Alexander Pereira has gone through his share of trials as artistic director of La Scala. He was nearly blocked from starting his job in 2014 when the Italian authorities questioned the legality of purchasing four productions from the Salzburg Festival. More recently, in March, he inflamed the theater’s advisory board and local politicians by courting the Saudi culture minister as a sponsor.
The minister, Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, had pledged a total of 15 million euros (about $17 million) with the promise of becoming a board member. La Scala’s administration rejected the deal and is to decide late this month whether to renew Pereira’s contract, which expires in the spring of 2020.
The house will continue with plans to collaborate with the government of Saudi Arabia on converting an all-girls’ school in Riyadh, the capital, into a coed music conservatory that will include ballet, instrumental teaching and a choir. The facilities, for 600 children, are scheduled to open in November.
At home in Milan, Pereira has increased private sponsorship for La Scala by 8 million euros since 2014 — relieving the house of a 6 million-euro deficit when he arrived. The company receives a third of its approximately 123 million-euro budget from public funding (compared with more than half at the state operas of Vienna and Munich).
Pereira, a 71-year-old Austrian, is known as a savvy fundraiser. As director of the Zurich Opera House from 1991 to 2012 and during a short tenure at the Salzburg Festival from 2011 to 2014, he placed an emphasis on new productions.
In Milan, he has increased opera performances and has concentrated growth in the autumn months: In 2012, the house used to run three productions from September to November; now there are five. With its doors open to the public on more evenings now, the house has seen a rise in the number of visitors — from 360,000 in 2012 to about 420,000 — but also a slight drop in the attendance rate, to 88%.
Together with his music director, Riccardo Chailly, Pereira has both cultivated the house’s illustrious Italian tradition and pushed programming in new directions.
He scored a victory at this year’s International Opera Awards in London when Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Fin de Partie” (Endgame) — originally commissioned for the Salzburg Festival and premiered in Milan in November — was named world premiere of the year.
The upcoming season features 11 new opera productions, including a double bill of the 20th-century composer Luigi Nono’s azione scenica in two parts, “Intolleranza 1960”— which will be performed at La Scala for the first time — and Schönberg’s monodrama “Erwartung” (Expectation). Continuing a Puccini cycle that draws upon the most recent scholarship, Chailly opens the season in December with “Tosca” in a staging by Davide Livermore. The conductor also presides over his first Strauss opera at the theater with “Salome.”
Pereira spoke by phone just after Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” (The Dead City) received its first performance in history at La Scala. “It was one of the biggest triumphs that we’ve had,” he said. “So I’m relatively motivated.”
The following conversation has been translated from German, edited and condensed.
Q: How have you struck a balance between the theater’s native tradition and introducing new repertoire?
A: If you are heading Milan’s famous La Scala, then you have a responsibility to consider what is part of its tradition. The theater was opened in 1778 — at a time when there was no opera house in Vienna or Berlin. But the danger is to derive everything from this tradition.
We try to stretch La Scala as wide as possible because one tends to situate Italian repertoire only between Verdi and Puccini. To present worthy operas that were written before and after is important.
Q: It must be a difficult time for opera for Italy, given shrinking public funds.
A: That is the big challenge of running this house. I have to spend my time collecting money.
If I only look in Italy, I reach a limit. And the question arises: Who else might want to finance an institution of worldwide importance?
Politically, one could wonder whether the European Union would be interested in La Scala. But that is much too long term. If I want to solve a problem in the short or midterm, then I have to find private money.
Who is investing in Europe at the moment? The Saudis, the Chinese, the Russians.
Q: You weren’t concerned about the cultural differences if a Saudi native had joined the board?
A: In the big European banks, if there is one [foreign] board member, the board does not break into shambles. If seven of 10 members were, then it would probably play a role.
But the important thing is that, in a country that has been without music education for 50 years, a conservatory is being founded. And the people who want to make this conservatory possible are surely not the worst in the world.
Q: Must Europe prepare itself for a future in which cultural institutions are more dependent on private sponsorship?
A: I don’t think that public funds will increase. The money has to come from somewhere. That’s why one has to build a strong private-public partnership.
And galvanize the audience to buy as many tickets as possible. La Scala finances itself through almost 70% of its own earnings.
One has to believe in the power of renewal. Theaters put on fewer productions because they think they have to save money. One closes down ballet ensembles. Total nonsense! On every evening that a ballet is not performed, I have an empty theater.
Q: Are there any bitter feelings that next season could be your last at La Scala?
A: We’ll see what happens. I have planned [the program] until 2022, which is in my contract.
I am a person who always looks forward and not back. Of course there were disappointments. But all in all, I am very grateful for this time in Milan because I have the feeling that I could do a lot for the house, not just nationally but internationally.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.