La Scala Theater: Season 2007 - 2008
Franz Kafka was also a man with great humour. To describe his indifference to opera, he would confess to his friend Max Brod that he couldn’t find any difference between Tristan und Isolde and The Merry Widow. It is truly odd that the 2007-2008 Scala Season should open with one and end with the other. It is to Kafka’s credit.
It is one of the mysteries of music that Tristan, which marks the beginning of musical modernity, went on stage forty years before The Merry Widow, a title full of sentimental lightness. The language of music goes back and forth, transforms and renews itself, and never forgets to return to past. At first glance it seems strange that The Merry Widow is an operetta dating from the beginning of the 20th century, while the profound Tristan still completely belongs to the 19th century. There are operas that from their creation on look towards the future. Besides Tristan, there is for instance Verdi’s Macbeth, which will be showing again in 2008: modernity has a long lasting strength.
What can we say about our 2007-2008 season, framed by a serious opera and an operetta? Is it modern or traditional? Discover it together, reading the playbill:
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE (Richard Wagner) December 2007 - January 2008
IL LAGO DEI CIGNI (PetrIl’ic Cajkovskij) December 2007 – April 2008
MARIA STUARDA (Gaetano Donizetti) January 2008 - February 2008
CYRANO DE BERGERAC (Franco Alfano) January 2008 - February 2008
ROMEO E GIULIETTA (Sergej Prokof’ev) February 2008 – March 2008
WOZZECK February 2008 - March 2008
IL TABARRO-SUOR ANGELICA-GIANNI SCHICCHI (Giacomo Puccini) March 2008 – April 2008
MACHBETH (Giuseppe Verdi) April 2008
1984 (Gerge Orwell) May 2008
IL PRIGIONIERO – IL CASTELLO DEL DUCA BARBABLU’ (Leǒs Janáček) May 2008
ANDREA CHENIER (Umberto Giordano) June 2008
IL GIOCATORE (Igrok’) (Sergej Prokof’ev) June 2008
LA BOHEME (Giacomo Puccini) July 2008
SERATA PETIT Semptember 2008
LA DAME AUX CAMELIAS (Fryderyk Chopin) October 2008
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) October 2008
DIE LUSTIGE WITWE (La vedova allegra) (Franz Lehar) October 2008 – November 2009