On the night of August15, 1943, La Scala was bombedand gutted. Bravely, the company continued performing,first at Como and Ber- gamo, then back inMilan at the Teatro Lirico. Some of thetheater's leading artists participated: Tancredi Pasero wasBoito's Mefistofele in the first production -in -exile, Schipa was Wertherthat same week, and there were Margherita Carosio, Bechi, andSimionato (as Meg) in a Falstaffwith Mariano Stabile. Then on May 11, 1946, Toscaninireturned to Milan from America, and La Scala returned to its rebuilthome. For his opening program theconduc- tor selected beloved works:the overtures to La Gazza ladra andWilliam Tell, the prayer from Mose (with the veteranPasero and the young Renata Tebaldi, then in her first Scala season),the overture and "Va, pensiero" from Nabucco, the intermezzo andthird act of Manon Lescaut, andthe Mefistofele Prologue with Pasero.
Above: the theater on August 16, 1943; left. Toscan in i's return to La Scala; below. Giulietta Simionato as the Italian girl in Algiers
Mused Teatrale alla Scala Soon the revitalized Scalatook a new lease on recording life, too,and in the early 1950s began the series ofcomplete recordings with Maria Callas. Many of these were made at La Scala,and some are parallel to what she was singing in the house: Norma, 11 Turcoin Italia, Lucia, La Sonnam- bula, La Gioconda. But other Callas interpretationsat La Scala are only partially recorded, notably her Anna Bolenaand her Lady Macbeth. Curi- ously enough, her splendid Tosca, recorded atLa Scala with her regular partners Giuseppe di Stefano and TitoGobbi and conducted by Victor de Sabata, was unknown to Scala audiencesthen; La Scala's great Tosca dur- ing the 1950s was Tebaldi, who sangunder De Sabata but recorded the op- era with other conductors. Naturally the Callas recordings do not tell the wholestory of those years. Simionato was another star of the time,doing for the mezzo-soprano rep- ertory what Callas was doingfor the soprano realm of bel canto.Simio- nato's recording of L'Italiana in Algeri,conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, is a fairly close reproduction ofthe Scala performances in the springof 1953, with Cesare Valletti asLindoro and Mario Petri as Mustafa.And the brilliant Cimarosa Matrimonio segreto,which inaugurated the Piccola Scala on December 26, 1955, is reflectedin the Angel recording, conducted by Nino Sanzogno (who conductedin the theater) with Luigi Alva, Eu- genia Ratti, and Graziella Sciutti.But for contractual reasons manyim- portant Scala artists of the '50smade their complete opera recordingselse- where. (Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco arethe important cases.) The Fifties recordings made at LaScala were confined to the Italian rep -
85 SEPTEMBi R 1978