On Tuesday, October 6, the General Consulate of Italy in New York hosted the presentation of the season 2026/2027 of the Teatro alla Scala. To illustrate the billboard was the superintendent and artistic director Fortunato Ortombina, with the interventions of the music historian Harvey Sachs and Milena Adamian, president of the Teatro alla Scala Association of America. To open the evening was the Vice Consul General of Italy in New York, Laura Pirino, who greeted Ortombina and defined La Scala “not only a symbol of tradition and culture, but a great bridge between the excellences of the Italian cultural and artistic tradition”, adding that “there is a lot to learn here in the United States”. The director of the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, Claudio Pagliara, recalled that this year the United States celebrate 250 years and that La Scala will perform them between two.
Ortombina, in his second year leading the theatre, explained the link between Milan and New York: “Every city in the world has a relationship with New York, because people from all over the centuries have arrived in New York.” Then he recalled that the work “was born in Italy, like pizza and many other things”, and that over the centuries has become “the most universal language”.
The novelty of the season is Myung-Whun Chung, at his first year as music director. Born in Korea and raised in the United States, he began as assistant of Carlo Maria Giulini in Los Angeles and was musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Ortombina told that the family moved to Seattle, where his father opened a restaurant and the young Chung worked in the kitchen, and then studied at Mannes School in New York. Directed at La Scala for 37 years: “It is one of the most Italian I know,” Ortombina said. On the delivery with Riccardo Chailly, who will return in season to direct The Rake’s Progress by Stravinsky, he added: “It’s the first time a music director finishes his post without a civil war.”.
The season opens on December 7 with Verdi’s Otello, directed by Chung with the direction of Damiano Michieletto. Ortombina remembered that that day will be fifty years from the first direct television of the inaugural evening of La Scala, on December 7, 1976, with the Otello directed by Carlos Kleiber, who he saw as a boy, at dinner, on a television in black and white. The billboard has long been recovering titles: The Puritani di Bellini, directed by Fabio Luisi, who have been missing from La Scala since 1971, and Les pêcheurs de perles di Bizet, which have not been seen since 1948. They are works that, explained Ortombina, the theater has long avoided for fear of the roles that put the protagonist in the spotlight, with the whole room waiting for a sharp note. “The fear is won, and it is worth winning,” Ortombina said.
For the first time, John Adams arrives at La Scala, with Nixon in China, forty years of composition and Kent Nagano on the podium. “It is a very important composer in this country,” Ortombina said, “and it has never been performed at La Scala: my opinion is that it is time to do so.” In 2027, the bicentenary of Beethoven’s death, there will be no Fidelio but Leonora by Ferdinando Paër, a parmesan composer who put in music the same subject before Beethoven, performed with the Academy. A work on the life of the German composer was also commissioned for children.
There’s also room for dance. Frédéric Olivieri, director of the Ballet Corps, also leads the School of Ball of the Academy, founded in 1813, the year in which Verdi was born, and where Carlotta Brianza, the first interpreter of Aurora in the Cheajkovsky Bella Addormentata in St. Petersburg. “Having the same person driving the company and the school gives an incredible energy,” Ortombina said.
The thread between Milan and New York is Arturo Toscanini, who in 1908 arrived at the Metropolitan Opera together with the general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza. Ortombina has announced that La Scala is creating an archive dedicated to the master, with the help of Sachs, and in the hall was the great-grandson Chiara Toscanini. According to Ortombina, a family member recorded Toscanini unbeknownst, with a microphone attached to a lamp, and invited the audience to listen to those recordings at the public library in New York, provided they understand a bit of Italian. Sachs recalled that in 1903 Toscanini left La Scala after a confrontation with the public, and said that “at that time the only excuse for a director not to direct a recital at La Scala was death”.
A video retraced on the evening of 11 May 1946, when Toscanini reopened La Scala after the bombings of August 1943. Among the voices of the film was that of Liliana Segre, today a senator to life, “Aven today is subscribed”, said Ortombina, “it does not even lose a show”.
Milena Adamian told the results of the association, born in June 2023 to support the theatre from the United States: in three years more than 400 students of the Academy have climbed on the stage of La Scala, and this year 20,000 children of Milanese schools have witnessed the performances dedicated to them. The next day, at the gala of the association, the Toscanini scholarship was announced, destined to the best student of the Academy. Who asks why Americans should give money to Milan, Adamian responded that in 2025 donations in the United States touched a record, 617 billion dollars (the Giving USA 2026 report indicates 617,2 billion), and that the desire to “thank the school that made you succeed” is “in DNA”.
Tickets for the first of December 7 are on sale from October 7, those for the other dates from October 14. The season continues until November 2027.
L’articolo In New York la Scala presents the 2026/2027 season, from the Chung Otello to the link with Toscanini proviene da IlNewyorkese.
