Tribute to Italy

It will be “a season featuring a robust program based on the great Italian repertoire.” Verdi's Don Carlo was picked for the December 7 premiere. Many great conductors will make their return, including Riccardo Muti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on January 27, Myung-Whun Chung, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Harding, and many more. Superintendent Dominique Meyer thus presents the new 2023-2024 season, together with musical director Riccardo Chailly and the mayor and foundation president Beppe Sala. Meyer admits that some titles like Don Carlo are scary to take on. “But this is the place where they have to be faced,” he says. The program includes fourteen operas, nine ballets, and many extraordinary concerts, with performances by pianists such as Marta Argerich and Maurizio Pollini.

“This is a year of great conductors,” the superintendent affirms. “Together with Maestro Chailly, who is slated to conduct two operas, there will be an extraordinary number of great conductors, some coming for the first time and others returning.” Among them are names such as Muti, Petrenko, Thielemann, and Viotti. The event will focus on the Italian repertoire, premiering with Don Carlo in its Italian version, which Verdi wrote in four acts expressly for La Scala. Lluis Pasqual will direct star singer Anna Netrebko.

Performing the Don Carlo is a huge responsibility; it is a great title that can't even be conceived without the certainty of a great cast of top-notch artists

“Performing the Don Carlo is an enormous responsibility,” Chailly points out. “It is a great title that can't even be conceived without the certainty of a great cast of top-notch artists.” Chailly adds that they will perform the complete 1884 version. “I directed it twenty years ago but with some cuts, this time there will be no interruption for the entire libretto.” The Italian repertoire will continue with the new production of Simon Boccanegra conducted by Lorenzo Viotti and directed by Daniele Abbado. Also included, the shooting of Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana with the legendary staging by Mario Martone and conductor Giampaolo Bisanti, and Don Pasquale in the Davide Livermore production with a Cinecittà setting, directed by Evelino Pidò.

In addition, since 2024 marks the centennial of Giacomo Puccini's death, La Scala will celebrate with two new productions: La rondine, for the first time since 1994, which will be directed by Riccardo Chailly, and Turandot, directed by Daniel Harding. The calendar of celebrations will come to an end in November 2024 with an extraordinary concert directed once again by Riccardo Chailly, starring Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann, and finally an art show at the La Scala Theater Museum.

This season’s novelties include Médée by Luigi Cherubini, directed by Michele Gamba, for the first time in the original French version, sixty-three years after the last production directed by Thomas Schippers with Maria Callas in the lead role. A Museum exhibition will be dedicated to La Divina. Damiano Michieletto will take up the challenge of directing, featuring Sonya Yoncheva as the sorceress.

Superintendent Meyer’s exploration of Italian Baroque, which started with Leonardo Vinci's La Calisto and Li zite ‘ngalera, now comes to Antonio Cesti's Orontea, a musical drama from 1656, directed by Robert Carsen and conducted by Giovanni Antonini. “It will be a bubbly and amusing work,” promises the superintendent.