The next season at La Scala will see not only new faces in the offices and in the pit – Sovrintendente Alexander Pereira and Musical Director Riccardo Chailly – but also a new direction in the programming with the world première of C02 by Giorgio Battistelli, an Italian composer but with an international reputation, based on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Then to close the season will be Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag’s Fin de partie, based on Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame. In 2015, the Salzburg Festival – where Pereira currently reigns –  is due to present the same work, which will be Kurtág’s first opera. He’s eighty-eight.

The complete programme for the season will be presented to various boards and unions, before the final announcement to the press and public.