Coming up: The Loggione

"What's on at La Scala?" Richard asked.
"Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers."

"What the hell is that?

"Cherubini's longest opera and his last."
"Cherubini?"
"Luigi Cherubini—the German composer."
"What??"
"Just kidding," I said. "I guess they've run out of operas by Verdi and Mozart and Handel and Puccini. I looked it up on Wiki. The opera premiered in 1833 and was "not successful." Translation: it bombed. And La Scala did it again in 1963. Negative reviews."

"Just our luck to be in Milan when they're dredging it up again," he said.
"It's like a vampire. That opera should have died. But tickets are selling well anyway. My guess is the scalpers buy them up, no matter what, and sell to tourists like us. Why else do you think they'd schedule something like this opera during tourist season. No matter what they do, the tickets will sell."
"Maybe it's like Springtime for Hitler, designed to lose. Or to showcase something you couldn't do in any other opera? How much are the tickets?"

"Good ones, which aren't very good anyway, would cost 500 Euro for two."
"Let's skip it," Richard said.

From Wikipedia:

Performance history of Ali Baba. 

It was premiered in Paris on 22 July 1833. It was not successful, with Hector Berlioz calling it "one of the feeblest things Cherubini ever wrote."^[2] It ran for five performances.^[1] Felix Mendelssohn discussed the opera in his letter of 25 December 1834 to Ignaz Moscheles, stating, that Cherubini was so craven to serve the new style en vogue in Paris at that time.

It was resurrected by La Scala in 1963 but again faced negative reviews.^[2] A live recording was made and was subsequently issued.

The overture has found a place in the concert repertoire for symphony orchestras.

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     Last time I was in Milan, my ex and I bought tickets from a scalper on the street who showed the location to us on the seating chart. We knew nothing about La Scala but thought they looked OK. I can't remember what we paid—a lot. The opera was Linda di Chamounix. Haven't heard of it? Neither had we. It was colorful; the singing was great. 

     But the seats were the most uncomfortable I've experienced since I flew to Europe on a Freddie Laker charter forty-five years ago. I'd almost forgotten Sir Freddie. Looking him up, it seems he was a trailblazer of the concept of economical air travel. The seats were jammed into that plane, possibly more jammed than they are today. I remember vividly when the woman in front of me put her seat back and her blonde head was in my lap. She rolled her eyes up and said, "Sorry, but.." In defense, I had to push mine back. The woman behind me groaned and pushed hers. On and on the groans continued as we strangers put our seats back and all realized the hell we were in for the next nine or eleven hours, whatever the time was. It seemed interminable. All we had to ease the pain with was alcohol—the whole plane was half-drunk so the line-up for the bathrooms filled the aisles. 

Freddie Laker left British United in 1965 and formed his own Laker Airways, in 1966, initially operating charter flights with a pair of turboprop planes acquired second-hand from British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). The livery was a mixture of black and red with a bold LAKER logo on the tailplane. He offered a new, revolutionary concept of economic air travel requiring passengers to purchase their tickets on the day of travel as well as to buy their own food. These flights were operated by Laker Airways and marketed under the Skytrain trademark. 

     Our La Scala seats were separated by a pillar that obstructed most of my ex's view of a sliver of the stage. We changed seats at intermission so I had the worst view for the second half. We kicked ourselves thinking we'd been had by the scalper. I've learned since that most of the seats in the hall range from poor to horrible. 

     The opera was long—three hours or more, and it was hot, sweat running-down-your-face hot. We could see only a little piece of the stage, the left upper third. Mostly, we looked at the curtain and the set unless there was a bit of unorthodox stage direction that called for one of the cast to drift way, way out of the center sight-line into our view.

     "Hey, I see someone! Something must have gone wrong," my ex whispered. I started to laugh and

couldn't stop. I had to leave, climbing over people, apologizing and laughing at the same time. So my ex started to laugh and he couldn't stop either. We both ended up in the hallway laughing that weird laugh when you're out of control and nothing will do until you just laugh it out. We must have looked insane.

     Thanks to modern technology, now you can see the view (non-view) from your prospective seat on one of those great camera things on the La Scala website. I worked my way through the seats starting with the most expensive available, through to the cheapest. As far as I could see (pardon the pun) there are few decent seats in the whole theater.

     So, how to have a La Scala experience with minimal discomfort? I decided I'd like to buy stand-up room in the loggione for forty euro each. Richard isn't enthusiastic so far. We can buy space at the last minute and if we get bored or uncomfortable, we can just leave. We might even get to boo, something I don't think I've ever done, even when we saw Jerry Lee Lewis playing Iago in the rock version of Othello. And that's something. 

"The theatre has more than 3000 seats organized into 678 pit-stalls, arranged in six tiers of boxes above which is the 'loggione' or two galleries. The loggione is typically crowded with the most critical of customers, who can be ecstatic or merciless towards singers. Even though these are the cheap seats, the most passionate opera fans stand back here and cheer or boo. 

La Scala's loggione is considered a baptism of fire in the opera world, and fiascos are long remembered. In 2006, tenor Roberto Alagna (pictured) was booed off the stage during a performance of Verdi's Aïda, forcing his understudy quickly to replace him mid-scene without time to change into a costume."