Some tremors amid the tremolos

This was supposed to be a glorious season for La Scala, the world’s most celebrated opera house, which triumphantly emerged from a three-year, multimillion-dollar renovation to resume its place as the jewel in Europe’s musical crown.

Instead, three months after its gala re-inauguration, the fabled theater in Milan is awash in labor strife, canceled performances and bitter artistic recriminations. Its immediate future is in jeopardy.

Nearly 700 La Scala musicians, stagehands, dancers and other employees are demanding the ouster of star conductor and musical director Riccardo Muti. He is holding his ground and has the support of the theater’s board of directors. The Italian government has suggested that it may have to intervene and has appointed a parliamentary committee to investigate. Milan’s culture commissioner quit in disgust.

While the essence of the dispute involves differences between Maestro Muti and members of the orchestra and staff over style, vision, politics and artistic priorities (not to mention ego), the trouble at La Scala reflects a wider crisis in opera companies in many parts of the world.

As sold-out houses suggest, opera remains a cherished art. Yet its audiences are aging while state subsidies are shrinking.

“The problems at La Scala seem bigger because it is the most famous [venue], but all opera houses are in [financial] trouble,” said Maria Delogu, a critic for the Italian magazine L’Opera.

“Even the normal life of these theaters, with so many personalities, is very delicate,” she said in an interview. “So many people have to be in harmony in an opera house, from members of the chorus to technicians to the conductor, that if other problems arise, such as over artistic sensibility, then something explodes.”

Things began exploding at La Scala last month when the Teatro della Scala Foundation’s board of directors fired general manager Carlo Fontana. Fontana was favored by employees but had clashed with the powerful Muti, and the board’s action was seen by some as support for Muti over the desires of the staff.

The board replaced Fontana with Mauro Meli, La Scala’s theater director and a longtime ally of Muti.

The theater’s main unions hit back. Complaining they had been excluded from the decision-making, they have staged a series of strikes that have forced the cancellation of several productions, including the March 10 company double-bill premiere of German-born 20th century composer Paul Hindemith’s “Sancta Susanna” and “Il Dissoluto Assolto,” a modern take on the Don Juan story by Italian composer Azio Corghi and Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago.

The musicians and other workers protested what they described as Muti’s heavy-handed, autocratic style and described him as a prima donna. The firing of Fontana, they said, was the last straw because it showed that Muti could get rid of whomever he chose.

In a tense meeting, nearly 700 employees voted to demand Muti’s ouster, as well as that of Meli and the entire board of directors.

“The meeting rejects the attempt to shift responsibility for the ungovernability of the theater,” the unions said in a statement.

Another of Italy’s performing-arts luminaries also weighed in. Franco Zeffirelli, the film and opera director, accused Muti of acting as “absolute dictator” of La Scala. Muti is “drunk with himself, drugged by his own art and his own personal vanity,” Zeffirelli told the British newspaper the Guardian. “He’s become a caricature of a conductor.”

Faced with mutiny and a crescendo of criticism, Muti has limited his public response to a letter published on the front page of the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In it, he reminded his audience that it was the musicians who first asked him to take over the struggling La Scala operation nearly 20 years ago.

He said he had guided the orchestra and chorus to an excellence “universally acknowledged and admired.” “I have always been on the side of La Scala, which means the side of the workers who bring La Scala to life with their labors and their passion,” Muti wrote. “How can La Scala workers have forgotten my struggles with them against the threats from our rulers to cut arts funding, to suppress music teaching in schools, to bring cultural institutions to their knees and to render their very existence precarious?”

He concluded with what some have interpreted as a veiled threat: “In the absolute certainty that La Scala will endure for as long as our society needs the arts and music, and that artists, who are not irreplaceable, at a certain point have to bow out, I thank and salute you all.”

Beyond the feud itself, Muti put his finger on the concern that grips most of Italy. The “maelstrom,” as he put it, is playing out “to the certain detriment of the image of La Scala.” And that, perhaps, could not have happened at a worse time.

The gilded neoclassical theater, once home to Verdi and Puccini, reopened on Dec. 7 amid glittery fanfare and civic jubilation after a three-year hiatus for a major overhaul. It was the venue’s first complete renovation since it was built in 1778 at the behest of Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who ruled Milan at the time.

La Scala is nothing short of an artistic icon in Europe, a focus of passion for the Milanese and pride for all Italians. Opening night, known as “La Prima” and always held on Dec. 7, the day of Milan’s patron St. Ambrose, is considered the cultural highlight of the year in a country awash in culture.

The renovation, at a cost of nearly $80 million, involved polishing the old and bringing in the new. It included installation of a layered parquet floor and reflective paneling on loges to dramatically enhance acoustics. In addition, seat backs now have computer screens to provide translations of the librettos.

Seating has been expanded and stage machinery modernized, both with a view toward accommodating more productions and larger audiences. Part of the bad blood between Muti and Fontana reportedly involved disagreement over how to bring more revenue to the financially troubled institution.

La Scala has been operating at a deficit, and the Italian government this year slashed its performing arts budget by about 25%, including some subsidies for La Scala.

Opera critic Delogu, who is also an official with the Democratic Left political party, predicted that money is only going to get tighter, as regional governments are given more control over their budgets as part of a nationwide “devolution” plan for decentralizing authority.

In contrast to Milan and the wealthier north, for example, a troubled southern city like Naples might be hard-pressed to allocate large sums to its famous San Carlo opera house when local unemployment, crime and poverty rates are soaring. San Carlo, regarded as the oldest working theater in Europe and fabled for its splendid acoustics, suffers from money and labor woes arguably worse than La Scala’s.

It is the crisis at La Scala, however, that has grabbed everyone’s attention. City and national officials are clearly worried. Politics are further complicating the dispute: Milan’s City Hall, which owns La Scala, is controlled by right-wing parties; the unions are mostly left-wing.

While the parliament holds hearings into the matter, Milanese officials have proposed the appointment of a mediator to attempt to bring the sides together before more damage is done.

The government “fervently hopes that all those involved will be able to express their points of view,” Arts Minister Giuliano Urbani said in a statement, “in such a way as to safeguard to the full La Scala’s prestige and history.”