Zeffirelli lays into La Scala season
John Hooper in Rome
Thursday January 6, 2005
The Guardian
Franco Zeffirelli, one of the world’s best-known opera directors, yesterday branded the inaugural season of the newly refurbished La Scala opera house a disgrace.
Zeffirelli accused the opera house of inviting second-rate conductors to perform. Writing to a journalist on the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, who had written approvingly of the programme, he said the situation “risks becoming utterly absurd and developing into a scandal of truly international proportions because La Scala belongs to the whole world”.
But the theatre’s artistic director, Mauro Meli, rejected the criticism and stressed that La Scala had embarked on a highly innovative season. “Of the 13 operas, five have never been done at La Scala in modern times,” he said.
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