The new season of La Scala: big names on the podium and on stage but a lackluster line

The 23-24 season is very good and yet it seems put together by shopping in the supermarket of recognized values, safe and always known profiles. Apart from Cherubini, in the choice of titles and above all in the way of proposing them, surprise, fantasy, risk, perhaps even provocation are completely missing

The 23-24 season of La Scala is not only much better than the 22-23, and it really didn’t take much, but in general also very good. The directorial parade is glowing. In addition to the landlord Riccardo Chailly with the inaugural Don Carlo and an unexpected Rondine for Puccini’s centenary, the great wands abound, starting with that excellent maxim, that is Kirill Petrenko (in the Rosenkavalier, moreover), then Thielemann for the new Ring, Harding for the new Turandot, the relatively young Viotti (Simone, a bit of a gamble), Mariotti (Tell, of which he is already an historical interpreter), Guggeis (in the archeolyrical section with Strehler’s Abduction from the Seraglio). The young-young Michele Gamba extracts the shortest straw, i.e. Medea by Cherubini, the riskiest show on paper because a) the real Medée is being staged for the first time at La Scala, the one in French and with spoken word (from a theater that he just covered himself with ridicule by proposing I Vespri siciliani in Italian and Les contes d’Hoffmann spurious was not obvious); b) directed by Damiano Michieletto; c) the ghost of Maria hangs over the title.