Don Giovanni meets austere Italy at La Scala opening

1 of 3. Carabinieri policemen stand in front of La Scala opera house in Milan December 7, 2011. Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'', conducted by director Daniel Barenboim, will open for the 2011 opera season at the La Scala opera house.

Credit: Reuters/Alessandro Garofalo

By Antonella Ciancio and Ilaria Polleschi

MILAN | Wed Dec 7, 2011 8:44pm EST

MILAN (Reuters) - Don Giovanni, opera's notorious libertine, opened the season at Milan's La Scala on Wednesday to an 11-minute ovation from an audience which also had a warm greeting for the president, under whom Italy faces its most austere era for decades.

Outside, hundreds of angry demonstrators packed the cordoned-off square, waving banners and jeering the wealthy, powerful and famous arriving to see Mozart's tale of arrogance, seduction and -- usually but not tonight -- retribution.

In the flower-decked hallways of the opera house, applause greeted President Giorgio Napolitano, mastermind of a political upheaval that has seen respected technocrat Mario Monti replace scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister.

"This is my first 'first night' at a very unexpected moment of my life," said Corrado Passera, who quit as chief executive of the Italian bank Intesa SanPaolo to join Monti's cabinet of technocrats.

As Monti and his wife stood for the national anthem, protesters outside voiced their anger over the swingeing cuts to the arts and other areas of the economy in the 30 billion euro austerity package Monti's government announced this week.

Under a fluttering banner reading: "WE WILL NOT PAY FOR YOUR CRISIS," a woman who gave her name as Antonietta said people had been shocked by the sudden change in the country's fortunes.

"Only a month ago we could not imagine having a new government and being so close to losing our jobs," she said.

European leaders are meeting this week to find a way out of a debt crisis that has engulfed Greece and forced Berlusconi to resign after 17 years at the helm of the euro zone's biggest debtor, with 1.9 trillion euros in outstanding bonds.

Berlusconi, now facing trial on charges ranging from tax fraud to paying for sex with an under-aged prostitute, may have stepped down from high office.

But La Scala is betting on its "Don Giovanni" with a shock ending to seduce an audience estimated at more than a million with a performance broadcast live on television and in cinemas across Europe, the United States and Russia.

"Don Giovanni is the biggest opera ever created. He reminds us that we are responsible for our own desires," director Robert Carsen told reporters this week. "It's a mystery that nobody can explain, a game with no rules," he said.

The audience at La Scala applauded the performance with enthusiasm, apart from a few whistles for Argentinian-born music director Daniel Barenboim.

First performed in Prague in 1787 -- with Giacomo Casanova in the audience -- "Don Giovanni" is one of the world's most-performed operas. The Italian libretto centers on the charismatic libertine who meets his just deserts when he is dragged down to hell by the dead father of a girl he seduced.

In this production, it is Don Giovanni who prevails. Turning the opera on its head, the final scene ends with the serial seducer alone on the stage while his accusers and enemies descend to hell.

The cast featured Mozart specialist Peter Mattei as Don Giovanni, Bryn Terfel as Leporello, Barbara Frittoli as Donna Elvira and Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna.

"Don Giovanni is a whirlwind of energy," Canadian-born Carsen said of his first production of the opera for La Scala. "He goes on as if he were never going to die," he said.

Carsen plays with opposites, mixing tragedy and comedy, truth and falsehood, making use of effects such as giant mirrors that reflect the theatre to itself.

"This is a post-modern opera, where truth is disguised. You never know who Don Giovanni is," the director said.

Singers performed on and off stage, walking among the audience. Costumes were both modern and traditional.

The 233-year-old La Scala has increasingly tapped private investors to cope with its own economic crises, and public funds now cover only 40 percent of its budget.

But general manager Stephane Lissner appealed for more public funding this week after Monti's austerity package was unveiled. "We cannot go on like this," the Frenchman said.

La Scala has barely managed to break even this year and Lissner has warned that the opera house's future could be at risk if a global recession takes hold.

Last year, Barenboim delivered an impassioned speech in support of the arts just before the first night of the season, while artists and unions demonstrated outside against government cuts in arts spending.

