Introducing the 2008-2009 Season

The 2008-2009 Season will open on 4th December with Verdi’s Don Carlo conducted by Daniele Gatti and directed by Stéphane Braunschweig. The idea behind last year’s L’histoire du soldat has blossomed: on the evening of 4th December an audience made up of young people will be able to attend the dress rehearsal of Don Carlo with the first cast for the symbolic price of 10 euros.

7th December remains 7th December: the Season is officially and formally inaugurated that night. But a totally different public will be able to enjoy Don Carlo during a preview performance that we are happy to reserve for tomorrow’s audience.

DIVERSITY

One day Verdi, criticising one of his librettists’ work, wrote to him: “There’s no fire, no agitation, there’s no MESS.” I like this idea of “mess” as artistic quality. Those who deal with artistic programmes call this “mess” “diversity”.

We have 14 operas on the programme: one from the 17th century, one from the 18th, four from the 20th and the remainder from the 19th.

There are seven Italian authors from the various eras. The others are a Czech, an Englishman, an Austrian, a German, a German who became English but who wrote in Italian, an Italian who became French, and a Russian who became American.

There are six Italian works out of fourteen, if you include the Onegin of the Bolshoi. There are four new productions and they are all Italian (Don Carlo, Assassinio nella cattedrale, Orfeo, Convenienze e inconvenienze teatrali). There are four revivals that pay homage to the ancient and recent history of La Scala  (Viaggio a Reims, Idomeneo, Tristan, Aida); there are three productions that have opened the last three seasons: Aida, Tristan, Idomeneo; there are three Italian premieres of major foreign productions (The Rake’s Progress by Robertson-Lepage, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Davis-Carsen and Alcina by Antonini-Carsen). There are also three historic periods of the Italian music: the birth of opera with Monteverdi; the golden age of the first and second half of the 19th century with Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi; and the late 20th century of Pizzetti.

So apparently there is mess. Verdi will be happy. And he will be even happier because we have given him the season’s opening. But diversity is not really achieved without a logic and rigour, and by means of a project. A season is never an end in itself, at least for me. It is not a list of works without connection one with another, without past and future, without first and before. So I would like to browse through the new Season with you, and highlight the string that binds yesterday’s and today’s ideas.
 

THE SEASON 

After Idomeneo conducted by Daniel Harding, after Aida conducted by Riccardo Chailly, and after Tristan conducted by Daniel Barenboim, Verdi’s Don Carlo returns to La Scala in the hands of an Italian conductor who has stirred audiences and critics alike in Lohengrin, in Wozzeck and in various concerts of the Filarmonica. Daniele Gatti is the conductor acclaimed by the Wiener Staatsoper in masterpieces of the German repertoire, invited by the Wiener Philharmoniker to join its revered family of directors, and who Bayreuth wants this year to open the festival with Parsifal. In the future Gatti will return to La Scala for Lulu (’10), thus ending the Berg cycle, and for Tosca (’11) and La bohème (’12), in addition to reviving Don Carlo in Tokyo in September 2009.

Audiences have discovered, appreciated and admired Stéphane Braunschweig in Janaček’s Jenůfa. He is a young and extremely sensitive director, who knows music, who goes straight to the centre of operas and the heart of the characters. It is his Ring that Sir Simon Rattle is conducting with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

The cast stars Ferruccio Furlanetto as Filippo II, Fiorenza Cedolins as Elisabetta, Giuseppe Filianoti as Don Carlo, Matti Salminen as the Inquisitor and Dalibor Jennis as Rodrigo.

The second opera is The Makropulos Case in Luca Ronconi’s production. The conductor Marko Letonja lives and breathes Slavic music. This work is part of the Janaček cycle, whose other productions Kat’a Kabanova and Jenůfa conquered audiences. And the Janaček cycle will continue next season with Patrice Chéreau’s From the House of the Dead conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Any theatre thinking of performing Janaček, for the soprano roles and in particular for the double role of Emilia Marty/Elena Makropulos, would want Angela Denoke, an unrivalled interpreter of Janaček. And we will have the skills of Angela Denoke, teamed with a cast of specialists such as Alan Opie, David Kuebler, Steven Mark Doss and Peter Bronder.

