballerina Project.
We've had a chance to skim Riccardo Muti's recently published autobiography (in Italian language only) and even if you can't understand Italian, it's worth it for the photos alone. From family portraits to the conductor's favorite fans (Mikhail Gorbachev, Queen Elizabeth II, and Pope John Paul II) O.C. brings you a few of her favorites -- although many, many more were curated for the book's final cut.
From 1981, in his la scala dressing room with his three children
With wife Cristina in Ravenna in the 1970s.
30-year-old Muti taking a smoke break.
O.C. can't stand cigarettes so she's given Muti's ciggy portrait a photoshop rehaul...click the link below to find our photoshopped solution to the nasty habit!
In the rush of preparing for la prima madness and settling back into Milan from a recent vacation (more on that in a bit) Opera Chic didn't have much free time to stroll through the masses of Milan's downtown Xmas crushes to follow our yearly tradition of bringing you la prima fever. The past few yast years we've happily been there for you -- in 2006 for Verdi's Aida, in 2007 for Wagner's Tristan, and in 2008 for Verdi's Don Carlo.
This year, opening night was fittingly somber and sober, and Milan was decidedly austere in opening night hype. One exception we found (while dipping into G. Lorenzi's Coltellinaio for gifts on Via Montenapoleone) was the Rolex store, who had decorated their window displays in an eye-catching Scala theme. Not bad, but while O.C. doesn't mind her men in Rolex, she's definitely a (vintage) Cartier girl!
(Above: Marcello and Wilma Giordani with Nicola Luisotti and Paolo Spadaccini [right], President of the Foundazione Festival Pucciniano. Credit: Cory Weaver) Well-dressed Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti received the 39th Premio Puccini award after a historic, 100th anniversary performance of Giacomo Puccini's La Fanciulla del West at NYC's Metropolitan Opera last night: La Fanciulla was commissioned and premiered by/at The Metropolitan Opera on December 10, 1910 and starred Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
As current Music Director at the San Francisco Opera, the Tuscan-born Italian Maestro Luisotti is on the East Coast to conduct the current run of La Fanciulla (in Giancarlo del Monaco's production), culminating in a final January 8, 2011 performance that's slated for the MET's live HD broadcast series.
Really, what better choice for the Premio Puccini to be given to the man whose great, great uncle used to chill with Puccini at Lago di Massaciuccoli (OC spoke to the Maestro almost one year ago -- you can read the full interview here) and has worked hard through posts held at Milan's La Scala, Florence's Maggio Musicale, and Venice's La Fenice (and singing in the chorus of the annual Torre del Lago Puccini Festival)?
Maestro Luisotti was the guest of honor at a special reception after the performance on Friday night where he was presented with the award by President of the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano, Paolo Spadaccini. The award has been around since 1971 and has been presented to a handful of opera celebs like Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Pavarotti, Josè Carreras, Renata Scotto, Mirella Freni, and Renata Tebaldi. All photos below credit to Cory Weaver. Compliments to the Maestro!
(Above: Luisotti with Angela Lansbury)
(Luisotti with Dan Rather)
(Luisotti with Walfredo and Elaine Toscanini, Arturo's grandson)
With a 60+ year legacy of artistry under his belt, Franco Zeffirelli has already filled a book (or two or three) in remembrance of his career, so really, what would stop him from auto-celebrating again? Just out is "Franco Zeffirelli, the complete works", the definitive collection of the artist's costume sketches, set designs, technical drawings, and photos -- an illustrated volume of his personal archives split between film, art, and opera where he carved out his career as a director, scenographer, and costumer.
The 500+ page book is going for 120 euro (although Amazon has it slashed down to $94.50 USD). When asked the inspiration for the book, Frengo said he basically wanted to pay it forward after having so many opportunities to work with such bright lights. In celebration of the new book, the Italian artist will be attending a special night on December 15 in Rome's Biblioteca Casanatense (invite above) for a dialog among the contributors.
Italy's newspapers unanimously reported on Teatro alla Scala's season-opening Die Walkure, headlines trumpeting Barenboim's victory and the blazing protests. From Milan's Corriere della Sera (who, as per custom, create a special la prima insert) to Rome's La Repubblica, here are some of our favorites:
No matter how long and hard you've practiced putting together the prestigious opening night of La Scala's season-launching la prima (read OC's review below), always leave it to those goofy A.V. kids to screw something it up!
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Now here are some new clips of last night's live broadcast from Teatro alla Scala for Wagner's Die Walkure.
