Word: ghiringhelli
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...first battle in 1955, when her rival disappeared from La Scala; Tebaldi has not sung there since. But while Tebaldi began a brilliant new career at Manhattan's Met, her fans made things hot for Callas in Milan. When hissing Tebaldi rooters pelted Callas with radishes, Manager Antonio Ghiringhelli put up to 150 cops into La Scala, soothed Callas with public kisses and bales of flowers...
This season La Scala's new Artistic Director Francesco Siciliani began needling Ghiringhelli about pampering prima donnas. Even before Callas' celebrated walkout on a Rome audience including Italian President Gronchi last January (TIME, Jan. 13), Ghiringhelli pointedly skipped his ritual of meeting her at the airport with flowers...
...Brussels World's Fair. Last week her fans were still throwing radishes at Callas, and so were some critics. "[Maria Callas'] well-organized claque," said Milan's Il Giorno, "does not prevent her voice from damaging well-formed ears." The final blow came when Manager Ghiringhelli, who had avoided her for months, cut Callas dead backstage. Enraged, she took public revenge at her next performance of Il Pirata. Instead of pointing offstage to her lover mounting the gallows, Callas leveled a finger at Ghiringhelli's box as she declaimed the lines: "There you see . . . distressing torture...
...even before Callas quit, Tebaldi made a surprising maneuver: she announced that she would not sing at La Scala without Callas. "I sing only for artistic reasons; it is not my custom to sing against anybody," she said. Groaned Manager Ghiringhelli: "This is a stab in the back." To some critics and subscribers, a Scala with no top diva seemed a disaster. Others considered the price well worth the exit of Callas. "She corrupts public taste," cried the Giorno critic. "She lowers the noble assembly of the theater to the level of an arena...
...Scala Manager Antonio Ghiringhelli expects to fill his new hall regularly, if only because there is a constant audience overflow from the old one. In addition to presenting chamber operas in the proper surroundings, he hopes to attract new and even experimental works by living composers. Already scheduled: Mozart's Cost fan Tutte, Scarlatti's Mitridate Eupatore, De Falla's Master Peter's Puppet-Show, Stravinsky's ballet, Apollon Musagetes...