Alla Radice Nousiainen

The “Scala Academy Project” has chosen an opera by Donizetti never before performed on the Scala stage. Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (Viva la mamma !) is a dramma giocoso which premiered in Naples in 1827. Italian actor, director and writer Antonio Albanese, a true master of wit and satire, made his debut as opera director. The Orchestra is conducted by Marco Guidarini.

In his ‘new life’ as a baritone Plácido Domingo has triumphed in the role of Francesco Foscari in Los Angeles, London and Vienna. Now he takes to the role in La Scala, Milan, the theatre that is the symbol of Italian opera. I due Foscari, premiered in 1844, famously one of Verdi’s darkest operas, is staged by Alvis Hermanis, who made such an impact at the Salzburg Festival with Die Soldaten and Il trovatore. Domingo is joined by two of Italy’s most exciting singers, the soprano Anna Pirozzi and the tenor Francesco Meli, and the acclaimed Italian conductor Michele Mariotti. The Financial Times was deeply moved by Domingo’s performance, calling his interpretation of the role ‘sublime’.

In 1778 Antonio Salieri’s Europa riconosciuta became the first work to be performed at the Milanese theatre later known as the Teatro alla Scala. Despite this honour, Europa riconosciuta (Europa recognised) remained unperformed for 226 years until 2004, when Riccardo Muti, then Music Director of La Scala, chose it to reopen the legendary theatre after three years of renovation work. “I love Salieri," Diana Damrau has said. "He was an important man and a musical authority in Vienna, a teacher and an heir to Gluck as a successful opera composer. And, like Mozart, he was a dramatist in music. Europa Riconosciuta is masterly in its construction and builds up step by step.

The great Italian stage and screen director Franco Zeffirelli made these widely acclaimed films, both starring Plácido Domingo. with Georges Prêtre conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala. Pagliacci, which co-stars the great singing actress Teresa Stratas, brought Zeffirelli the coveted Emmy as Best Director in the category of Classical Music Programming. Cavalleria was filmed on location in Sicily, which adds immeasurably to the power and atmosphere of this timeless story of love, honour, justice, and violence.

Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, is a story of human passions. Two essentially benevolent creatures, involved with and possibly doomed by their traffic with the gods, find treachery and evil in the world of the humans, and are ruined by the dark side of humanity.

Two queens on one island. A recipe for disaster. Especially as both have a legitimate claim to the other’s throne. They are, after all, related… So the power politics are the name of the game. And, for reasons of state, one of the heads that wears a crown has to roll. Maria Stuarda was laid to rest for more than a hundred years, finally being revived in 1958 in Bergamo under conductor Oliviero de Fabritiis. However the real breakthrough for the opera fi nally came with Giorgio de Lullo’s Florentine production for the Maggio Musicale in 1967 (with set design and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi, director, set designer and costume designer at La Scala in 2008).