Cecilia Bartoli's cancellation of her first Melisande at Firenze's Maggio Musicale has spawned a Rashomon-like spate of "why she do this?" scenarios. Bartoli herself broke the news in a letter to her fans posted on the Decca website: "It is with great sadness that I have decided to withdraw from this year's new production of Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino due to contractual difficulties with the management of the festival. I was very much looking forward to working with Maestro Giuseppe Sinopoli and Dieter Dorn on this marvelous opera, which I studied with great passion, and I hope that my dream to sing Melisande will come true soon in another context." Bartoli's publicist Edgar Vincent offered La Cieca the additional detail that the managment of the Festival scheduled a broadcast of the opening night without first obtaining Bartoli's permission. According to this version of events, the singer protested, only to be informed that she would be "replaced" for that performance. She replied, "You can't replace me, because I'm replacing myself," and pulled out of the entire run. 

Not entirely accurate, says a source close to the Maggio Musicale: the fact is that the festival broadcasts the prima of every operatic production as a matter of course, as well as many other high-profile events. They have done so for years; in fact the practice of broadcasting the prima is as standard at all the major houses as the Saturday afternoon Texaco broadcasts are at the Met. The theater, though, is flexible, and has been known in the past to reschedule the broadcast for various reasons - for example, if there is another important musical event in conflict, or if a principal artist has to cancel the first performance. In those cases, RAI will simply substitute a later performance. In the case of La Bartoli, we were told that she was offered her choice of performances to be broadcast; her counter-offer was to send the cover on for the final night -- which, she suggested, could then be broadcast. At that point, she and the Maggio Musicale parted ways. 

La Cieca recalls that this is not the first time Bartoli has pulled this sort of stunt. Her biography notes that she refused to allow a broadcast of Cenerentola from Bologna, and of course we all remember Bartoli's famous one-performance Met season when she canceled a broadcast of Così claiming a back injury -- and then spent the afternoon signing autographs at Tower Records. 

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Our source in Firenze and another in Milan confirmed what basically everyone in the Italian opera biz has told us - that Bartoli is just no big deal in her native country, and that opera-goers there just can't figure out what all the fuss is about. They consider Bartoli a silly and spoiled young woman with a strong need for control that is destructive to any sense of collaboration in the theater. As a stylist, she is regarded as being farcically over-the-top - "Italian Opera for Dummies." Her performances here do not sell out; there were gobs of tickets remaining for Pelleas at a $70 top! Our source in Firenze (whose anonymity we are respecting) finished by saying that he and many other fans wished that the company had engaged a "real star like Vesselina Kasarova" in the first place.

Our man in Milan called Bartoli a "gramophonic artist" and added, "In Italy we expect real opera singers to sing operas."

La Cieca saw the handsome and regal Marcella Pobbè in the lobby of the Teatro Comunale in Firenze at the prima of Tristan und Isolde. (This was one of the highlights of La Cieca's opera voyage with Dawn Fatale to Italy in May.) La Cieca did not approach La Pobbè - after all, what could she say besides, "I think you had the right idea telling Stefan Zucker to go to hell." In the company box we recognized recognized Nancy (Star Trek) Mehta, seated next to a dark, slim woman who turned out to be Sophia Loren! The diva is a personal friend of the Mehtas and is furthermore engaged in a little promotion of her son Carlo Ponti Jr, who is pursuing a career as a conductor with the maestro as mentor. Loren looked glamorous in a royal blue silk suit and spent the whole second intermission serenely signing autographs. In the next day's papers, the diva praised the performance, her first Wagner, noting that she found the "sottotitoli" a great help as she does not speak German. Her favorite opera is La traviata, but the character she most identifies with is Aida. Accompanying La Loren was her sister Maria Scicolone, who looks exactly as you would expect Sophia Loren's sister to look. 

