La Scala’s opening night is the most glamorous event on the annual arts calendar. This year’s opening is high stakes though: “The first is the recent announcement that its standing-room area, lair of the claque and wellspring of disruptive booing, will be permanently closed – a brave, if not foolhardy, step that has excited enormous antagonism. The second is that January 27 will mark the centenary of the death of Giuseppe Verdi. – The Telegraph (UK)