Before the final curtain call on December 7th -- a few minutes after the conclusion of five ginormous hours of Wagner's Die Walkure that opened La Scala's new season on Milan's holiday to celebrate the city's patron saint, Sant'Ambrogio -- the night was engraved as a triumph before the first strains of Wagner's famous leitmotifs hit the adoring, vaguely taxidermied, Milanese public. Maestro Daniel Barenboim's victory was sealed when he stepped from the orchestra pit onto the platea floor to inaugurate the evening and spoke out, in Italian, quoting the Italian Constitution (art 9.) to defend the future of culture in Italy, and deafening applause ensued (which was also directed to Palco Reale where Milan's Mayor, Letizia Moratti kept company with Italy's President, Giorgio Napolitano).
As Barenboim entered the orchestra pit at the beginning of Act II and Act III, preemptive cheering for La Scala's "Maestro Scaligero" guaranteed the final triumph and today’s newspaper headlines, the Italian press creeming themselves in phrases like, "Il trionfo della Valchiria", "Quattordici minuti di applausi", "Scala, il trionfo di Barenboim" (massive headlines also addressed the out-of-control student protests which flared-up around Piazza della Scala/Palazzo Marino where the city's most official post-opera Gala takes place.
La Scala's opening night -- on the feast day of the city's patron saint, St. Ambrogio -- dazzles, the furs thick, the family jewels bright, the hairstyles even p0rnier. Here's a tease of what happens in Milan's elegant creams, reds and gold-leaf opera house. Corriere della Sera's photos are here; La Repubblica's; La Stampa's.
President of the Italian Republic, Napolitano with his wife; Milan's Mayor Letizia Moratti and Scala's GM Stephane Lissner.
Last night under a rain-soaked Teatro alla Scala with the echoes of protesters across Piazza della Scala, Guy Cassiers' new production of Die Walkure opened the Milanese opera house's 2010/11 season to a coiffed and couture'd crowd. Before Daniel Barenboim, "Maestro Scaligero", wielded his baton to deliver a stunning interpretation of Wagner's opera (more on that later) he addressed the crowd. Speaking in Italian, he briefly talked about the uncertain future of Italian opera and Europe's shakey (at best) culture scene. Pimping or earnest? OC's in the middle, but Scala's crowds nor the loggione disagreed and Barenboim's speech was met with wild applause, bravos and even an old lady from the gallerie shouted "Viva il presidente".
Barenboim was speaking, elegantly, in protest of Decreto Bondi -- named after Silvio Berlusconi's Culture Minister, Sandro Bondi, who was conveniently absent for la prima (he said he was detained due to voting...you can read OC's analysis on Decreto Bondi here) -- which passed into law over the summer, Barenboim said that he was very happy and honored to be leading La Scala for La prima and to be "Maestro Scaligero" of the opera house, but all of his colleagues have been worried about the future of opera and culture in Italy and Europe.
He then quoted Article 9 of the Constitution, which references the rights of the Italian Republic to promote culture and scientific research. Clip above of the event.
There's probably only one commentator in the United States who understands that full devotion to ballet will make very weird things happen to you -- and breaking out in stigmata is not entirely out of the question.
Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night. When Natalie Portman finally takes possession of her dark side (she’s at her most impressive here), her eyes turn devil. Slashing its way to the finish line, Black Swan is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror.
The film just opened in limited release in the US.
Riccardo Muti has been conducting professionally for about 45 years. Until a few nights ago, he had only given one encore -- at Scala, for Nabucco's "Va' Pensiero", Italy's unofficial national anthem (there are frequent calls, in the Italian media, to shelf the admittedly lame "Fratelli d'Italia" anthem and replace it with Verdi's immortal music).
The other night in Rome, during the performance of the opera house's season opener, "Moise Et Pharaon", the audience's applause was so massive after the "Des cieux où tu réside" chorus (aka, Dal tuo stellato soglio) that the usually very strict Italian maestro agreed to an encore, driving the opening night's crowd nuts.
"I'm against encores on principle, but with that never-ending applause and thunder of requests after the 'prayer' in the fourth act I felt uncertain," Muti said later. "Then I realised that there was the desire to once again feel an important page of our culture, a page full of emotion and spirituality."
But it really goes beyond that. Muti is the "come scritto" guy who's horrified by embellishments, the guy who broke Toscanini's embargo against encores at Scala only once in a quarter of a century (Toscanini is his idol: by the way, Gianandrea Gavazzeni had broken the embargo before with I Lombardi), the guy who's on the record in an entire career with lean, mean, aggressive performances and the guy who'll visibly frown, in the pit, if the applause starts too early and clashes with the final notes of the orchestra.
Everybody knows that la Scala tomorrow night will open its season with Die Walkuere and the usual Scala drama is already there: singers who slammed the director in the press, the conductor (Daniel Barenboim) and the general manager (Stéphane Lissner) who declined to defend the director effectively throwing him under the bus (Why? Maybe, to deflect responsibility for the likely booing that tomorrow night will salute Guy Cassiers and his videos), etc...