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Italy bond costs set to mark new record at auction

The Bank of Italy building is seen downtown Milan, November 25, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Stefano Rellandini

By Valentina Za

MILAN | Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:31pm EST

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's five-year borrowing costs are expected to rise further above 6 percent on Wednesday, to mark a new euro lifetime high, at an auction that will provide a first test of bond market sentiment towards the euro zone after last weekend's EU summit.

Measures agreed by European leaders to strengthen fiscal discipline have not convinced markets the debt crisis will be resolved and threatened rating downgrades for euro zone states averted, or curbed yields on outstanding Italian debt.

Saddled with a debt equivalent to 120 percent of gross domestic product, Italy has seen its funding costs spiral towards unsustainable levels since taking centre stage in the debt crisis in early July.

The yield on the five-year BTP bond it will sell on Wednesday topped 7 percent on Monday, although it was able to sell short-dated debt on the same day at a slightly lower cost than the euro-era high levels seen a month before.

Italy paid 6.3 percent in November to sell five-year bonds, its highest cost of borrowing since the single currency's adoption in 1999.

The same September 2016 BTP bond yielded around 6.8 percent late on Tuesday as markets fretted over implementation of measures on the euro zone bailout fund agreed at the summit. Fears that credit rating agency Standard & Poor's will downgrade some or all of the 15 euro zone sovereigns it has on watch after the summit also kept investors edgy.

The small size of Wednesday's sale -- limited to just one issue of up to 3 billion euros -- should help it go through despite low liquidity in the markets close to year-end. But bigger tests loom in the new year.

BIG CHALLENGE IN JANUARY

Italy has trimmed the size of its auctions in reaction to market pressure but it will have to step up issuance if it is to meet a gross funding goal of around 440 billion euros next year.

"The issuance challenge for Italy in 2012 is considerable and January will provide an important first hurdle," Citi analysts said in a comment on Wednesday's auction.

Nearly 26 billion euros of BTP bonds mature on February 1, with 91 billion euros of bonds falling due by the end of April.

"ECB buying in the secondary market will help, but, if the crisis worsens, it is difficult to see how Italy will retain independent market access in 2012 and help from the International Monetary Fund may at some stage be needed," Citi analysts said.

The European Central Bank has propped up Italian and Spanish government bonds though purchases on the secondary markets since early August. Analysts say its indirect support has been key in helping purchases by primary dealers at auctions because they can sell at least part of their holdings to the central bank.

"With investors' portfolios closed ahead of year-end, the auction is a matter for primary dealers. Luckily they know they can count on the ECB," said a London-based bond trader.

Expectations measures to be agreed at the summit would prompt more aggressive ECB bond buying -- coupled with a new austerity package by the Rome emergency government aimed at staving off financial disaster -- had driven Italian yields lower last week.

But selling pressure returned after ECB President Mario Draghi dashed hopes the central bank would ramp up its purchases in response to the EU agreement on more stringent fiscal rules.

ECB sources told Reuters purchases would remain limited for the time being but analysts say a radical shift may be needed next year if the situation deteriorates.

Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco said last week that Italian borrowing costs must fall in a sustained way to around 5 percent to ensure Rome can continue to manage its 1.9 trillion euro debt.

Spain will also sell bonds this week, with up to 3.5 billion euros of 2016, 2020 and 2021 bonds due for auction on Thursday.

It sold short-term debt on Tuesday, paying less to borrow than record levels seen at a November sale, but analysts warned good demand for its 12-month and 18-month T-bills would not necessarily translate into a bid for longer-dated paper.

"This is defensive, this is balance sheet paper, there may be the odd FX reserve manager who has looked at it and picked them up ... it doesn't really tell us how the auctions on Thursday are going to go," said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London.

(Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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Don Giovanni meets austere Italy at La Scala opening

1 of 3. Carabinieri policemen stand in front of La Scala opera house in Milan December 7, 2011. Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'', conducted by director Daniel Barenboim, will open for the 2011 opera season at the La Scala opera house.

Credit: Reuters/Alessandro Garofalo

By Antonella Ciancio and Ilaria Polleschi

MILAN | Wed Dec 7, 2011 8:44pm EST

MILAN (Reuters) - Don Giovanni, opera's notorious libertine, opened the season at Milan's La Scala on Wednesday to an 11-minute ovation from an audience which also had a warm greeting for the president, under whom Italy faces its most austere era for decades.

