Special Gala Performance! The opening of the opera season at La Scala is the biggest event in the Italian musical calendar. Every year on December 7, the day that Milan celebrates Saint Ambrose, the city’s patron saint, the theatre premieres an eagerly anticipated new production— but not in 2020.
This season was to have opened with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with Lisette Oropesa set to have been the first American to sing a title role in the gala season opener since Maria Callas in 1951.
But instead, with Milan on lock-down, the theatre assembled an extraordinary cast of opera and ballet stars for SEE THE STARS AGAIN (A riveder le stelle) a glittering spectacle of music, dance and art, performed with no audience but those at home in Italy (2.6 million tuned in live!) and in cinemas worldwide.
Cast:
Soprano – Eleonora Buratto, Rosa Feola, Aleksandra Kurzak, Camilla Nylund, Kristine Opolais, Lisette Oropesa, Marina Rebekam, Sonya Yoncheva
Mezzo-soprano – Marianne Crebassa, Elīna Garanča
Tenor – Roberto Alagna, Benjamin Bernheim, Piotr Beczała, Juan Diego Flórez, Vittorio Grigolo, Francesco Meli, Andreas Schager
Baritone – Carlos Álvarez, Plácido Domingo, George Petean, Luca Salsi, Ludovic Tézier
Bass – Ildar Abdrazakov, Mirco Palazzi
Dancers – Timofej Andrijashenko, Martina Arduino, Marco Agostino, Roberto Bolle, Claudio Coviello, Nicola Del Freo, Nicoletta Manni, Virna Toppi