2024-04-18 02:50:07
Fortunato Ortombina will become the new intendant of Milan’s La Scala. Since 2017, the sixty-three-year-old Italian has directed the opera stage of the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice. In Milan, he will replace the French impresario Dominik Meyer, who has been in charge of La Scala for the past four years. The change was announced by the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, who chairs the board of directors of La Scala. She chose Ortombina unanimously.
The AFP agency recalls that the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni set an age limit of 70 years for the directors of 13 Italian opera houses last year. In doing so, she de facto made it impossible for the 68-year-old Meyer to seek an extension of his mandate.
According to the New York Times, however, the current government has long emphasized that the most important Italian cultural institutions should be in the hands of Italians. “It seems strange to me that ten of the most important Italian cultural institutions are managed exclusively by foreigners,” the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano was surprised, for example, last year. He now welcomes the name of the new head of the Milan Opera House. “After three foreign directors Stéphane Lissner, Alexander Pereira and Dominic Meyer, an Italian returns to La Scala,” says Sangiuliano.
Fortunato Ortombina will join La Scala in the autumn. | Photo: Michele Crosera
Graduated musician and musicologist Fortunato Ortombina will not step into a foreign environment, from 2003 to 2007 he already worked as the coordinator of the artistic director of La Scala. He will start taking over the powers this September, when he will arrive in Milan and will work alongside Dominik Meyer for some time. He will remain in office until August 2025 at the latest.
Among other things, Fortunato Ortombina will have to choose the new musical director of La Scala. The current, respected 71-year-old conductor Riccardo Chailly was due to retire in February 2025. The board of directors has just extended his tenure by one year.
According to the New York Times, the board wants Chailly to be replaced by 62-year-old Milan native Daniele Gatti, who is currently the music director of Florence’s Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival.
The orchestra of Milan’s La Scala, led by Riccardo Chailly, will be among the main stars of this year’s Prague Spring festival. He will return to the Czech capital after 23 years. On May 20, the Municipal House will feature works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Leoš Janáček and Sergei Prokofiev.