The Teatro alla Scala in Milan, one of the world’s most prestigious and storied opera houses, announced Tuesday that its next leader would be Fortunato Ortombina, who is currently general director of Venice’s opera house, Teatro La Fenice.
Ortombina will succeed Dominique Meyer, a respected French impresario who has run La Scala since 2020 and who previously led the Vienna State Opera. The appointment of Ortombina comes as Italy’s current national government has made it clear that it favors homegrown talent over foreigners at major cultural posts.
“A decision has finally been reached,” Mayor Giuseppe Sala of Milan, who is the chairman of the foundation that runs the opera house, said Tuesday after a board meeting. The appointment of Ortombina ended months of speculation and whispers in the opera world.
Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, enthusiastically welcomed the appointment on Tuesday. “After three foreign general directors, Stéphane Lissner, Alexander Pereira and Dominique Meyer, an Italian returns to La Scala,” he said in a statement, which noted that the practice of Italian opera singing had recently been added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list.
Ortombina’s appointment was unanimous, Sala said Tuesday. It was widely expected, and followed months of rejected candidates, crossed vetoes pitting board members against lawmakers at the local and national levels, and even a new law instituting age limits for theater leaders that critics said was intended to oust the foreigners who hold such posts.
The haggling had risked putting politics and vested interests ahead of the theater’s artistic legacy, said Alberto Mattioli, an opera critic who recently published a book about Italy’s opera houses and their history. “It’s all been a power game” over appointments, while omitting discussion of cultural policy or a vision for the theater and its “core business, opera,” he said.
Sangiuliano, the culture minister, said that Ortombina’s nomination was “an excellent solution,” knowing that La Scala “is a prestigious symbol of the nation that projects a positive Italy in the world,” the minister added.
Last May, Italy’s conservative government passed a law that said the general directors of the country’s 13 state-run opera theaters could not serve beyond their 70th birthday, a measure critics said had been meant to purge theaters of foreign general directors.
Meyer, who before running La Scala and the Vienna State Opera was the artistic director of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and the general director of the Lausanne Opera in Switzerland, will turn 70 next year. But Sala said at a news conference Tuesday that according to legal experts consulted by the board, the age cap did not apply to La Scala, which is governed by a different statute than other opera theaters.
The law capping the age limit at 70 initially caused a ruckus at the San Carlo theater in Naples, which moved to dismiss Lissner, also French, who had turned 70 midway through his term as the general director. A labor court reinstated Lissner after his lawyers challenged the grounds for his dismissal.
After taking office in September, Ortombina will consult with the board and the theater’s orchestra to select a music director. Sala said the current director, Riccardo Chailly, would remain until 2026, conducting La Scala’s Dec. 7 season premieres — an annual cultural highlight in Italy — in 2024 and 2025. The board expressed a preference for Daniele Gatti, currently the musical director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, to succeed him.
Ortombina will take over La Scala in September.
Sala said that Meyer, whose term officially ends on Feb. 28, 2025, had been asked to stay on until Aug. 1 of that year. Meyer has not said whether he would accept the extension.
Ortombina, 63, is no stranger to La Scala. He served as coordinator of the theater’s artistic direction from 2003 to 2007, then left to become the artistic director at La Fenice. He became La Fenice’s general director in 2017.
With his background in musical studies, as an artistic director and then general director, Ortombina was “a step in the right direction,” said Mattioli, the critic.
Sala on Tuesday acknowledged the tense negotiations that had led to the appointment, saying that the board had “done everything for the good of La Scala, for its dignity and in fairness.”
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