Italian melodrama's official recognition as a global cultural treasure is getting trumpeted Thursday with La Scala’s season premiere of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” an opera that hits hot-button topics of power and oppression.
In keeping with a La Scala tradition of off-stage melodrama, the issue of who would occupy the royal box at the Milan opera house on opening night spawned a pre-performance kerfuffle. La Scala's unions protested the institutional seat of honor going to Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa in the absence of Italy’s president and premier.
