Music: The Halftone Crisis

Even the great Caruso sometimes sang Rodolfo’s Che gelida manina aria from La Bohème a halftone down from the high C that Puccini’s score calls for—and Puccini wrote a letter saying he liked it better that way. But when Italy’s beloved tenor Giuseppi Di Stefano showed up at La Scala to rehearse Rodolfo in a new production of La Boheme under Austria’s Herbert von Kara Jan. he was stopped by La Scala’s tearful manager. “Oh, dear Di Stefano,” said the manager, “Von Karajan doesn’t want you because you sing the Che gelida manina a halftone down.”

Such an insult was certain to send an Italian tenor up to his top register, and coming from an Austrian, it was more than any Italian could bear. DI STEFANO

SACKED BY VON KARAJAN. Cried the headlines, and Di Stefano announced he would sue La Scala and Von Karajan for defamation of character. Von Karajan denied he knew Di Stefano had even been signed to sing with him, and when La Scala paid Di Stefano his regular $10,000 fee despite the fact that he was not going to perform. Giuseppi simmered down. But not his friends. “Don’t let yourself be insulted by a foreigner,” they cautioned him. Quickly working himself back into a proper Sicilian rage, Di Stefano turned his $10,000 over to the Italian Opera Singers Association “to start a fighting fund to battle for the dignity and honor of Italian opera singers, who are continually pushed around.”

By curtain time last week, Italian opera fans had promised to fill the theater and boo Von Karajan right off the podium. Tenor Gianni Raimondi, who was hired to sing the role, was getting threatening phone calls for betraying his countryman. Said Di Stefano: “I’m seriously thinking of going to live in Katanga, where they are more civilized.”

Instead of booing, a packed house in Milan last week greeted Von Karajan with eloquent silence as he threaded his way through the orchestra. After the Che gelida manina aria, a few hisses mingled with the applause. Von Karajan’s slightly Wagnerian notion of Puccini had the audience stunned at first, and La Scala’s new second-act setting looked more like the Place de la Concorde than Boheme’s little Left Bank square. Still, it was a gripping performance of a great opera, and Von Karajan was honored with 18 curtain calls. “Viva, Karajan!” and “Bravo, Maestro!” shouted the audience. The whole affair seemed to prove that to Italians, grand opera counts more than politics or personalities. Or did it only demonstrate that peace at La Scala can be won by the presence of 450 cops?