Day: December 12, 2021

Italy’s La Scala has postponed its ballet season premiere after a coronavirus outbreak in its ranks, just days after the famed Milan theater staged its high-profile opera season opener with a full-capacity audience.

At least one of the four ballerinas who tested positive for COVID-19 also appeared in the Dec. 7 premiere of the opera Macbeth.

Ten other people linked to the outbreak tested positive for the virus, all of them theater support personnel, including someone who worked in the hairdressing department, the theater said in a statement.

Italian health authorities placed several other people in quarantine because they were in close contact with those confirmed infected, La Scala said.

La Scala Theatre Ballet was scheduled to perform La Bayadere to open its season on Dec. 15. The performance has been pushed back until Dec. 21.

The 19th century ballet is based on a score by Ludwig Minkus and choreography that Rudolf Nureyev debuted with the Paris Opera ballet in 1992. La Scala’s performance of the ballet marks the first time the Nureyev Foundation has allowed another company to perform it.

The opening of La Scala’s opera season is considered a highlight of Italy’s cultural calendar and took on added glitter this year after the 2020 edition was televised due to the pandemic.

While the Dec. 7 performance officially launched La Scala’s opera season, the theater staged pre-season operas, ballets and other events for several months, one of the few European houses to resume regular, full-capacity performances.

Italy, like other countries in Europe, is seeing an increase in new coronavirus cases as cold weather sets in. The country reported 20,000 new cases Friday.

However, the latest wave so far is more contained in Italy than in other European nations, and the country’s daily death toll has generally stayed below 100 for months.

Officials credit 85% of Italy’s population over age 12 being fully vaccinated, as well as continued mask mandates and health pass requirements to access workplaces, restaurants, museums and theaters.

Source: Voice of America

Six years ago today, nearly 200 nations signed the Paris Climate Accord, where they agreed to keep the rise in global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Scientists say that threshold is an absolute minimum to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.”

As he wound up the recent COP26 in Glasgow, Guterres had that harsh warning for the 200 countries who had gathered to talk climate change — and how to slow it down.

Hanging over the summit was the deadline of 2030 for a drastic reduction of greenhouse emissions that was set six years ago at COP21 in Paris.

Former executive secretary of the U.N. Climate Convention, Christiana Figueres, remembers it as a historic event.

“It was a real breakthrough for the United Nations to have a completely unanimous, legally binding pathway for decarbonizing the global economy,” Figueres said.

Secretary of state at the time, John Kerry signed that agreement for the U.S.

“It really was an exciting moment when 195,196 countries come together simultaneously, all wanting to move in the same direction, understanding the stakes,” Kerry said.

2015 was the hottest year on record. Scientists pointed to that as sure proof that global warming was real and serious.

But that record keeps on getting broken as the planet gets hotter year by year.

The World Meteorological Organization says the planet has been propelled into uncharted territory, with rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and “relentless” extreme weather events.

The WMO warns that “extreme” weather is the new normal.

Nonetheless, both Figueres and Kerry remain optimistic.

“We are moving in the right direction,” Figueres said. “The question is the timing, and I do feel that everyone came out of Glasgow with a renewed sense of timing.”

Kerry is now President Biden’s special envoy for climate.

He was back in Paris this week as part of a whistle stop tour of Europe to reassure leaders the U.S. is back in the game, after former President Donald Trump shut the door on climate issues.

“No one country can save this. Everybody has to act,” said Kerry.

That was also perhaps the main takeaway from the Glasgow summit — as developing nations pleaded with their richer neighbors not to be complacent with what has been achieved, but to keep pushing hard to meet that 2030 deadline, to save the planet.

Source: Voice of America