Word: scala
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...diet of potatoes. At length he got a chance in 1961 to sing at the Bayreuth Festival, home of the heldentenor, where he was hailed as a "flawless" Parsifal. Last year he became one of the few U.S. tenors ever to sing at Milan's La Scala opera house. "The Italians," he explains simply, "love...
...walls of Milan's famed old La Scala opera house almost visibly quivered. Fifteen jazz musicians, sporting candy-striped shirts and elastic armbands, took the stage and let loose with a blistering Strike Up the Band while a covey of chubby little ballerinas in split-to-the-hip satin skirts twitched their pelvises and tried their best to look naughty. Enter a Mississippi riverboat gaily puffing smoke. Switch to an 80-ft.-high wooden Eiffel Tower. Then, rising from beneath the stage on elevator platforms like hosts of angels, the 100-piece orchestra, jazz band, singers and dancers unite...
...occasion was the world premiere last week of Gershwiniana, a $100,000 "ballet-cantata" based on George Gershwin's music and billed as "a great moment in Italo-American collaboration." After opening night, the bemused Milanese had another name for it: "La Scala Follies." The critics had some complaints, some major (Director Maner Lualdi's failure to stitch the kaleidoscopic scenes into a visual and dramatic whole), and some minor ("How can one stage a 1910 New Orleans dance palace without calling in a single colored face...
...Seventh Army Symphony. "I conducted every day for a year," says Lewis, "an opportunity few conductors get. It was a time to make all the mistakes, a luxury you can't afford when you're conducting a major symphony. The fact that I'm at La Scala now I probably owe to the Seventh Army...
Lewis' triumph at La Scala has already won him an invitation to return next season. Says La Scala Artistic Director Francesco Siciliani: "If he could do so much with Gershwin, imagine how he will make Puccini sound!" Yet for all the accolades, Lewis says he felt he had really arrived when, after opening night, he visited the elegant Biffi Scala, which is to Milano operagoers what Sardi's is to Broadway theater. At his appearance, the chef marched out of the kitchen, cried "Bravissimo, maestro!" and pointed to the latest addition to the menu-a beef fillet smothered...