The opening of the season at La Scala in Milan on 7 December is always a grand affair, and this year will be no exception. Franco Zeffirelli, 83 years old, is directing a new production of Aida, a work that has not been staged at this theatre for more than 20 years.
It is noon when I arrive at La Scala to interview Zeffirelli, but inside the magnificent domed hall it seems like evening, and preparations are well under way for the big night. Round lights glow softly in the dainty red plush and gold-trimmed boxes, stacked like Christmas presents to a dizzying height. The splendid red velvet stage curtains are open. There is a gold platform with scarabs and Egyptian cobra motifs. A man attached to a cord flies through the air overhead.
At the centre of all the pomp and magnificence, fittingly, is Franco Zeffirelli, directing. La Scala has a permanent staff of about 800, so there is no shortage of technicians and carpenters, porters, stagehands and seamstresses, and other various indigenous types bustling about the set seeing to their business.
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