A grand future for opera theatre

On February 17, 2025, Fortunato Ortombina has been appointed the new Superintendent and Artistic Director of the Teatro alla Scala. A musician has reached the top of Via Filodrammatici, and we have dedicated the first interview of his mandate to his life in theatre and music. His Mantuan origins; his total devotion to music, which he has always experienced as both scientific exploration and daily practice; his relationships with teachers, mentors and artists; and his experiences in the most important Italian theatres, from Parma and Turin to Naples, Venice and Milan, all make up a story that interweaves memories and ideas with a mixture of stubborn passion and ironic lightness. As he says: "I want us to have fun and the audience to have fun with us."

PB Let's start at the beginning. The first lines of your biography show a kind of musical mania: after the conservatory, you joined the Orchestra del Regio as a trombonist, but that was not all.
FO Yes, I played the trombone as an extra in the orchestra, and at the same time I was a bass singer in the choir. Almost immediately I started working as correpetitor and in the meantime, I studied composition. In short, I was ready for anything, it was a complete immersion in music, and in the theatre. From that point of view, I never lacked anything: I always had one foot in musicology and the other in making music every day. My first contact with La Scala also dates back to those years. My trombone teacher had studied with the first trombone at La Scala, Bruno Ferrari, with whom I also took lessons. More than the instrument, I remember his stories about Toscanini's last Wagner concert and then about De Sabata and Karajan. But the person who had the greatest influence on me was the great choirmaster of la Scala in the Abbado years, Romano Gandolfi. He was born in Medesano, in the province of Parma

PB It seems that the figure of the choirmaster exerts a special fascination on you.
FO If someone asked me, "Would you rather be the director of La Scala or the choirmaster of La Scala?" I wouldn't hesitate for a moment; I would say choirmaster. Because the choir is something special, linked to society. It is the repository of the soul of a city. And the link with the city has always interested me in a special way. We were talking about Parma, which has a very important and deep relationship with Verdi. And I loved Verdi even before I went there.

PB How did this passion for Verdi come about? Were you from a family of musicians?
FO No, they were craftsmen. But a lot of them were amateur musicians. I always heard my mother sing, an uncle played clarinet in the band, my father played harmonica and my maternal grandfather built guitars. When television arrived when I was a child, I don't remember films or football matches, but I do remember Beethoven's sonatas played by David Oistrakh. So, always encouraged by my mother, I started playing in the band as soon as I had the chance, and I was a child prodigy. They let me conduct when I was 13.

PB A lot of practice and then a development in musicology. I'll mention a name: Philip Gossett.
FO It was the eighties, the first critical editions of Verdi were beginning to come out and I did a year of seminars with him, he was an impressive teacher. He was fundamental in opening my eyes to the world of Verdi, as someone who already loved very much his music, but who needs to learn the mentality and method of the scholar. After graduating I joined the “Istituto di Studi Verdiani”, where I remained for about ten years until I started working in an opera foundation. At the Teatro Regio in Turin, they needed someone who could combine musicological knowledge and musical practice.  

PB We'll get to Turin next, but I wanted to ask you something about the artists who frequented Parma during your formative years.
FO The artist I was closest to in the eighties was Alfredo Kraus, but there was also Maria Chiara, Ghena Dimitrova, Cesare Siepi, and then Ghiaurov, Obraztsova and very often Carreras. My first opera as a correpetitor was Don Carlo with Boris Christoff, Ghena Dimitrova and Renato Bruson. A rich musical environment in which there was no lack of parochialism. I remember the coldness with which Mirella Freni was received in Parma just because she had sung before in Reggio Emilia. But the artist I maybe knew best, with whom I worked and with whom I can say I sang, it was Carlo Bergonzi. When he sung in Luisa Miller in Busseto, I was in the chorus.

PB Turin and Naples were where you gained experience with Carlo Mayer.
FO He was the one who brought me to Turin. He was looking for a musical assistant and had heard of me as a Verdi scholar. We worked together there for two years and then for three years at the San Carlo in Naples and he was a great teacher, the only real artistic director I've had. He was also the person who encouraged me to become an artistic director myself, telling me that I had what it took.

PB Then came the first engagement at the Fenice.
FO I was there for two years after the theatre burnt down. The performances were held at the Palafenice, a big venue on the lagoon, but after a few months the Malibran also opened, a small and wonderful theatre that I have been trying to promote all these years, so that it would have the same dignity in the hearts of the Venetians as the Fenice. Then, at a certain point, I received a phone call from La Scala, I met the Superintendent Carlo Fontana and Maestro Riccardo Muti. It was a complex period, but I had the time to work with Muti for a year and a half. It was a formative experience. I learnt many concepts about running a theatre and making it work, starting from music.

