Sorpresa! Cecilia Bartoli returns to La Scala after a 20 year gap

It was announced yesterday that Cecilia Bartoli will return to Milan's La Scala after an absence of twenty years. The singer, feted abroad but largely ignored in her homeland, was working on a project with La Scala which evaporated when Riccardo Muti suddenly parted ways with the theatre.  Now it is Daniel Barenboim who has engineered her comeback which will open the La Scala Philharmonic's 2012-2013 season.

December 3rd was to have seen the maestro conduct three Mozart symphonies, but towards the end of the press conference Ernesto Schiavi, the orchestra's artistic director, brought a rabbit out of his hat with the surprise announcement that the programme would be modified now that the mezzo had confirmed her availability.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.