'Don Carlo' celebrates La Scala’s status as cultural treasure

MILAN

Italian melodrama's official recognition as a global cultural treasure was celebrated on Dec. 7 with La Scala’s season premiere of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” an opera that hits hot-button topics of power and oppression.

The start of the 2023-24 season highlighted the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO's decision to include Italian lyric opera on its list of intangible cultural treasures. The agency on Dec. 7 recognized the global importance of the 400-year-old art form that combines music, costume and stage direction.

La Scala's general manager, Dominique Meyer, told the audience before the opera that Italian opera had helped “the Italian language become known and loved in the whole world.”

Chailly, the opera house's music director, conducted “Don Carlo,” which turns around the power dynamic between the king of Spain and his son, Don Carlo, who are caught in a love triangle and hold opposing views on the Spanish empire's oppression of its colonies.

The cast included a pair of La Scala premiere veterans: Russian soprano Anna Netrebko as Elisabeth of Valois and Italian tenor Francesco Meli in the title role.

Lluis Pasqual, the stage director, said Don Carlo's focus on nationalism and religion remain current as the suffering in the Middle East persists.

“One is tempted to say, ‘How important is it if the soprano is a meter more to the left or the right?’ None at all in comparison with what is happening in the world," Pasqual, who is Spanish, said. "The only way to react, we who can’t do anything to improve the situation, at least I cannot, is to do our work in the best way possible.’’

La Scala’s season premiere remains one of Europe’s top cultural events, bringing together top cultural, political and business figures as the city observes a holiday for the patron saint St. Ambrose. As such, it is often the target of protests, leading to the center of Milan being cordoned off.

Quiet protests made it inside. Some female attendees wore red shoes and jangled their keys as part of growing protests to end violence against women following the killing last month of a 22-year-old student north of Venice. And an Iranian tenor, Ramtin Ghazavi, who sings in La Scala's choir strode the red carpet wearing a T-shirt reading: Women, Life, Freedom in support of women protesting in his native country.