Dawn Fatale graciously served as Cieca's guide to the art treasures of the various cities we invaded. And so, in full Room with a View mode, Cieca did the galleries and the churches. One completely unexpected operatic connection we stumbled on was a special display in the Vatican Museum concerning the origins of Christian practice in Armenia, which is of course the background of Les martyrs/Poliuto. Among all the Crucifixions and Annunciations, a welcome breath of fresh air was the depiction by various artists of that ballsy Old Testament heroine Judith -- statuesque, determined, confident and more times than not eerily resembling Lauren Flanigan. Go figure. Mary Magdalene is of course depicted in all the Crucifixion material, invariably with red hair - so I suppose the blonde coiffure on Cavadossi's painting would be a tipoff to Tosca that something wasn't quite kosher.

We paid a visit to Sant'Andrea delle Valle, which is unusual among Roman churches for the brightness and warmth of the light in the interior. I would guess that in early afternoon in July the illumination is even more brilliant and suffused. Anyway, it appears that those productions that depict the main altar of the church up center are in error - far more likely that Cavaradossi would have been assigned the task of decorating one of the side naves-from which, by the way, heavy solid doors allow access to the smaller private chapels.

Our Tosca trifecta included Castel Sant'Angelo and Palazzo Farnese as well as the church. The Castel is doing "restauro" on the highest platform, but I could see enough to tell that, yes, you can't jump into the Tiber from anywhere in the fortress. In fact, the usual depiction of the third act (giant statue and the dome of St. Peter's visible upstage) would result in Tosca's falling only onto a lower terrace of the castle, enough to kill her, yes, but less spectacular than one might hope.

It was a double debut at La Scala for us; that is, our first time in the venerable bastion of operatic tradition. On the morning of Friday the 14th, we stopped by to check on tickets and to tour the La Scala museum, where the curators have on view tons of operatic bric-a-brac, including the fan used by Mafalda Favero in Traviata (one for each act, actually), Simionato's peau-de-soie gown for the Cenerentola finale, Toti dal Monte's wedding veil from Lucia and Giuditta Pasta's diadem from Norma! The display continued with a display of the many set and costume designs for this theater by Pier Luigi Pizzi, with a special emphasis on the current production of Armide.

An unexpected treat: exiting the salon where the designs were displayed, we walked across a corridor, through a door - and found ourselves in a center box, with a full view of the auditorium and the great stage, where carpenters were setting up the afternoon's technical rehearsal of Giselle. To denizens of the Met, the auditorium is quite intimate in appearance, with room for perhaps 2200, surely no more. Surprisingly (as Dawn found out) even the boxes far to the sides are afforded an acceptable view of the stage.

So, that night, we arrived a little early, having found to our confusion that no place anywhere near the theater offered a pre-performance seating for dinner - very few restaurants open before 7:30. Anyway, a platoon of young, attractive, and unfailingly polite ushers took our tickets and led us where we belonged. Nowhere, anywhere around the theater was there any sense of crowding or crush. Not even a line outside the ladies room!

Next surprise: Riccardo Muti, who wields absolute power here, made only a brief and shy nod toward the applauding public when he reached the podium, in contrast to the ovation-milking antics of certain local artistic directors. And then, Armide. Pizzi's scenic realization perfectly matched Muti's musical sensibility: clean, exact, precisely proportioned, Apollonian in serenity and balance. The various spectacular visual effects made no pretense to simulate reality, but rather seemed the dream of an aesthete: Armide's palace of silvered metal slowly canted toward the audience as it became "real;" her Baroque bed transformed into a chariot (or was it a funeral pyre?) upon an ocean of red-silk "fire" for her final exit. Pizzi drilled his performers in the stylized gesture language of Baroque theater, which means that the singers' movements integrated smoothly into the (very) extended dance episodes choreographed by Heinz Spoerle - almost an hour of ballet in all, as in the original score, but, frankly perhaps too much of a good thing. The performance ran until midnight, with much of the dance in the final acts.

