Word: scala
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MOSCOW--The Soviet Union and Italy have proposed a cultural agreement that would bring the La Scala Opera Company to Moscow...
...stage of Milan's La Scala one evening last week, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, mused about the futility of wealth and power. The aria, Oh! de' verd'anni miei, got hearty applause. After the curtain fell on the third act of Verdi's Ernani, barrel-chested Baritone Cornell MacNeil scurried back to his dressing room, where he signed his name to a La Scala option for next season. Then he dispatched a cable to his wife in Cliffside Park, NJ.: "We tore up the pea patch, doll...
...Scala debut last week MacNeil was in typically impressive form: his rich, flexible baritone soared and swelled with enormous power; his acting had about it a quality of vibrant conviction that dominated the stage. Once he moved the house to bravos. Few in the audience realized that MacNeil was there for merely a one-shot appearance, was not given a rehearsal with the cast or orchestra. And few but La Scala's sharpest critical ears detected that MacNeil speaks no Italian, has to learn his roles by rote. Said MacNeil modestly: "There isn't much acting required...
...Hates. Casa Ricordi was founded in Milan in 1808 by a violinist who, so the legend goes, noticed that the workers around La Scala wore paper hats made of discarded musical scores. Giovanni Ricordi investigated, found that valuable scores and orchestra parts were stacked high in La Scala's cellar. He began to buy up some of the scores, set himself up as a copyist, got a contract stipulating that all the scores he produced would remain his property after a performance. In an age without copyrights or royalties on performances, he funneled some of his earnings back...
...organizational genius was Grandson Giulio, an ironic, meticulously dressed man, who dabbled in poetry and chamber music, negotiated so shrewdly that Casa Ricordi realized as much as 65% from the earnings of its composers' work. With a near-monopolistic control over Italian opera, Giulio attended rehearsals at La Scala, recommended the hiring or firing of singers, publicly castigated conductors. A pet hate for a time: Toscanini, whose style he once likened to a "mastodonic mechanical piano." Above all, Giulio commissioned Arrigo Boîto to write the librettos of Otello and Falstaff, which fired the aged Verdi into composing...