The famous Milan opera house "Teatro alla Scala" will open its new season tonight with an opera by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, after there have been several disagreements and conflicts with the work of Russian artists in that and other concert halls due to the war in Ukraine.
La Scala's music director Riccardo Chailly will conduct Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," and cultural and business luminaries, as well as high-ranking political officials, are expected to be guests at the season opening.
The Italian left-wing party +Europe has announced a demonstration in front of the opera house to, according to the organizers, "draw attention to the defense of freedom and European democracy, which are today threatened by Putin's Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people."
The party claims that Shostakovich's opera exposes the abuse of power and the role of personal resistance, and the authorities, for security reasons, moved the protest away from the concert hall.
Shostakovich's 1934 "Lady Macbeth" highlights the position of women in the Soviet Union, and the country's leader Joseph Stalin banned the play from performance in 1936.
This is the second time that the season at La Scala has opened with a Russian work since the start of the war in Ukraine, the last time this was done in 2022, when Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov was performed, which was attended by Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Shai worked on the opera with theatre director Vasili Barkhatov, who told reporters ahead of the premiere that it was "an opera that has suffered for a long time and must make up for lost time."
Scala general director Fortunato Ortombina told reporters that "music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict," and that "Shostakovich and Russian music in a broader sense have an authority over the Russian people that surpasses Putin's."
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