The third opera, Tristan und Isolde, is a revival of last year’s season’s opening, which won the Abbiati prize (the Italian Theatre Critics Award), but which left a great part of the audience that wanted to see it outside the theatre. Tristan is not alone: it will be followed by Aida and Idomeneo, the other two season’s openings from the last three years. Exploiting the heritage of the house is both a duty and a necessity.

With the fourth work, Alcina, La Scala explores the early 18th century, which one does not immediately associate with our theatre. Handel, just like Mozart, wrote for the Italian language like an Italian. It would be a shame to give up Handel’s operatic heritage, so close to the understanding of our public. The good result that Giovanni Antonini has achieved with Ascanio in Alba has convinced us to entrust him the musical direction of Robert Carsen’s production. The cast of the two main roles deserves a mention here: Anja Harteros (Alcina) and Monica Bacelli (Ruggiero).

We believe in the “Italian” qualities of young Italian conductors like Carlo Montanaro. For this reason we have chosen a work of the young Verdi for him, to mark his return to La Scala after the forthcoming Traviata. I due Foscari needs freshness and a new approach to stand out. In the house repertoire we have a beautiful production by Cesare Lievi, with sets and costumes by Maurizio Balò. Francesco Foscari is Leo Nucci; Jacopo is Fabio Sartori, and Lucrezia Contarini is Svetla Vassileva, a soprano who has been awarded the Abbiati prize by the Italian critics.

In the heritage of La Scala there are masterpieces like Il viaggio a Reims, and I naturally had the idea to stage this opera as a tribute to a maestro of modern theatre: Luca Ronconi. Rossini’s opera is amongst his most visionary works. Ronconi’s production, with its screens and its “televised” theatre, is equally visionary.

In the Viaggio too we have aimed to cast with a “homogeneity in virtuosity”: Patrizia Ciofi, Daniela Barcellona, Carmela Remigio, Annick Massis, Dmitry Korchak, Nicola Ulivieri, Alistair Miles and Fabio Capitanucci.  And for the musical lead we continue our collaboration with Ottavio Dantone.

Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress has been absent from La Scala since 1980. It is time to revive this 20th century masterpiece popular with every audience for its refined art of the quote. You have discovered Lepage, one of today’s greatest directors, with 1984. His re-interpretation of The Rake’s Progress draws a lively comparison with the 1979 production and stimulates the awareness of the time that has gone by. David Robertson is an outstanding interpreter of Stravinsky. The cast of specialists includes William Shimell as Nick Shadow, with Anna sung by Emma Bell, who was acclaimed for her Elektra in Idomeneo on 7 December 2005.

Why Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Assassinio nella cattedrale? For four good reasons: it is a respected Italian opera in the post Second World War period; its libretto displays extremely rare literary qualities (T.S. Eliot); we are nearing the fiftieth anniversary of its premiere at La Scala in 1958; and also approaching the hundred year anniversary of the birth of Gianandrea Gavazzeni, who conducted it then.

On the podium we welcome an Italian conductor who began his significant career precisely at La Scala: Donato Renzetti. For the role of Tommaso Beckett we have once more Ferruccio Furlanetto. For the staging, sets and costume we trust the refinement of Yannis Kokkos. Finally, if you allow me, I would like to remind you that Leyla Gencer sang in the premiere of this opera, and it will therefore also be dedicated to her.

If a cycle continues with The Makropulos Case, with A Midsummer Night’s Dream another one is starting. This one is dedicated to Britten, an author who, like Janaček, is adored by audiences when they know him. This is another production by Robert Carsen, a much-liked artist who reasserts the theatrical side of a family of directors. We have Sir Andrew Davis on the podium, one of the best connoisseurs of Britten. The cast too is rich of specialists, with David Daniels as Oberon and Rosemary Joshua as Titania. 