PB For example?
FO The rehearsals with the singers are really the first building block, the foundation for the performance. They start before the orchestral rehearsals, and so the work of the orchestra is also influenced by the insights that the conductor has gained from working with the singers and the choir.

PB After your first stint at La Scala, you returned to La Fenice for many years, during which the theatre underwent a decisive artistic and organisational evolution.
FO I was Artistic director for a total of 20 seasons, the last seven of which I was also Superintendent. Every city has its virtues, its faults, its flavour, its habits and its psychological barriers, which you have to learn to listen to with patience and humility. Historically, Venice has always been very open to the arts, a place of experimentation and possibility, a real Silicon Valley. Just think of the Biennale, but if we look back, it is no coincidence that works such as Rigoletto and La traviata, among Verdi's most revolutionary, were written for La Fenice.

PB If I had to identify a cornerstone of your time in Venice, I would say it was the combination of popular repertoire and experimentation. On the one hand, there were many performances of La Traviata, but in a Carsen production; on the other hand, there was Vivaldi at the Malibran, the courage to inaugurate the debut of a young composer like Filippo Perocco, the presence of another living composer like Giorgio Battistelli, the research on the work of Bruno Maderna, etc.
FO Maderna's Requiem was lost and never performed. We have been able to premiere it thanks to the collaboration of the city institutions, starting with the Cini Foundation and then extending to American universities. Maestro Chailly was supposed to conduct it, but there was a problem at the last moment and he as forced to cancel. Still, I remember the theatre was packed, the city was talking about it and participating. And then we worked on the variety, as you said. First of all, with those who were with me at La Fenice, we were able to develop a process of optimising the workforce, rewriting the calendars to work better and more. We went from a season of 55 shows to one of 105. And already in 2011, we opened the season with Intolleranza by Luigi Nono, directed by Luca Ronconi. I can't think of anything we haven't done in Venice, including Wagner's Ring, again directed by Robert Carsen.

PB Let's digress for a moment about direction. You hired big names in Italy and abroad, but you also had the desire and ability to look closer to home and, for example, make a Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy with the most promising young local talent.
FO Damiano Michieletto. We worked together on Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. You know, there were always two operas that I was afraid of as an artistic director: Don Giovanni and Il Trovatore. During the rehearsals for Roméo, I saw Damiano working with baritone Markus Werba, and I knew it had to be Don Giovanni. Two years later we were on stage, then we did Le Nozze and Così fan tutte. Again, I enjoyed organising the production in such a way that the audience could see the three operas one evening after the other. Seeing them all creates what economists call the snowball effect: the growth of a habit and the passion of a city. After a few years of working to engage the public, surprising results can be achieved, such as the fact that a contemporary opera can have the same box-office success as the best-known repertoire.

PB Then there's the question of ballet, which has been gradually reduced in Italy.
FO Ballet is a sad chapter in the history of our country. There used to be ballet companies in many Italian theatres, including La Fenice, but they were left to die. In a theatre, you have to do operas, you have to do concerts, and you have to do ballet, which is a high form of musical theatre. So, La Scala today has a great responsibility and a great history. In Milan there is a support from the city that doesn't exist anywhere else and, especially in dance, La scala has a unique contribution from the Academy that selects and prepares our most talented people.

PB Let's talk about La Scala. In 2028 it will be 250 years since the theatre was founded.
FO But this interview is too short to say what I really want to do. It will have to be an event that brings together many of the city's strengths; a moment when La Scala confirms itself as a mirror and a place of identification for everyone, even for Milanese who have never been here and whom we will try to bring here for the first time. It's a very broad programme, to be developed together with the other institutions. People who live in other cities refer to our theatre as 'La Scala di Milano', recognising an identification that already exists. But I would like it to be even more so, and to unite the city in a moment of great inclusion and great perspective for the 250th anniversary. Music and theatre have this capacity. That's why I'm not at all worried about the future of the Opera House. I am sure that in 500 years' time there will be more people listening to La Bohème than there are now, more people going to see The Nutcracker than there are now, and more people humming Beethoven's Ninth. I have no doubt about the opportunities we have been given. That's why we can't waste them, and we have to join forces, we have a great responsibility and a lot of work to do.

Paolo Besana
Translation by Alexa Ahern