Only one of the performers managed to invest Pizzi's gesture-system with emotional meaning: Anna Caterina Antonacci. The protean diva also (not coincidentally) was the sole singer to succeed completely in shaping and coloring the marvelous recitative and arioso lines in her murderously long and demanding role. As with so many singers La Cieca worships, Antonacci blends the physical and the vocal seamlessly: her movement was as poetic as her singing. At the close of the second act, Antonacci (in a post-modern variant of 18th century costume, panniered but perilously strapless) hijacks the magical ship of Renaud and sails off into the distance. The gorgeous diva struck an attitude on the prow, actually becoming the figurehead. Now, Antonacci's voice is not perfect, with some scratchiness early in the evening and a few shrill high notes later on. To me, that hardly matters when one hears so intelligent a shaping of the line and the complex beauty of her timbre. After the performance, a very polite security person led us through the creaky maze that this the backstage area of La Scala, and we spoke briefly to the diva in her dressing room. Up close, Antonacci is quite petite but buff -- her body fat percentage must be among the lowest in the business. She spoke of her fondness for Gluck and her wish to sing Alceste again (her first attempt five years ago was, in her opinion, not fully successful). La Cieca recommmended to La Antonacci the role of Dejanice in Handel's Hercules, suggesting that the "Where shall I fly?" aria would perfectly suit her vibrant personality and fluent coloratura. 

Of the other singers, Violeta Urmana made a properly strong impression as La Haine, which essentially is 20 minutes of non-stop balls-to-the-wall wailing a la Dolora Zajick Judgement Scene. One can see why she is in so much demand for Kundry - her Act 2 finale must blow the place down. A special word of admiration and wonder for the La Scala chorus, who have the most velvety tone, whether in full cry or (most remarkably) is a ravishing hushed pianissimo that never degenerates into crooning. What a contrast to the hog-calling we hear at the Met!

And speaking of which, the audience does not talk except at intermission, they do not take flash photographs, and they leave their cellphones at home. When an usher noticed an elderly gentleman taking a photo in the lobby, he quietly asked the man not to take any more photos. In New York, such an infraction calls for the use of the blackjack and repeated shouts of "NO! HEY! What did I say? What did I say? I SAID lay OFF with the FREAKIN CAMERA!"

Otherwise, in Milan, we stopped at a supermarket to buy bottled water, and the checkout clerk gave us free Gigli tapes ("e un regalo"); and we found the best source for opera CDs in the city - "Trova Musica" at via Masera 10 (near Piazza Lima), with plenty of live performances and a very friendly staff who offered us tea while we browsed.

Torino feels a lot like Philadelphia, if only because it's about two hours by train from the big city. We made a day trip there for a double bill of La Voix Humaine and The Medium on May 16. The Teatro Regio is a very modern and very red civic auditorium seating about 1200 and, by American standards, truly opulent square footage for lobbies, bars and other public spaces. It was very definitely a matinee audience, lots of elderly ladies and upper-middle-class NYCOish couples there for the final performance of the run.

The good news is that Renata Scotto has successfully reinvented herself for Moedlrollen, with the lower part of the voice especially quite solid and reliable. The notes above the staff are reserved for moments of emotional stress and as such do not really need to be pretty; it suffices that they are strong and on pitch, all the way up to the tricky high C in the Poulenc. La Cieca guesses that Scotto began the performance with little or no warmup - the first few minutes of the Voix frankly sounded like a woman who had had her stomach pumped the night before. But, like Diana Soviero, as Scotto warms up, so her voice gains depth and color. 

Voix Humaine is a fairly well-known performance by La Scotto, preserved on video since 1993 and seen here and there, though not yet in the US. It's typically Scottoesque in its unremitting concentration and high energy, its Judy Garland-like alternations of giddy manic chatter and depressed near-paralysis. The diva shows us Cocteau's "young and elegant" jilted woman in an ironically sexy pearl-gray silk peignoir, her hair (Scotto's own platinum chignon) still damp and disheveled from the previous night's suicide attempt, her makeup smeared with weeping. The set is a doorless white box, unfurnished but for a hard and uncomfortable-looking banquette.

Scotto circles from wall to wall like a trapped prisoner, then sinks down on the floor, gradually creeping toward the audience as the light casts ever harsher shadows across her anguished face. Her only gloss on the text is a furtive swallowing of a handful of pills following one of the times she loses the telephone connection with her lover. As such, her final murmur of "je t'aime" is slurred as she loses consciousness and the phone falls to the floor, suggesting that this heart-wrenching phone conversation is but one of a long series. Particular notable in this very individual interpretation is Scotto's frequent use of smiles and flirtatious laughter, the wiles of a woman who has not quite given up on the affair. She also reacted with blind rage to the party-line subscriber's interruption of her call - in fact, Scotto's varied emotions go far to dispel the sentimentality that can creep into this rather one-note piece.

