La Scala's gala season premiere vanquished bad-luck vibes around long-absent Verdi opera

La Scala’s gala season premiere vanquished bad-luck vibes around long-absent Verdi opera

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An inside view of Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, prior to the start of the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Etoile Nicoletta Manni, left, and principal dancer Timofej Andrijashenko pose for photographers as they arrive at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, northern Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del Destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Olympic medallist Gianmarco Tamberi and wife Chiara Bontempi, left, pose for photographers as they arrive at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, northern Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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People take to the street in MIlan, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024, to protest against ongoing wars and a security bill being discussed in the parliament that would introduce new rules about public demonstrations and the right to strike. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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An outside view of Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, during the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Etoiles Nicoletta Manni arrives at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Italian renowned dancer Roberto Bolle arrives at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli is flanked by his wife Valeria Falcioni as they arrive at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Liliana Segre is welcomed by former Artistic Director Dominique Meyer and Roberto Bolle at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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Italian Senate President Ignazio La Russa and his wife Laura De Cicco arrive at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell arrives at Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, for the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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People watch a screen at the Galleria Virrorio Emanuele II during opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’ at the Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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People watch a screen at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II during the opening of the 2024-25 season featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Forza del destino’ at the Milan’s Opera House La Scala, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

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By COLLEEN BARRY

MILAN (AP) — Milan’s storied Teatro alla Scala presented Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” for its gala season premiere Saturday for the first time in 59 years, determined to shake the opera’s reputation for bringing bad luck.

The production conducted by Riccardo Chailly and featuring Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, American tenor Brian Jagde and French baritone Ludovic Tezier received 13 minutes of applause, and a smattering of boos from the upper balconies.

“No one booed after my arias,″ Netrebko retorted, with an air kiss.

The premiere is a highlight of the Milan cultural calendar, attracting top figures from the world of politics, business and the arts, although this year, both President Sergio Mattarella and Premier Giorgia Meloni, who have attended in the past, instead traveled to Paris for ceremonies marking the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Netrebk o sang the role of Leonora to American tenor Brian Jagde’s Don Alvaro, lovers whose future is determined by a tragic accident. Jagde was brought in on short notice to substitute for German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who dropped out for family reasons.

Not PARSE.LY: Anna Netrebko

American tenor Brian Jagde gets last-minute call to sing in La Scala’s gala season premiere

American tenor Brian Jagde gets last-minute call to sing in La Scala’s gala season premiere

“I have never felt like this in my life,’' Jagde said backstage. ”It really is so exciting to be on stage in this place, with these people, on this day.”

It is Jagde’s fourth time singing the role of Don Alvaro this year alone, and his third La Scala performance, the second alongside Netrebko.

Netrebko called the score of “La Forza del Destino” a “masterpiece,” but confessed recently that she could not identify with her character, Leonora, ’’as a woman of the 21st century.”

“If you are looking at the story, it is basically nonsense, sorry,” she told a recent press conference. “If we are being serious and trying to follow the story, and try to understand, especially the character of Leonora, hunted by fear, guilt, desperation, and in the end what did she find?”

The opera is an ill-fated love story between Don Alvaro and Leonora set against the background of a wars, which has resonance in current global turbulence. A pro-Palestinian protest gnarled traffic in the center of Milan just ahead of the VIP arrivals at La Scala. Unions also traditionally protest the lavish event in the piazza opposite the opera house.

“La Forza del Destino” has not opened the La Scala season since 1965, and has not been performed by La Scala’s orchestra for 25 years. The opera has been dogged by superstition that it brings bad luck, so much so that some in Italy will not say the full title aloud.

But La Scala general manager Dominique Meyer said the reason so much time had passed is that “there aren’t always singers up to it.”

“We need to understand something, that singers like Anna Nebrenko come once in a generation.”

He dismissed the superstition as “folklore,” adding, “we applaud folklore, but we remain calm.’'