Word: scala
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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EACH opening night during the opera season, Milan's Via Manzoni is transformed from a bustling commercial street to a river of wealth and elegance. Bumper to bumper, a seemingly endless line of Mercedes, Alfa Romeos, Lancias and Maseratis inches toward the Piazza della Scala, their high-powered engines being raced by traffic-frustrated drivers. Pulling up before La Scala's neoclassic facade, the cars discharge their cargoes-usually an Italian businessman, resplendent in white tie, and his bejeweled wife, dressed in a Fontana, Capucci or Dior...
...opera at Milan's La Scala last week was Verdi's Battle of Legnano, and the principals bore glittering reputations -Soprano Antonietta Stella, Tenor Franco Corelli. But as anxious to please as either of them were the two men posted on either side of the first gallery (the fifth tier). Antonio Carrara, 33, and Carmelo Alabisio, 76, can lay claim to being opera's most successful dispensers of professional applause...
Carrara and Alabisio are the organizers of the La Scala claque. At a time when claques are disappearing from many of the world's opera houses, the La Scala group is one of the best in the house's long history. At a signal, 30 hand-clappers burst into applause, almost always sweeping a large part of the audience with them. Says Carrara: "The claque is absolutely necessary, not only for the artists, but because some operas are so boring that nobody would clap if we didn't boost up the atmosphere...
...opera houses, none in years have been organized with the same flair and genius for detail. A onetime aspiring singer, Carrara abandoned his career when his money ran out, now works during the day as a salesman, has been claquing evenings for ten years. Alabisio was a top La Scala tenor under Toscanini in the 1920s. Their basic claque (which they can beef up to 40 on important evenings) includes singing students, teachers, music lovers and two barbers. Perhaps the most dedicated is Claqueur Nino Grassi, 60, who has clapped professionally at La Scala since he was ten years...
...claqueurs to drown them out. When Maria Callas sang in Poliuto (TIME, Dec. 19, 1960), a group of Stella's fans booed Callas, were drowned out by the claque and became so enraged that they started a slugging match that sent two combatants to jail. Although the La Scala claque never shouts at or boos a performer, some claques do; at the Teatro Regio in Parma, the local claque decided that it did not like the stringy-voiced tenor, refunded him his money and in subsequent performances all but booed him from the stage...