The new interpretation was Baba in The Medium, definitely a mezzo-soprano part. Scotto has clearly worked very hard on to integrate Menotti's declamatory writing into her essentially lyrical voice, with almost complete success. Baba's very effective first entrance ("How many times I've told you not to touch my things") lay ideally in the middle of Scotto's clear and vibrant chest register. She intelligently underplayed the moment, only hinting at the anger - which in fact made her all the more frightening. The higher reaches of the part's limited compass (E-F-Gflat) lie in a vocal area where the soprano can produce a big if harsh sound. Some phrases, though, center around the Aflat and Bflat in mid-staff, the weakest part of Scotto's current vocal equipment. As such, some lines in Act 1 were covered and lost despite the considerate collaboration of John Mauceri in the pit.

Dramatically, there were no problems. Baba seemed a sort of older version of Scotto's celebrated Giorgietta in Il tabarro, her cruelty motivated by bitterness and disappointment. She wore a sleazy maroon crushed-velvet dress festooned with chains and beads, her hair a tangle of frizzy curls with an oxidized auburn dye job. Her face was chalky-white, with heavily kohled eyes and smeary red lipstick. For the second act drunk scene, Scotto, old pro that she is, changed into a severly simply black dress, the better to concentrate the attention on her expressive face.

The whole performance was a tribute to Scotto's intelligence and sense of style in performance. The big "I killed the ghost" was a real tour de force, building to a moment of utter panic when she fired the gun, her eyes averted in terror.

A trademark Scotto "in character" curtain call was a delightful dessert. The diva, still trembling with emotion, gradually "returned to herself" in the process of taking a dozen or so bows. Eventually she was beaming with triumph at the standing ovation (the only one we saw in the whole Italian trip.) Both the diva and the maestro hinted after the perfomance that at least one US opera company is interested in importing this double-bill. They were coy about venues or dates, but they both seemed confident that this new Scotto role would travel to her fans here. If you have connections with an opera house management, you should let them know that this "package" is a very attractive one indeed.

The younger artists in the company seem to have taken lessons in how to handle the public from their veteran colleague-the excellent Monica (Cristina Pastorello) and Mrs. Gobineau (Claudia Bandera) both made carefully-timed "entrances" onto the street from the stage door, immaculately dressed, coiffed, and made-up, to greet the public, bestowing autographed photos to their admirers. After a brief interval, the diva herself swept out to charm the crowd of about 40 or so who had been waiting for more than half an hour, mostly men, and mostly middle-aged or older, who remembered her Italian triumphs of decades past. She had a few words for every one of them, her smile as broad and beguiling as ever. Scotto still is the real thing, and I, for one, am ready to say that she was easily worth the whole trip.

Clouds and rain for the two days we spent in Bologna, which somehow seems only right: this is a quiet, serious city, a university town. The churches are subdued in their decoration, and there's not so much of a tourist presence. La Cieca is proud to say that she managed to get a haircut and beard trim speaking only Italian, and ended up looking more or less as she intended ("quasi calvo")

We often argue over the "proper" size of a theater to perform "small" works or "big" works. Well, the Teatro Comunale is quite small, with perhaps 400 places in the platea, and 5 rings of boxes theoretically seating five each (two or three is more like it). The loggione is minimal, so let's say, 1000 tops, the size of a straight-play house on Broadway. The intimacy of the theater, in conjunction with the fact that the majority of the cast were native Italian, made for an unusually fluent delivery of the text (especially in the uncut recitatives) and less reliance on unsubtle sight gags.

Dawn and I agreed that the star of the show was Sonia Ganassi, the Dorabella, who really seems to have it all - a warm, richly colored (but never heavy) voice, razor-sharp comic timing, a curvy little figure and a perfect comedienne's face. From her first scene, her eyes danced with mischief, as she enjoyed the joke more than anyone. Ganassi also has the sort of personality and presence we associate with the greatest stage stars, seemingly lighting up the theater with each entrance. In short, this artist lives up to every word of Cecilia Bartoli's publicity, and she honors her contracts to boot. 

