During the opera season, I always look forward to one annual ritual that comes as regularly as back-to-school shopping in August or gridlock-alert days in November and December. I’m referring, of course, to the December season-opening gala at La Scala, which is preceded by the inevitable work stoppages and strike threats, only to be averted at the last minute. It’s not only opening night, of course—there was last summer’s strike, for instance, which shut down three performances of La Bohème at La Scala—but it is typically opening night when one or several unions stage protests by walking off the job.

This year was almost an exact repeat of last year, when a November strike, scuttled a couple performances of Verdi’s Requiem and workers also threatened to strike the opening-night performance of Tristan und Isolde, led by Daniel Barenboim. (The show went on.) I am happy to report that, despite generally pessimistic reports of funding difficulties for Italian opera, as of December 2, this year follows the pattern of previous Decembers at La Scala, and the December 7 Don Carlo will go on, at least according to a December 2 Bloomberg news report from Milan.

It turns out there would have been ramifications for New Yorkers, if this Don Carlo had been derailed. New York is one of several U.S. cities where live high-definition theater screenings of Don Carlo are about to take place. This Sunday, at Columbia University’s Miller Theater, you can hear the performance live—doors open at 11:30 a.m., and there are $25 general-admission tickets, with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. (Tickets can be purchased ahead of time at the ticket office at Alfred Lerner Hall at Columbia, or on the day of performance beginning at 10 a.m. at the Miller Theatre box office.) The cast includes Fiorenza Cedolins (Elisabetta di Valois), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Filippo), Giuseppe Filianoti (Don Carlo), Dalibor Jenis (Rodrigo), and Matti Salminen (Grand Inquisitor). You definitely won’t want to miss the Eboli, powerhouse American mezzo Dolora Zajick. This is the second year for the La Scala theater transmissions—which are presented by a partnership between the New York-based Emerging Pictures and RAI Trade, a sales division of RAI, the Italian public broadcaster—but it’s the first time they’ve broadcast the opening-night gala live. Five other U.S. cities—Baltimore, Los Angeles, Newport, Philadelphia, and Tulsa—will have screenings, though it’s hard to imagine folks in L.A. being in the mood for a big Verdi five-acter at 8:30 in the morning. In New York, meanwhile, it’s great to have live opera on Sunday, the one day of the week when the Met is dark. And for a very cheap price, too. A word to the wise, though: unlike the Met, which can hold nearly 4,000 in the audience, Miller has only 688 seats.

Photo of mezzo soprano Dolora Zajick.

P.S. True to form, there was plenty of offstage drama on opening night, with a last-minute substitution of Italian tenor Giuseppe Filianoti by American tenor Stuart Neill, ovations, catcalls, etc. See the December 8 edition of the Corriere della Sera. 

Tags: Dolora Zajick, HD broadcast, Italian Opera, Miller Theater, new york, Opera, strike