La Scala

Leonard Louis Lavender, the opera cabbie of the Main Line, wants to demonstrate how he got his idea of "service with a show," so he ushers me into the backseat. There's more legroom there, and it's the spot where his mystery passenger had ridden six years earlier. "I was to pick the client up at 4:30 in the morning at the Conshohocken Marriott," he says. "She had to go to the airport. " He nudges a CD into the dashboard player, and the music begins softly: a soulful Italian accordion, a bed of strings, a harp, then the unmistakable tenor of Luciano Pavarotti.

Two days and two concerts follow the Philadelphia Orchestra's concert in Milan's Teatro alla Scala, but in reality, the musicians' European tour peaked here. Geneva and Paris will be concerts; La Scala was an epiphany. Milan is music director Riccardo Muti's other artistic home. In other theaters on the tour, his name has been posted outside the dressing rooms, written on a sheet of Philadelphia Orchestra stationery. In La Scala, his name is on the door of the office that once was Toscanini's.

Opera fans heckled, shouted down, whistled and generally disrupted Wednesday's season premiere at La Scala in Milan, Italy. The reason: Luciano Pavarotti was not in Elisir d'Amore, as advertised. It wasn't clear why he wasn't. Some said he had a cold, others said he had those dreaded artistic differences with conductor Guiseppe Patane, who drew his share of rude shouts from the audience. So did Welsh singer Marie McLaughlin ("You are an amateur!") and director Andree Ruth Shammah ("Buffoon!"

Drama, passion at the opera, intrigue, betrayal, a star-crossed moment, a king topples, a star rises - a chorus swells. And that was before the curtain went up yesterday at the storied annual opening of the La Scala opera house in Milan. Because when the curtain rose, the lead tenor in Guiseppe Verdi's masterpiece, Don Carlo, was not the famous Guiseppe Filianoti, the singer listed in the program. No! It was Stuart Neill, who, until his marriage ended a few years ago, lived in Haddonfield, a graduate of the Academy of the Vocal Arts, and a regular performer in concerts around the world and the region.

Milan and Muti. Flint and tinder. Whether Riccardo Muti is conducting the opera at Teatro alla Scala, where he has been music director for just a year, or conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra at La Scala, the sparks and flames leap up right away. It was true last night, when Muti led the Philadelphians in their first performance together here since he added the theater to his list of directorships. Sold out for weeks, the concert was a special addition to the theater's orchestral season, which begins next week.

La Scala. Those words conjure an image of the world's most famous opera house, the glittering jewel of Italian vocal history in otherwise gray, gloomy Milan. The house's orchestra has toured America before, supporting operatic productions and Verdi's Requiem, but its last visit to Philadelphia as a symphonic entity was led by no less than Arturo Toscanini way back in 1921. Expanded into an ensemble for playing orchestral repertoire as well as opera 25 years ago by Claudio Abbado, and more recently by Riccardo Muti, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala will visit tonight with Italian conductor Riccardo Chailly at its helm.

Cramped subterranean pits were long ago accepted as the best place to keep opera orchestras. Subservient to the enormous egos roaming about on stage, these anonymous accompanists have grown used to finding a conductor's discouraging hand in their faces with a gesture asking for less. But Friday night, opening the Kimmel Center's visiting-orchestra series, one opera orchestra deservedly had the audience asking for more. Generously, and with great style, they gave it. Riccardo Chailly led the Filarmonica della Scala in two hours of Respighi, Nino Rota and Wagner with tenor Ben Heppner, and then rewarded listeners' cheers with 20 minutes of Verdi and Rossini encores.

The operatic life and times of Riccardo Muti, music director for the last 20 years of world-renowned opera house La Scala in Milan, appears to be entering a new chapter. The embattled former music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra is ready to resign, his wife, Cristina Mazzavillani, said in an interview with Vanity Fair's Italian issue, published yesterday. This is not too shocking: The maestro's entire house walked out on him last month and demanded his removal. Muti has courted controversy because of his iron-fisted control over La Scala.

When Stuart Neill's name flashed across movie theater screens worldwide during a December global simulcast from the opening night of La Scala opera house in Milan, those who had heard him over 15 years in every conceivable Philadelphia venue were likely to ask two contradictory questions: What on earth is he doing at La Scala? Then, upon hearing his fully matured Verdi tenor voice: Why hasn't he been there all along? "It's interesting, isn't it?" the 44-year-old tenor says in a voice packed with understatement - the sort not likely to be heard from him in Verdi's hell-defying Requiem on Sunday with the Mendelssohn Club at the Kimmel Center.

Columbus' voyage may have been as financially shaky as that of Milan's Teatro alla Scala, but the opera orchestra and chorus matched Columbus' determination Wednesday when they performed at Carnegie Hall as part of Italy's observance of the Columbian quincentenary. Riccardo Muti led the orchestra and chorus in the first of two performances of Verdi's Messa da Requiem. Those performances were all that survived from an originally planned grand tour with staged productions of Bellini's I Capuletti ed i Montecchi and Verdi's La Traviata in Washington, and performances of the Requiem in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York.

