The opera house La Scala was in crisis on Sunday night after its musical director, Riccardo Muti, said he would no longer conduct the orchestra, and the chairperson of the board proposed handing the running of the theatre to government-placed commissioners.
In a letter at the weekend, Muti told the musicians: ”I believe that, at the moment, there are not the conditions for us to play music together.” His announcement forced the theatre to scrap a concert by La Scala Philharmonic that was to have been performed on Friday, the latest in a string of cancellations pitching the house into financial crisis.
Bringing in commissioners appointed by Rome would be a humiliating admission of failure by the governors and a crippling blow to Milan’s civic pride. Nevertheless, the city’s mayor, Gabriele Albertini, who is also chairperson of the board of governors, told the daily Corriere della Sera that it was ”the natural outcome, I do not see others”. He said the move, which would require the approval of the culture minister, would be preferable to giving in to the musicians’ demands.
Albertini said that if the orchestra continued to defy Muti ”he could leave La Scala and go elsewhere. Any [opera] theatre in the world would welcome him with open arms.”
La Scala’s musicians and other staff, have been in open revolt against the board and the theatre’s tempestuous musical director since February 24, when the governors dismissed the previous general manager, Carlo Fontana, and replaced him with Muti’s choice, Mauro Meli, the theatre’s former artistic director. Behind the move lay more than a year and a half of friction between the 64-year-old conductor and the former general manager, whom Muti accused of ”dumbing down” La Scala’s programme.
Staff at the theatre, however, admired Fontana and supported his policy of trying to strengthen the opera house’s finances with more popular offerings.
In an interview with The Guardian earlier this month, the director Franco Zeffirelli came out in support of the workers, accusing Muti of wanting to make himself ”absolute dictator of La Scala”. Muti hit back with a letter to Corriere della Sera, saying: ”Today, I am accused of wanting not merely to be musical director, but artistic director as well, and perhaps also superintendent, or even of influencing the candidacy for the next mayor. I would smile, if the situation were not so depressing.”
Albertini said that, at a meeting on Friday, union representatives had turned down an offer to take part in the selection of the new artistic director. At a hasty meeting later, during the interval of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, the musicians voted to alter their negotiating stance. Instead of demanding that the governors reversed their decision to sack Fontana, they decided to call on Meli to step down voluntarily.
Queen of Spades is one of several operas in the current season being performed with conductors other than Muti. La Scala returned to its main venue in Milan last December after a â,¬50-million restructuring and refurbishment intended to return it to the front rank of international opera houses. – Guardian Unlimited Â