On Friday 29 November, La Scala will add an extra performance of its triple bill which opens tomorrow night, and the entire proceeds will go to aid Venice's Teatro Fenice which finds itself flooded after water in the canals has risen more than 1.50 meters.
The theatre's season was to have opened on 24 November with Don Carlo, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung in a production by Robert Carsen. In the hope that the crisis will have subsided, the orchestra and singers have moved to Treviso to continue preparations, but the lower areas of the theatre are currently flooded. Musical instruments were saved after rescuers, in total darkness as power was out in much of the city, broke locks to remove the precious items from their lockers.
Alexander Pereira, the Intendent of La Scala, said,
All the artists and workers at La Scala were struck by the images of the most beautiful city in the world submerged by water which, to this extent, has rarely happened in the past.
We thought of our colleagues at Teatro La Fenice seeing their theatre flooded just a few days before the opening of their opera and ballet season and we wanted to organise as soon as possible an event to express our solidarity.
Tickets went on sale at 3pm today, and are priced from €18 to €150 www.teatroallascala.org.
The programme features George Balanchine's Symphony in C, Jiří Kylián's Petite Mort, and Maurice Béjart's Boléro which will be danced by the company's principal dancer, Martina Arduino. The theatre orchestra is conducted by Felix Korobov.
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.