Sharing vocal honors with La Ganassi was the only American in the cast, Bruce Ford, who might appear to be cast against type as the ultra-lyrical Ferrando. It is a pleasure to report that Ford carried over the virility and vibrancy of vocal attack we associate with his Rossini portrayals into Mozart. Particularly impressive was his delicately sustained mezzavoce, without even a hint of wimpy falsetto. And Ford is a funny guy, too, with a sort of injured dignity that reminds one a bit of Jason Alexander. Anyone's dignity would be injured, though, by the "Albanian" drag designed by Pasquale Grossi: doublet and ski pants of leopard-print, accessorized with cape, turban and boots in electric blue watered silk - an ensemble to do Opal Gardner proud.

A more sedate color scheme (tiger and tangerine) was assigned Pietro Spagnoli (Guglielmo), who sang with a fine, unforced lyric baritone that bloomed nicely on top. He moves well and is appropriately studly; his pelvis-bumping convulsions during the "mesmeric" treatment caught and held the interest of his Dorabella and La Cieca as well. Alessandro Corbelli, an artist who has never seemed to me capable of singing or anything else, proved me wrong as Don Alfsonso, putting over the words and (especially) listening intelligently to the other artists. Raffaella Angeletti, who must be no more than about 25, has an important voice in embryonic form. As Fiordiligi, she sounded strongly reminiscent of Carol Vaness, warts and all. Once she stopped singing wildly sharp (after "Come scoglio") she settled down some, but I still feel she is not well advised to take on such killing roles when the technique is not quite settled.

As for Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz - what the hell is the deal with her? Granted, she was not rasping and shrieking here as she did in those New York Fledermaus performances, but the voice is small and unfocused, and she lacks any grit as Despina. Yes, she is very pretty in a Northern sort of way, rather like a soubrette in a Bergman film, but this role wants anger, knowingness, lust, something. The doctor impersonation came off well, with a heavy "shienshia" accent (I think of it as Roman, but I guess it has other regional associations as well). The notary was a total loss, as Norberg-Schulz did not even attempt the Bolognese twang - which under the circumstances is rather like playing Liza Doolittle in London without speaking Cockney.

Daniele Gatti, perhaps in imitation of his idol Muti, conducted Cosi faster than it can be played, though somehow the singers kept up with him. He could have given his artists more freedom of rubato, as most of them (most notably Ganassi and Ford) sounded musical and imaginative when they got the chance to shape their lines. The production by Pasquale Grossi rang the changes on an all-purpose unit set, and Gianfranco de Bosio moved his performers skillfully through uncontroversial but charming blocking.

In Bologna, we found the best selection of CDs at Bongiovanni Dischi - lots of exotic singers and unusual live performances on the crammed shelves of this tiny shop at via Rizzoli 28. (This is also the headquarters of the Bongiovanni record label.)

Tristan und Isolde at the Maggio Musicale Firenze was conducted by local divo Zubin Mehta and staged in the most lackluster fashion imaginable by Klaus Michael Grueber. It seems that Herr Grueber's Konzept (though that is far too strong a word) is that Tristan is about emotional distance, lack of affect, passivity and, in a pinch, catatonia. Act Two was a study in lassitude, with the lovers behaving like post cold-turkey skag addicts, neither happy nor sad nor anything else but just sort of blah. Eduardo Arroyo's sets for Acts Two (tree branches and twinkly Christmas lights) and Act Three (bombed-out '60s elementary school) didn't bother me all that much. But La Cieca HATED Act One, a skeleton model of the Titanic done in thin chrome pipes which fluoresced post-potion; the effect was of an off-Broadway revival of Anything Goes. No trace of the curtain protecting Isolde's modesty from the ship's crew; Ben Heppner as Tristan was stuck on stage killing time for the whole act. This act also featured a dozen supers in chic blue hooded ponchos who performed a tightly-choroegraphed "yo-ho-ho" line dance, which accomplished not much besides making the set creak distractingly. Meanwhile, the lighting suggested that the sun was setting in the east over Cornwall. The local papers tactfully referred to the "controversial" and "stormy" reception Herr Grueber and Co. received when they took their calls for this production at the Salzburg Easter Festival - I can only imagine!

