Updates on Chailly’s health after his illness on Wednesday evening at La Scala
Problems last night at Scala in the second performance of A Lady Macbeth from the Mcensk district by Shostakovich. The first act went smoothly, but the intermission was prolonged. In the second act we saw that the director, Riccardo Chailly appeared tired in the direction and, in fact, in the end the director appeared extremely ill and it was decided to have him assisted by the medical guard, always present in the theatre. The show was stopped and the hall lights turned on. Then the artistic director Gavazzeni came out announcing that the show could not continue, postponing further information until today.
Maestro Chailly was then accompanied out of the theater with the help of doctors, but he always maintained absolute clarity and greeted the crowd who applauded him. As a precaution he was taken to hospital.
Chailly spent the night at the Monzino Cardiology Center in Milan. According to Thursday morning news, today the values are good and today his therapy will be changed. His wife Gabriella explains it in a message to the orchestra teachers.
The show, in fact, is very demanding due to its duration and particularity which the maestro has repeatedly defined as “at the limit of the performable”. Both the conductor and the singers are subjected to a demanding and lasting physical effort, but during the premiere on December 7th the show went smoothly and ended with a triumph and more than eleven minutes of applause.
Even if the maestro has repeatedly assured that staging this show “was not an act of courage but a duty towards a work that has lost time due to historical events” (i.e. Stalin’s censorship in 1936), it truly was an act of courage and, perhaps, last night, the stress of preparation and that which accompanies the opening of the season was paid for a bit.
The work is boldly modern for having been composed in 1934 by a 24-year-old composer. The orchestra has been performing the Russian repertoire with Chailly for ten years and was very involved in the technical difficulty, as was the choir.
Chailly had also declared that the protagonist, the American Sara Jakubiak, had “been squeezed like an orange”, but probably everyone has been.
Chailly was recently reappointed director at the Lucerne Festival and will continue his activity at La Scala beyond the twelve years of his musical direction. A Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi awaits him soon with Luca Salsi, Francesco Meli and Anna Netrebko as protagonists. Then the symphonic commitments with the Filarmonica della Scala including the concert in Piazza del Duomo.