|
 La Scala diehards were chagrined last year when the house
opened its 2013 season with Wagner's "Lohengrin" instead of
Verdi in the composers' joint bicentenary year, but that
production was greeted with a 13-minute ovation.
The final curtain for "La Traviata" on Saturday was followed by
more than 13 minutes of applause, but boos rang out as some of
the cast and crew, including Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov
and Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, took their bows.
The modern-dress production of Verdi's tear-jerker about a
courtesan who dies of consumption after sacrificing her love of
a young man for the sake of his family had a starry cast —
German soprano Diana Damrau as the doomed Violetta and Italian
opera specialist Daniele Gatti conducting.
But the production also featured touches like Violetta swigging
from a bottle of Jack Daniel's whisky and one of her lady
friends wearing a Native American-style headdress.
Such innovations did not sit well with some of the formal-dress
audience who had paid as much as 2,000 euros ($2,700) per ticket
for the 2014 season opening night.
"A triumph for Violetta and catcalls for the director," the
Italian newspaper La Stampa said in the headline of its review.
"After so many years of non-Italian opening nights — Wagner,
Bizet and more Wagner — and especially after 'Lohengrin' greeted
Verdi's bicentennial birth year at last year's opening, Scala
finally welcomed its native son back to the fold, with arms wide
open, regardless of Wagner transgressions," blogger "Opera
Chic", who specialises in La Scala productions, wrote.
"But when they rolled back the rock, it was a Frankenstein
monster. Seal it back up!"
"NOT REPEAT THE SAME SHOW"
"La Traviata", set in 18th-century Paris, has been part of
performance schedules worldwide more than any other opera over
the last five seasons, according to operabase.com.
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 "To set side by side the repertoire and the modern
day is the Scala's mission, not repeating the same show as the
conservatives would like," Stephane Lissner, outgoing artistic
director of La Scala, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della
Sera, defending the current production.
Conductor Gatti dedicated the evening to Nelson
Mandela and held a minute's silence in the lavish auditorium for the
"extraordinary man" who was South Africa's first black president and
who died on Thursday.
The first-night audience included Italian head of state Giorgio
Napolitano, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and
British politician Peter Mandelson.
"I love this production. It's gold standard," Mandelson told Reuters
amid the bow-tie and evening dress-clad crowd during the interval.
"I love the singing of this wonderful Violetta."
But Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani told
reporters he was "puzzled" by the production and recalled a
production of Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" he had once worked on.
"We managed to give a touch of modernity, without betraying the
spirit of the opera," Italian news website Il Giorno quoted Armani
as saying.
Views differed among other audience members filing down La Scala's
carpeted staircase after the show.
"I enjoyed it very much," said spectator Roberto Tiezze as he left
the auditorium. "It made good use of the singers, who have a great
ability to communicate the story."
La Traviata will play at La Scala until January.
(Additional reporting by Sara Rossi; editing by Michael Roddy and
Mark Heinrich)
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