US star soprano misses La Scala gala season-open debut

Soprano Lisette Oropesa was to be the first American to sing a title role in the gala season opener at La Scala since Maria Callas in the 1950s. Then Italy's virus cases surged.

An outbreak in both La Scala's chorus and its orchestra forced the country's premier opera house to cancel for the first time one of the top events on Europe's cultural calendar.

Oropesa is now set to be one of more than 20 opera stars, among them Placido Domingo, Roberto Alagna and Piotr Beczała, recording arias and duets from the tiered theater for a broadcast gala event marking the traditional Dec. 7 opening. But there will be no glittering crowds, and no celebratory dinner. In fact, on Dec. 7 night the theater in Milan will be mostly empty.

By then, Oropesa will be in Barcelona, where she is performing next week. That comes after a whirlwind 2 and a half days in Milan that include a COVID-19 test, a gown fitting at Giorgio Armani for her part in the show, a dress rehearsal and, finally, performing for a TV camera an aria she had prepared for her opening night as "Lucia di Lammermoor."

Despite the disappointment of missing her La Scala season-opener debut, Oropesa, 37, still hopes to reprise the title role in Donizetti's opera in Milan once performances can return to Italy's theaters.

"To sing a title in an Italian opera as an American soprano is a pretty big deal," Oropesa said in a phone interview from Barcelona, where she was rehearsing the role of Violetta in "La Traviata."

And doing on the La Scala stage for the coveted season-opener is even bigger. Here, Oropesa, a second-generation Cuban-American born in New Orleans, was set to follow in the footsteps of Callas — also a daughter of immigrants — who opened La Scala's 1955 season singing...