La Cieca has just heard that as of this afternoon, La Scala has dismissed Giuseppe Filianoti from their opening night new production of Don Carlos (scheduled for a worldwide telecast Sunday) and replaced him for the entire run of performances with American tenor Stuart Neill.

Per La Cieca’s source, at the Thursday open dress rehearsal of the Verdi opera, Filianoti “wandered around incoherently” in the third act (i.e., the prison scene in the four-act version) and, again quoting our source “basically took a huge shit. He didn’t even know what opera he was in, apparently.”  La Cieca hears further that La Scala originally was going to remove Filianoti from only the first night or two of the opera, offering him dates later in the run, but the tenor turned them down.

Opera Chic also reports that La Scala’s management is trying to find a third tenor to take over some of the later performances (December 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 21 and January 4, 8, 11 and 15) in order to remove some of the pressure from Neill. Does Roberto Alagna know the part in Italian?

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