Just in: La Scala offers Pereira a one-year contract
mainFirst reports from today’s board meeting in Milan say that a decision has been taken to give Alexander Pereira a one-year contract only for 2014-15 to be its sovrintendente.
(UPDATE: Offer confirmed. The board has informed Pereira that he must leave at the end of the 2015).
He had been expecting six years.
The offer puts all of Pereira’s plans in jeopardy. he may refuse to take the job on that basis, and Riccardo Chailly will be unlikely to join as music director. The mayor of Milan is about to give a press conference.
It looks like La Scala is descending into a very Italian form of chaos.
UPDATE: It’s a death warrant for La Scala.
Next: Pereira’s response to the offer here.
Frankly an insult of the grossest kind. Why offer the man a contract at all if they are not willing to let him have time to do his job properly? Idiots!!!
He and Chailly should both tell them to go to Hell.
they should have never accepted him neither in Salzburg nor in Milan, only the Swiss in Zurich could bear him (much too long!), this most overrated and incompetent manager. He leaves a disaster in Salzburg where one should finally change the structure of the highly political Festival where most designations are based on politically ridiculous choices p.e. the president who thinks she must comment on all ‘tu felix Austria nube’ or an even better quote ‘das ganze ist eine Farce und weiter nix’ – Salzburg offers the plot for an operetta in Moerbisch! On top the quality has gone down dramatically and all the Mozart they have performed there are on a lower level than some provincial theaters in Germany, the UK or the US! Do never follow any critiqu as so many have no idea but it is fun to read some – at least the English – as they would tell you the same.
While you may not appreciate him as a manager, he has shown incredible musicianship (his performance starts at 4:40 mins).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8RdzgB2Mug
One year? They don’t want him. I wonder if they have their own candidate up their sleeves…
Alexander Pereira was a highly successful manager of the Koncerthaus in Vienna and at the Zurich Opera for many years. Opinions about artistic quality are highly subjective but their seems to be a political element to the situation in both Salzburg and Milan which has nothing to do with artistic issues. Maybe the debate should be about politics and art. There are so few candidates for these jobs it is sad to see such a highly qualified candidate as Alexander Pereira sabotaged by politics.
I must take issue with Hasbeen. Pereira was pushed through in Salzburg politically despite not having been chosen by the search committee. He could have succeeded had he not managed to make himself enormously unpopular almost immmediately by failing to get all those he needed to work with in the Festival on side, through his unbearably autocratic and arrogant style of ‘management’. He has now managed to do exactly the same in Milan. Oscar Wilde might have said ‘to lose one Intendanz is unfortunate…….to lose two sounds like carelessness’!