The principals mustered a little more passion in the outside acts, especially Ben Heppner, who, I am willing to bet my PETER HOFFMAN ROCK CLASSICS LP, was actually "doing" the Zambello staging from Seattle. (For all my frequent criticism of Zambello's work, I admit that she does have a gift for facilitating performers' emotional and - especially - physical connection to the music.) Which just goes to show that life is full of surprises. I went into this performance expecting riveting acting and scrappy singing from Deborah Polaski, and rather rudimentary acting in combination with manicured vocalism from Heppner. In the event, they made a very closely-matched pair. I have never, ever, live or on recordings, heard Heppner sing better. Yes, he took it easy now and then in Act Two, but how he gave in the third act, with the phrases building to big, ballsy and thrilling high A-flats and As with the sort of abandon we associate with truly demented artists. This apparent willingness to go for it and let the chips fall where they may paid off gorgously - the suspect intonation and right, unvibrant tone that tarnished his Met Lohengrins were nowhere in evidence. Oh, all right, I'll quibble: Heppner has refined his voice into the most efficient instrument possible, choosing focus and consistency of sound over variety of tone color or, frankly, beauty- though in "Wie sie selig") Heppner ventured a hushed half-tone and a melting legato that any Italian tenor might envy.

La Polaski built upon her New York reputation as well. She is a truly mesmerizing physical actress, we all know that, but this time around she achieved intensity within repose, a flexible flow of energy that I can only describe as exalted. What astonished me was the quality of the singing, far more consistent and sheerly beautiful than her uneven Ortrud. The voice is big and rich, with a gutsy open-throated physicality. Like her spiritual predecessor Dame Gwyneth Jones, when she sings, the sound seems to rise from the soles of her feet, gushing like a fountain toward the public. She was also capable of some very sweet piano singing in Act Two and at the beginning of a very "innig" Liebestod. Yes, she did tire, the voice taking on a greyish color; the sustained forte high notes at the end of the opera were below pitch and squally. But that's not a huge tradeoff for Polaski's amazing way with the text, better than anyone, I would say, since Varnay. She is a tall and handsome woman, with an interestingly chisled face. In her ultra-simple black velvet sheath (designed by Moidele Bickel), Polaski was a ringer for Ingrid Bergman in Notorious.

This performance has made me a believer in Marjana Lipovsek. The mezzo-soprano always seemed to me in recordings to sound shrill and shallow. It is true that she lacks the vocal velvet of, say, a Blanche Thebom, but, oh, what an artist she is! She etches every word with the specificity of intention and color of a great Lieder singer, and she listens to the Narrative with as much passion as La Polaski puts into singing it. Her great scene with Isolde at the opening of Act Two Lipovsek played as a barely-contained panic attack, her anxiety growing with each calm reply from Polaski. La Cieca thought the two lower-voiced men, Falk Struckmann (Kurwenal) and Franz-Josef Selig (Marke) oversang wildly and overacted in the worst lurching, eye-popping provincial sort of way.

Now the bad news. It appears that Zubin Mehta has no very clear clue how Tristan is supposed to sound. Admittedly, the Teatro Comunale has a very bright sound that works against a smooth orchestral blend, but the maestro seemed completely incapable of the constant subtle shifting of orchestral color. The magical moment in the Prelude, when the solo trumpet adds a sheen to the orchestral climax, sounded - well, like someone added a trumpet part; the pillowy divided strings under Bragaene's Call were no more than an ordinary (if lush) concerto grosso. (This uncontrolled orchestra sound, complicated by the massive sets, meant that Lipovsek's "Ruf" had to be miked. The electronic boost was tasteful but noticeable.) The second act faltered and finally died, clocking an outrageous 88 minutes by Dawn's watch. After Heppner's lyrical phrasing in Act One, I was really looking forward to a luscious "O Koenig," but Mehta's tempo left the tenor concentrating on just getting to the end of each line. It was just funereal- James Levine and Renee Fleming in cahoots don't drag this much. 

