MILAN (AP) — Just earlier than an opera-ballet set in battle, La Scala’s principal dancer Roberto Bolle, basic supervisor Dominique Meyer and different members of the dance firm, orchestra and stage crew confronted the viewers because the curtain rose. It revealed a banner with the crucial: “Cease fire.”

The sentiment referring to the war in Gaza obtained a standing ovation lasting at the very least two minutes Saturday night earlier than the ultimate efficiency of the opera home’s authentic manufacturing “Madina.” It tells the story of a Chechen lady who’s manipulated to develop into a suicide bomber after she is orphaned and raped by Russian troopers.

In a title function carried out by La Scala ballerina Antonella Albano, Madina repents on the final minute and throws down her suicide vest inside a crowded Moscow café.

Albano, “Madina” composer Fabio Vacchi and conductor Michele Gamba had been additionally among the many dozens of La Scala performers and workers who stood beneath the banner.

It was the famed Milan theater’s first touch upon the conflict in Gaza, however not the primary time it has waded into the politics of conflict.

La Scala music director Riccardo Chailly held a live performance for peace in Ukraine in April 2022, with proceeds going to assist the inhabitants hit by the conflict. The theater joined others in dropping Russian conductor Valery Gergiev from its program due to his failure to distance himself from the invasion. Ukrainians later protested La Scala’s staging of the Russian opera “Boris Godunov,” for the opening of its 2022-23 season.