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.