Daniel Barenboim revived the 2007 Season’s Opening with Tristan as well as the 2006 Opening. Aida is returning for three clear reasons: Barenboim’s engagement in the great Italian repertoire of La Scala; to exploit the theatre’s heritage; and to prepare the opera and the production for a double tour: to Israel with the historic Aida of 1962 and to Japan with Zeffirelli’s recent staging, in both cases with Barenboim as conductor.

In the visiting production of the Bolshoi there is a Scala element too: the director and set designer of Eugene Onegin is Dmitri Tcherniakov. It is his version of Prokofiev’s Gambler that will soon be staged at La Scala. 

Orfeo also opens a new path: with Monteverdi, whose work at La Scala has seldom been performed. In the coming two seasons we will see Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria and L’Incoronazione di Poppea. From the perspective of music and theatre an extremely coherent trilogy is also beginning, with Robert Wilson’s stage direction and Rinaldo Alessandrini’s musical direction. Alessandrini has received various awards for his Monteverdi recordings and has been entrusted with the critical edition of all of Monteverdi’s music by the Bärenreiter publishing house. He will work with the musicians of La Scala, with the addition of some specialists of his Concerto Italiano at the harpsichord and the theorbos. The chorus will be that of the young people of the La Scala Academy.

The Donizetti of Le convenienze e inconvenienze teatrali is a contribution of the Academy to the “great” season. But it is also the opportunity to see the debut at La Scala - and in operatic staging - of Antonio Albanese, a talent in which I am not the only one to believe. I have convinced him to consider this Donizetti project and he has convinced me with his ideas.

Finally, the return of the third 7th December. Mozart’s Idomeneo was my first gamble at La Scala. The production was born in a few months, almost by a miracle. For its export to Paris, Luc Bondy has refined it, a few scenes have been changed, the costumes have been renewed. It is therefore an enriched production that returns to La Scala to complete the cycle of revivals of season’s opening, and to open another one: with Myung-Whun Chung.

After his beautiful interpretation of Madama Butterfly and the splendid recent concert with the Filarmonica, Chung has developed a beautiful relationship of trust with the Orchestra and the theatre. He has therefore eagerly accepted to conduct theChristmas Concert and Idomeneo, as a prelude to a Zauberflöte in 2011 and to Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise in 2013. And with Chung begins another journey, which will bring us to the first great tour of La Scala in Korea, his country of origin, and to China and Taiwan in 2012.

THE BALLET

Six programmes, eight ballets, three great revivals, a new creation in absolute premiere and three major works of the 20th century that enter the repertoire. This is in a nutshell the offering of the La Scala Ballet Company, under the direction of Elisabetta Terabust, for the 2008-2009 Season. Throughout the year the Company will be touringintensively. The three revivals relate to extremely popular shows: La bayadère, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Giselle. The new element is Coppélia, in a new production both in terms of the staging and the choreograpy. With the Trittico Novecento (Twentieth Century Triptych), in May, La Scala Ballet continues its travel into the creativity of our time. During the summer months of June and July it will perform the national premiere of a cult ballet by Roland Petit, Pink Floyd Ballet, a perfect union between ballet and rock music.

This is a season that perfectly balances classicism and modernity, with celebrated choreographers such as Natalia Makarova, Yvette Chauviré, George Balanchine, Glen Tetley, Jiří Kylián, Roland Petit and Derek Deane; étoiles such as Svetlana Zakharova, Roberto Bolle and Massimo Murru; and guests such as Polina Semionova, Guillaume Côté, Denis Matvienko and Marianela Nuñez.

As I said, a season is not just a list of works. I think the 2008-2009 programme, which aims at being a bridge between the first three-year period and the complete development of our artistic project to 2013, demonstrates this. Every work and every production is not an isolated element but opens a door and starts a journey: with a composer, a conductor, a director, a language, a period, a theme, or an expressive world.