Outside, hundreds of angry demonstrators packed the cordoned-off square, waving banners and jeering the wealthy, powerful and famous arriving to see Mozart's tale of arrogance, seduction and -- usually but not tonight -- retribution.

In the flower-decked hallways of the opera house, applause greeted President Giorgio Napolitano, mastermind of a political upheaval that has seen respected technocrat Mario Monti replace scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister.

"This is my first 'first night' at a very unexpected moment of my life," said Corrado Passera, who quit as chief executive of the Italian bank Intesa SanPaolo to join Monti's cabinet of technocrats.

As Monti and his wife stood for the national anthem, protesters outside voiced their anger over the swingeing cuts to the arts and other areas of the economy in the 30 billion euro austerity package Monti's government announced this week.

Under a fluttering banner reading: "WE WILL NOT PAY FOR YOUR CRISIS," a woman who gave her name as Antonietta said people had been shocked by the sudden change in the country's fortunes.

"Only a month ago we could not imagine having a new government and being so close to losing our jobs," she said.

European leaders are meeting this week to find a way out of a debt crisis that has engulfed Greece and forced Berlusconi to resign after 17 years at the helm of the euro zone's biggest debtor, with 1.9 trillion euros in outstanding bonds.

Berlusconi, now facing trial on charges ranging from tax fraud to paying for sex with an under-aged prostitute, may have stepped down from high office.

But La Scala is betting on its "Don Giovanni" with a shock ending to seduce an audience estimated at more than a million with a performance broadcast live on television and in cinemas across Europe, the United States and Russia.

"Don Giovanni is the biggest opera ever created. He reminds us that we are responsible for our own desires," director Robert Carsen told reporters this week. "It's a mystery that nobody can explain, a game with no rules," he said.

The audience at La Scala applauded the performance with enthusiasm, apart from a few whistles for Argentinian-born music director Daniel Barenboim.

First performed in Prague in 1787 -- with Giacomo Casanova in the audience -- "Don Giovanni" is one of the world's most-performed operas. The Italian libretto centers on the charismatic libertine who meets his just deserts when he is dragged down to hell by the dead father of a girl he seduced.

In this production, it is Don Giovanni who prevails. Turning the opera on its head, the final scene ends with the serial seducer alone on the stage while his accusers and enemies descend to hell.

The cast featured Mozart specialist Peter Mattei as Don Giovanni, Bryn Terfel as Leporello, Barbara Frittoli as Donna Elvira and Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna.

"Don Giovanni is a whirlwind of energy," Canadian-born Carsen said of his first production of the opera for La Scala. "He goes on as if he were never going to die," he said.

Carsen plays with opposites, mixing tragedy and comedy, truth and falsehood, making use of effects such as giant mirrors that reflect the theatre to itself.

"This is a post-modern opera, where truth is disguised. You never know who Don Giovanni is," the director said.

Singers performed on and off stage, walking among the audience. Costumes were both modern and traditional.

The 233-year-old La Scala has increasingly tapped private investors to cope with its own economic crises, and public funds now cover only 40 percent of its budget.

But general manager Stephane Lissner appealed for more public funding this week after Monti's austerity package was unveiled. "We cannot go on like this," the Frenchman said.

La Scala has barely managed to break even this year and Lissner has warned that the opera house's future could be at risk if a global recession takes hold.

Last year, Barenboim delivered an impassioned speech in support of the arts just before the first night of the season, while artists and unions demonstrated outside against government cuts in arts spending.

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Bond market hammers Italy, Spain ponders outside help

A union workers flag CGIL is seen in front of a bank during a protest downtown Milan, November 25, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Stefano Rellandini

By Barry Moody and Elisabeth O'Leary

ROME/MADRID | Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:37pm EST

ROME/MADRID (Reuters) - Italy's borrowing costs soared to their highest levels since Rome joined the euro on Friday, piling pressure on the newly installed government of Mario Monti at the end of a week in which the euro zone crisis tainted even safe haven Germany.

