MILAN — The general manager of Milan's famed La Scala said a bittersweet farewell to the theater on Tuesday during the presentation of its 2024-25 season, saying he “would have been happy to continue.”
Dominique Meyer's contract ends at the end of February, but Italy's far-right government has limited him to one term as it seeks to restore the historic cultural institution to the Italian people. The Frenchman was only the third foreigner to run Italy's premier opera house.
The theater's new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, is due to meet with Milan's mayor on Wednesday as he prepares to take up the job in September. Ortombina will take up the post from Venice's La Fenice Theater and will work alongside Meyer in his first few months.
Meyer's final gala premiere will be Verdi's La forza del destino starring Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann on December 7. The new season also features the world premiere of In the Name of the Rose, a new opera commissioned by La Scala and the Paris Opera and written by Francesco Fillidei and based on a novel by Umberto Eco. The opera will be performed in Italian in Milan and Genoa, and in French in Paris.
“The time it takes to create a new opera is longer than the term of a theatre director,” Meyer told a press conference, stressing that “a little stability doesn't hurt.”
Meyer has been asked to stay on until August 2025, when he turns 70, in line with a new rule laid out by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government that opera house directors must retire at the age of 70. He has not said whether he will accept an extension, but the press conference had all the feel of a farewell party, with well-wishers from the organisation lined up in two rows, including Italian senator for life Liliana Segre, who began attending La Scala as a girl, and union representatives also in attendance.
Meyer, who took over as director in March 2020 when the pandemic closed theaters, said he increased sponsorship donations to 38 million euros last year, above pre-pandemic levels, and boosted daily box office receipts by 22 percent to 236,000 euros, mainly due to scrapping last-minute discounted tickets that he said had “poisoned” the market.
He will leave La Scala with 132.7 million euros in cash, compared with 109 million euros in 2018.
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