This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome Lorenzo Fiore, my correspondent to Giuseppe Verdi's opera, opening the La Scala season within these last days, and Lorenzo attended because it's across the piazza from his club. And attendance was sparkling according to the photographs of the

Washington Post so we're going to ask Lorenzo to it very much characterized the excitement here the

Washington Post headline is very very ironic the Scala's gala season premiere, vanquished bad luck vibes around long absent Verdi opera.

This is La Forza del Destino.

It ends very unhappily, very unhappily.

However, I know that every time Verity plays, I cheer up. And I've been listening to the opera on YouTube, and it cheered me up.

So Lorenzo, thank you for guiding me.

We're having a world of bad news these days, one, two, three, four wars, and more promised in the new year.

So it's a treat to spend time at La Scala in my imagination.

La Scala opens with La Forza del Destino.

It says that it's a four-hour opera. Is that correct?

Hello, Lorenzo.

Hello, John, and hello to all the radio listeners.

Correct, correct.

The opera is a very long opera, four hours.

We started at 6 p.m. and we finished by 10 p.m.

So it's a very long opera, but I can tell it was fantastic.

I had the lucky to attend the first premiere and just to underline the success of this

opera, 12 minutes of claps to everybody, starting from the singer to the director of the

orchestra, the orchestra, the director of the opera, the choreography director,

those that makes the dresses of the singer and the chorus, those that made the lights.

The opera is a very an epic, it's a drama, a very dense drama, which talks about the unreasonable matter of war.

...