Rob LaScala, whose flagship restaurant is the casual, family-friendly LaScala's at Seventh and Chestnut Streets, is launching side-by-side Italian concepts a few blocks away. Earlier this year, he bought the adjoining Old City restau-clubs Paradigm and Dolce. The Paradigm side has opened as Rocchino's (239 Chestnut St., 215-238-6900), a smart-looking spot, named after his mother's side of the family, with brick walls, a curved bar with moderately priced beers and wines, booths and table seating, and a mammoth, colorfully tiled coal-fired oven that fires up pizzas, pastas, and the like; it's billed as a rustic small-plater, but portions, especially pastas, are decent.

Leonard Louis Lavender, the opera cabbie of the Main Line, wants to demonstrate how he got his idea of "service with a show," so he ushers me into the backseat. There's more legroom there, and it's the spot where his mystery passenger had ridden six years earlier. "I was to pick the client up at 4:30 in the morning at the Conshohocken Marriott," he says. "She had to go to the airport. " He nudges a CD into the dashboard player, and the music begins softly: a soulful Italian accordion, a bed of strings, a harp, then the unmistakable tenor of Luciano Pavarotti.

Julian Rodescu, 58, who parlayed a busy vocal career and a deep love of music into a day job helping young musicians reach the next career level, died Saturday. A large man with a tender heart and gentle mien, Mr. Rodescu was a familiar sight around Broad and Locust Streets, where he would often settle in with a cell phone to conduct business as artistic director of Astral Artists, an organization providing professional development for promising classical talent. He had assisted the two-decade-old group in its early days, and assumed the role of artistic director in 2009.

Salvatore Licitra, 43, a tenor known in his Italian homeland as the "new Pavarotti" for his potent voice and considerable stamina, died Monday after spending nine days in a coma following a motorscooter accident in Sicily. Catania's Garibaldi Hospital, announcing the death, said he never regained consciousness after sustaining severe head and chest injuries in the Aug. 27 accident. The hospital said Mr. Licitra's family agreed to make his organs available for transplant. "His passing in the fullness of his career hurts," the La Scala opera house wrote in its announcement of the death.

If there's a gift to be had from the Metropolitan Opera's wildly checkered season, it's the lack of consensus on any given event. Operagoers don't know whom to believe anymore - they have to believe themselves. So even though Rossini's Armida was limp on every front when heard on April 19 in the opera house, the HD cameras might well work some sort of wizardry for the finale of the Met's movie-theater simulcasts at 1 p.m. Saturday in seven area locations. The production might have been the ultimate star vehicle for Renee Fleming, 51, if her voice still suited the music.

When Stuart Neill's name flashed across movie theater screens worldwide during a December global simulcast from the opening night of La Scala opera house in Milan, those who had heard him over 15 years in every conceivable Philadelphia venue were likely to ask two contradictory questions: What on earth is he doing at La Scala? Then, upon hearing his fully matured Verdi tenor voice: Why hasn't he been there all along? "It's interesting, isn't it?" the 44-year-old tenor says in a voice packed with understatement - the sort not likely to be heard from him in Verdi's hell-defying Requiem on Sunday with the Mendelssohn Club at the Kimmel Center.

Drama, passion at the opera, intrigue, betrayal, a star-crossed moment, a king topples, a star rises - a chorus swells. And that was before the curtain went up yesterday at the storied annual opening of the La Scala opera house in Milan. Because when the curtain rose, the lead tenor in Guiseppe Verdi's masterpiece, Don Carlo, was not the famous Guiseppe Filianoti, the singer listed in the program. No! It was Stuart Neill, who, until his marriage ended a few years ago, lived in Haddonfield, a graduate of the Academy of the Vocal Arts, and a regular performer in concerts around the world and the region.

Sally Paxson Davis, 68, of Radnor, chairwoman of the Academy of Vocal Arts, died of leukemia July 4 at Waverly Heights in Gladwyne. Mrs. Davis had led the board of the academy, a tuition-free opera training school in Philadelphia, since 2001. During her tenure, students won numerous international competitions and received contracts for leading roles at opera houses, including the Metropolitan, La Scala, and Convent Garden, said K. James McDowell, the academy's executive director.

Opera, staged or in concert, has been an intermittent and not especially well-adjusted visitor to the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. No mystery why: Operatic needs are numerous and specific in ways that don't sit well in an all-purpose venue. And opera in any setting has so many components that budgets go up and prospects of total success down. So respect and gratitude are in order for the Philadelphia Orchestra's coming so far out of its comfort zone to present a concert performance of La Boheme on Tuesday under Rossen Milanov, even if amid so many compromises you wondered if the effort was worth it. Arguably the world's most lovable opera, Puccini's La Boheme tells a story about starving young artists creating, loving and dying in Paris that not only has hugely appealing drama seamlessly integrated into a masterful score, but holds up under endless hearings and less-than-wonderful performances.

This time last year, the Metropolitan Opera's foray into high-def simulcasts in movie theaters across the country was a quixotic experiment. Now, the second simulcast season, opening tomorrow with an all-star performance of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, feels like an institution - with Washington Opera, La Scala and no doubt others catching on to the idea. Despite reports of considerable technical glitches in venues (and some customer-care deficits in local theaters), tickets are sought heatedly in advance, and even one of the larger venues, Philadelphia's Riverview Cinema, was almost sold out days before tomorrow's Romeo.