Tag Archives: Teatro alla Scala

Top ten operas 2022

This was the year that opera houses got back to something approaching “normality” post-pandemic. It’s easy to forget that at the start of 2022, Covid restrictions were still very much in place: visiting Vienna in January, one needed proof of … Continue reading

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Scarpia stabbed, Tosca smothered by Livermore’s La Scala staging

Puccini: Tosca Teatro alla Scala, 7th December 2019 A stone lion pins down its prey in Scarpia’s study, symbolic, no doubt, of the cat-and-mouse game the Chief of Police plays with Tosca in Act 2. But it could also represent … Continue reading

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Codes of honour trip up Bechtolf’s Ernani at La Scala

Verdi: Ernani *** Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 29th September 2018 George Bernard Shaw admired the “fierce noonday sun” of the score to Ernani. “The one with the bandits” evens gets a glancing mention in his play, Arms and the Man. I’m not … Continue reading

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Rossini’s Thieving Magpie doesn’t quite take flight at La Scala

Rossini: La gazza ladra *** Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 12th April 2017 Everyone knows the overture to La gazza ladra. It’s the one that begins with a pair of snare drums snarling across opposite sides of the orchestra which then … Continue reading

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Plums and turkeys: a musical voyage around 2016

Most people I know cannot wait to see the back of 2016. But in the year in which Brexit, Trump and the Grim Reaper were the big winners, I admit to having had a terrific twelve months. A whirl of … Continue reading

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