A punishing bond sale, in which Italy was forced to pay a record 6.5 percent for six months paper, came after a disastrous German bond auction earlier in the week and the leaders of France, Germany and Italy failed to make headway in tackling the growing debt crisis.

Amid signs that the euro zone contagion is spreading, indications emerged in Madrid that the People's Party, getting ready to form a government in the coming weeks, may apply for international aid to shore up its finances.

After winning an election this month, the PP under Mariano Rajoy inherits an economy on the verge of recession, a tough 2012 public deficit target, financing costs driven to near unsustainable levels by nervous debt markets and a battered bank sector with billions of euros of troubled assets on its books.

Tuesday's launch by the International Monetary Fund of a credit facility for fiscally responsible countries at risk from the euro zone debt crisis gives it a potential lifeline it may wish to exploit.

"I don't believe the decision has been made ... but it is one of the options on the table, because I've been asked about it. But we need more time and more information on the current state of things," a source close to the PP told Reuters.

Italy's auction on Friday, described by one analyst as "awful," spooked investors further and pushed two-year yields on the secondary market to an eye-watering euro lifetime high of more than 8 percent.

Longer term debt is above a "red line" of 7 percent which forced Portugal, Greece and Ireland into bailouts that Europe could not afford for the much bigger Italian economy.

Spiralling borrowing costs have added to pressure on Monti's government of technocrats, hastily sworn in this month after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was bundled out of office as economic pressures grew.

European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn threw his backing behind Monti but warned that swift action was needed to contain the escalating euro zone debt crisis.

He dismissed fears that the euro's survival was in question but said the crisis had reached the heart of the single currency.

"This contagion effect has been touching the proximity of the core and even touching the core itself," he told a news conference after meeting Monti in Rome.

"It shows that this is an increasingly systemic phenomenon, which calls for strong financial firewalls in order to contain this contagion and have a counterforce to this market turbulence."

EYES ON ECB

With the European Central Bank coming under increasing pressure to take more effective action, something it and Germany continue to oppose in public, officials suggested one possible scenario that could break the impasse.

A push by euro zone countries toward very close fiscal integration could give the ECB the necessary room for maneuver to dramatically scale up euro zone bond purchases and stabilize markets.

The ECB, which cannot directly finance governments, has been buying Italian and Spanish bonds intermittently on the secondary market since August to try to keep their borrowing costs and contain Europe's sovereign debt problem.

But Italian and Spanish yields have nonetheless reached levels that economists see as unsustainable, raising the possibility that Rome and Madrid will be forced to seek emergency international funding.

"We are not far from a point when the disruption in the markets is so big that monetary policy transmission does not work at all," said one euro zone official involved in shaping the euro zone's policy response to the crisis.

"If the ECB has the assurance that we are moving toward a fiscal union, they could be ready to go all out," he said

Belgium, which had prided itself on being able to stabilize its debt position despite having had no government for the past 18 months, saw its credit rating downgraded.

Political deadlock in Brussels prompted Standard & Poor's to cut Belgium's credit rating to double-A from double-A-plus, citing concerns about funding and market pressures, as the euro zone debt crisis continues to worsen.

"We need a reply that is clear and credible if we are to avoid the worst," Belgium's caretaker prime minister, Yves Leterme, told Belgian television.

The downgrade followed difficulties this week in Belgium's drawn-out attempt to form a government. Elio Di Rupo, leader of the French-speaking Socialists, had been trying to form a government based on a six-party coalition.

But he tendered his resignation on Monday after talks for a 2012 budget - agreement on which is a condition for forming a government - ground to a halt.

Greek, the source of the euro zone's debt crisis, provided another source of dispute.

Investors' worries intensified after reports that Greece was demanding harsh conditions from creditors on a proposed bond swap -- critical to reduce its debt and avoid default.

Banks represented by the Institute of International Finance agreed last month to write off the notional value of their Greek bondholdings by 50 percent to reduce Greece's debt ratio to 120 percent of its gross domestic product by 2020.

But Greece was demanding that its new bonds' net present value -- a measure of the current worth of future cash flows -- be cut to 25 percent, a far harsher measure than the banks had in mind, according to people briefed on the matter.

(Writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Mike Peacock)

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