Word: scala
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...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...
...first discovered his vocal gifts while trying to teach others to sing. He won a state scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, graduated with top honors in 1955, made his big debut in the West four years later in Milan. Soon he had established himself as "the pillar of La Scala...
...been known, for example, to spend six rehearsals perfecting Webern's Variations for Orchestra, a work that lasts less than six minutes. The musicians who have worked under him agree that the result is worth all the painstaking labor. Says Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, recalling a performance at La Scala: "His accompaniment was unforgettable. I played a concerto I had played hundreds of times before, but with Celibidache it seemed like a completely new work. I never understood why a conductor so absolutely marvelous was as little known and as little in demand...
...Simultaneously, doctors in three of Italy's 30 medical unions struck, demanding higher wages and better working conditions in clinics. Then the opera went on strike, darkening stages just before performances of Strauss's Fledermaus in Rome, and Rossini's Moses at Milan's La Scala...
...came on two days' notice: she replaced ailing Lucine Amara as Liu. Despite excellent notices, Bing still held her back: "You have plenty of time." She retorted: "I want to sing while I am young," and took off for Europe. She sang at Covent Garden, the Bolshoi, La Scala. In Moscow, she showed the first syndrome of a prima donna: she walked out after the second act of Eugene Onegin, declaring that "the applause was scanty." At a recital a few days later, chastened Muscovites bravoed her back for five encores...