Muti knows that people still remember his 1994 Walkuere, and you know what, maybe that one wasn't worse than Barenboim's will reveal itself to be.
In the meantime, Muti's showing the Romans that the new improved Muti will give you an encore if you ask politely enough and if you clap loudly enough, and, as you can see in the video above, he'll even crack little risqué jokes about his coming to Opera di Roma as Music Director (he won't take the title): "Everybody asks, is he coming or is he not coming, coming or not coming, and given that choice of words it even gets a little embarrassing...". You know, he'll even give you one of his rare -- and famous -- crocodile smiles.
Below, Muti's 1994 Walkuere at Scala, opening night, Meier and Domingo:
(if you look around carefully, the entire 1994 broadcast is available on YouTube)
The clip below will spoil the movie for you if you didn't catch it in the theaters and still want to see it (it's out on DVD and Blu-Ray) because it's the wordless, four-minute finale, all played out to "Harmonielehre", and it's astonishing.
At the inauguration of Milan's Museo del Novecento,Scala's "Prima Ballerina", Sabrina Brazzo, wore a Diane Von Furstenberg dress and Diego Dolcini sandals.
Rome's Teatro dell'Opera 2010/2011 season popped the cork and inaugurated itself all over the place on Thursday night under the pouring rain (which has also drenched Milan in a soggy, gray landscape the entire past month). The honor of opening the new season was given to super-conductor Riccardo Muti who filleted Rossini's Moise et Pharaon. The 19th century opera had never before been staged in Rome's opera house. The new production from Pier'Alli was also given a before-opening-night Gala on November 30th, a dual fundraiser for Rome-based humanitarian agency Agenda Sant'Egidio.
Star Riccardo Muti shared the spotlight with the night's additional luminaries: President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano and wife Clio; Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno; designer Alberta Ferretti and some of Clan Fendi and Clan Bulgari (Maite Bulgari founded the Agenda Sant'Egidio last year); even the head rabbi of Rome's Jewish community, Riccardo Di Segni, got in the Hanukkah spirit with a little bit of Old Testament vibe. Ildar Abdrazakov is Moïse and Nicola Alaimo is Pharaon. Dagospia was there (photos by Mario Pizzi da Zagarolo pasted below).
(Above: Sondra Radvanovsky as Amelia in LOC's current new production of Un Ballo in Maschera. Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago)
Sondra Radvanovsky a.k.a. ~The Rad~ is coming to Milan. She's stepping in a lead role at Teatro alla Scala for the February 2011 Puccini Tosca. The American soprano is filling-in for the originally-cast Austrian soprano Martina Serafin (we wrote about it here). Win/win yay/yay since young conductor Omer Meir Wellber will be leading the Luc Bondy production. The Rad splits lead duties with Oksana Dyka; Cavaradossi is Jonas Kaufmann and Marco Berti; and Scarpia is Zeljko Lucic and Bryn Terfel. The Rad will be singing Tosca at Scala for only her second time** her third time on stage (the first time was Opera Colorado last season) which made for XdoubleX [c-o-l-o] R-A-D [o]. Rad-O.
Daniel Barenboim, who is about to open la Scala's season next Tuesday with Die Walkuere, has written a lenghty essay about Wagner, Israel, and Nazism. In English on his website, and it's been published in Italian (in a massive two-page spread in print and on line) by Corriere della Sera:
During the Third Reich, Wagner’s music was still played by Jews in Tel Aviv by none other than the then Palestine Symphony Orchestra, the modern-day Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, when it became known that Jews had been sent to the gas chambers to the accompaniment of certain Wagner works, the performance of Wagner was rightly declared taboo out of respect for survivors and the relatives of victims. This was done not because of Wagner’s anti-Semitism but rather because of the Nazis’ abuse of his music.
Wagner may have been the most important personal and ideological role model for Adolf Hitler, a kind of “predecessor,” as Joachim Fest writes in his Hitler biography. Hitler called him “the greatest prophet ever possessed by the German people,” and took on Wagner’s mythology as a component of Nazi ideology. Nevertheless, as revolting as Wagner’s anti-Semitism may be, one can hardly hold him responsible for Hitler’s use and abuse of his music and his world views. The Jewish composer Ernest Bloch, for one, refused to accept Wagner as a possession of the Nazis: “The music of the Nazis is not the prelude to Die Meistersinger but rather the Horst-Wessel-Lied; they have no more honor than that, further honor can and shall not be given them.” Whoever wants to see a repulsive attack on Jews in Wagner’s operas can of course do so. But is it really justified? Beckmesser, for example, who might be suspected of being a Jewish parody, was a state scribe in the year 1500, a position that was unavailable to Jews. As far as I am concerned, if Beckmesser’s awkward melodies resemble synagogue chant, then this is a parody of Jewish song and not a racist attack. One can of course also raise the question of taste in this matter.