Word: scala
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...Scala opened with Macbeth, considered one of its best new productions. Typically, the company offered a cast of Italian and non-Italian singers, notably Italy's Piero Cappuccilli as Macbeth, the U.S.'s Shirley Verrett as Lady Macbeth and Bulgaria's Nicolai Ghiaurov as Banquo. On the podium was Claudio Abbado, the company's former music director who, at 43, is a conductor of international stature. The production was conceived and staged by Italy's Giorgio Strehler (see box). For Strehler, it was one of three moments in the spotlight. His staging of Figaro...
Cenerentola is less popular than Rossini's The Barber of Seville, probably because of its emphasis on bravura ensemble work over traditional solo arias. Further, the title role is written for an almost extinct species, the coloratura contralto. La Scala has such a rara avis in Lucia Valentini Terrani. She really has too hefty a look for an ideal Cinderella, but her voice was lusciously bronze and agile. The production is by France's Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; within a delightful children's cutout house, he manipulates his characters like a swinging Coppelius. How, for example, Soprano Margherita...
...Italy's Giorgio Strehler, who was responsible for the opening productions of both La Scala and the Paris Opéra, is no ordinary director. When he says the music comes first, he means it. When he uses the phrase no man's land, he means that too; contrasting cases in point are the failure of his Macbeth and the success of his Figaro...
...sure they are placed where they can sing best. If the dramatic situation demands it, he will not flinch from asking Macbeth to sing lying down or Lady Macbeth to sleepwalk across a ledge. But he is never gratuitous about imposing feats of physical endurance. Says Francesco Sicilian!, La Scala's artistic consultant: "He never betrays his material in order to make an audience burst into applause at his daring." Strehler would go along with that. "I believe in clarity," he says. "Any kind of theater is an encounter between human beings who look each other in the face...
...began working in the theater while in his early twenties. After World War II he settled in Milan and, at 26, was invited by La Scala to stage La Traviata. Since then he has directed several operas there. Collaborating with Conductor Claudio Abbado has been satisfying, in part because both men thrive on lengthy discussion and painstaking rehearsal. Speaking of their Boccanegra production, Strehler comments: "Directing the opera is like writing an essay on it -an effort to unlock the essence...