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Dateline: 24th September, 2004
Exit Maestro Riccardo Muti, musical director of Milan's Teatro alla Scala and guest conductor at the Royal Opera House of La Scala's production of Verdi's La Forza del Destino at Covent Garden, has walked out of the production, less than a month bnefore the first performance. This follows a disagreement over scenery for the production. According to the ROH, four sections of a metal wall, which had been brought over from Italy, were too heavy for the theatre's fly tower to handle and would breach health and safety rules, so they decided they wall would have to be rebuilt using lighter materials, including cloth, but with exactly the same colour and texture, but the designer, Hugo De Ana, refused to agree to the changes. Muti was asked to speak to his designer about it but decided to support him and walked out of the production. The ROH's musical director Tony Pappano will take over, even though he had to cancel some performances in Chicago to do so. He has to learn the score from scratch as he has never conducted the opera before. A spokesman for La Scala said that the decision to withdraw was because the changes were "not completely faithful to their conception" and "upholds the tradition of La Scala that any restaging corresponds absolutely to the original production". The Covent Garden chief executive Tony Hall told BBC Radio Four's Today programme, "Why minor changes should prove so difficult to accept bemuses us all. Muti refused to engage in debate and didn't grace us with his presence." In a statement issued on Thursday Hall, Pappano and Elaine Padmore, the company's director of opera, said, "Maestro Muti does not accept what we think are minor scenic changes which need to be made to the production for it to fit safely on the Covent Garden stage.We are totally perplexed by Maestro Muti's last-minute decision given the level of co-operation, goodwill and trust shown by the Royal Opera House towards the Maestro and the Teatro all Scala." The La Scala stament added that it hopes "there may be a fresh opportunity to work together with the prestigious British Opera House", but it is unlikely, Tony Hall said, that Muti will be invited back to Covent Garden "in the next three to four years." Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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