The Sicilian theater has announced on its website that Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, scheduled for October and late November, respectively, are postponed until further notice, citing a severe fiscal deficit of over 3 million euros. Two June ballets have also been axed.
Until today's announcement, the current season was supposed to launch Teatro Massimo di Palermo's first complete Wagner Ring Cycle in its +116 year history. The Palermo opera house had tapped Graham Vick for a shoestring-budget Ring Cycle, which had premiered in January with Das Rheingold and followed in late February with Die Walküre, both exiting to positive reviews for Vick's dramatically-vicious cast and theatrical dexterity (Shirley Apthorp for the FT).
The last time Teatro Massimo organized a Ring Cycle, it was split between the 1970 and 1971 seasons, conducted by Lovro von Matacic in the Grand Théâtre de Genève production.
At the Milan press conference to introduce the Ring Cycle, the theater had announced, via then-Intendant Antonio Cognata, that the 2012-13 season would be functioning on the slimmest budget in its history, but intended to stage Wagner's Ring regardless. How disappointed we are, although nowhere near disappointed as the singers, stagehands and orchestra who had poured everything into pulling off the opera house's first Ring Cycle under such frugality and sacrifice. Read the whole announcement here.