Word: scala
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Today, public fancy has turned to classical and pre-classical styles. Ever since World War II, the directors of Milan's huge (cap. 3,200) La Scala have tried to find a showcase for small-scale operas. First they bought property directly behind the stage, on the Via dei Filodrammatici (Street of the Amateur Actors), where once the carriages of the great prima donnas were parked. Plans were made to remodel a small apartment building into a tiny theater. Eventually, after five years of labor and some half a million dollars, La Piccola Scala (cap. 600) was finished...
Last week La Piccola Scala opened to an audience of Milan's biggest industrialists, severest critics, ranking socialites and reigning artists (including Soprano Maria
Meneghini CallasX The offering: Cima-rosa's charming // Matrimonio Segreto (The Secret Marriage), with such Scala names as Caro Badioli, Eugenia Ratti, Graziella Sciutti and Giulietta Simionato -all first-rate singers but not of world reputation. The opera has been performed scores of times at La Scala (last in 1948), but in the vast house it never came across with such gusto, immediacy or subtlety. The press was as happy as the audience, and only a few backstage complaints about the cramped space kept the accolade from being unanimous...
...Scala Manager Antonio Ghiringhelli expects to fill his new hall regularly, if only because there is a constant audience overflow from the old one. In addition to presenting chamber operas in the proper surroundings, he hopes to attract new and even experimental works by living composers. Already scheduled: Mozart's Cost fan Tutte, Scarlatti's Mitridate Eupatore, De Falla's Master Peter's Puppet-Show, Stravinsky's ballet, Apollon Musagetes...
...Harvard-bred (A.B., '39) Leonard Bernstein first flashed into musical prominence as a composer (Fancy Free, Trouble in Tahiti, On the Town), and is regarded as one of the most talented of U.S. conductors. Two years ago, with five days' preparation, he directed Milan's La Scala orchestra in the seldom-staged Medea of Cherubini, starring Maria Callas. To composing and conducting, he added teaching at Tanglewood and Brandeis University, spends his spare moments with his wife, Actress Felicia Montealegre, and three-year-old daughter. He worries that he may be scattering his talent: "Diversification means...