On the way to Aida in Rome, La Cieca kept "recognizing" the Rome Opera House - "Is that it?" she would ask.

Dawn would respond, "No, that's a hotel." 

"How about that?" 

"Museum."

"That surely must be . . ."

"No, that's the Department of Motor Vehicles."

Finally we walked up to what appeared to be a recently-refurbished elementary school, and Dawn announced, "This is the Rome Opera." Well, the interior is also pretty bland, until you enter the theater proper, which La Cieca will now declare, is what an opera house should look like. It's all 1870s deep-red velvet and ornately carved gilded plaster, like a set for the second half of Gone with the Wind. Unfortunately, the performance was shockingly provincial, reminding La Cieca of the semi-hilarious golden age of the New Orleans Opera.

The performance began with an announcement that Nina Edwards, the scheduled Aida, was ill and that Michele Crider was "carrying" the role tonight. We later found out that at the prima a few days earlier Maria Guleghina ran out of voice during Act One and mimed the remainder of the role while a chorister sang from the pit. Miss Crider, despite the filth surrounding her on all sides, gave a strongly professional performance with moments of great beauty, especially in the Tomb Scene. Her voice is perhaps a little bright and glassy of timbre for so Italianate a role, but she phrased with imagination and was not afraid to pump out rich chest tones. She "rode" the massed forces in the triumphal scene thrillingly, with huge and brilliant high B's and C's. She is a handsome Junoesque woman who acts with dignity.

Giorgio Merighi was the worst sort of provincial Radames, yelling every line like a train announcer. He looked gangy and uncomfortable in his unflattering costume. The comic highlight of his performance came when he tried to escape by shoving on a load-bearing "fatal pietrs." Elisabetta Fiorilla (Amneris) has mastered the grand manner of a Cossotto: she accented every line with a swish of her cape and a lurch forward on her thick-platformed Scotto heels. She was hardly shy about unfurling her massive chest tones: in fact, in the Boudoir Scene, her thundering "figia dei faraoni" set her claque to cheering in mid-scene. Unfortunately, the top and middle of her voice are not so well-developed; by the end of the opera the high notes were little more than screams. This did not faze La Fiorilla, though: she finished the Judgement Scene by clomping up a steep flight of stairs and falling into a campy faint on the final chord. La Cieca confesses she sprang out of her seat screaming "brava" as Fiorilla took a half-dozen calls before allowing the show to continue.

This was a borrowed production reminiscent of the notorious "packing crate" Norma that plagued La Scala in the seventies. Mario Ceroli's unit set was knotty-pine gym bleachers ornamented with plywood cutout mummies; Egyptians performed on a well-lit upper level, and everyone else lurked in semidarkness down below. The stage direction allowed everyone to stand around casually through most of the opera, but included a dream ballet danced to the Prelude. This pas-de-deux was encored during "O terra addio." Amneris' handmaidens sported neon-colored 1940s swimwear, and the beefy palace guards aroused interest in their sandals and jockstraps. (One particularly gorgeous specimen, a genuine Guidone, nonchalantly chewed bubble gum the whole time.) Meanwhile, the chorus were dressed for Khovanschina, in peasant smocks made from quilted movers' pads. The Triumphal Scene offered a mélange of choerographic styles including Martha Graham, Charleston, the Wedding Dance from Fiddler on the Roof and specialty dancing a la Nicholas Brothers.

Apparently "Supervisore Generale" Giuseppe Sinopoli is doing what he can to tread water in Rome until Muti retires from La Scala (which, rumor has it, may be as early as the beginning of 2002). The theater is notoriously impossible to run efficiently; the saying goes that if you reprimand a janitor for not cleaning the men's room, the next day you will get a phone call from the Vatican asking, "why are you being so hard on my cousin?" While we were in town, the opera management altered plans for Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream (only four weeks away), changing a staged production into a concert. In the process, they lost the services of David Daniels as Oberon, surely the raison d'etre of the project in the first place.