The bare brick farmhouse has been coated in orange stucco and its front door re-sited apparently for visitor convenience. The stated intention is to encourage cultural tourism - but this is cultural vandalism on a Visigothic scale. Elsewhere in Busseto, important Verdi sites are sealed up and decaying. Only the living-room of his patron, Barezzi, is preserved intact. Bergonzi rightly fears that ham-rich Parma is about to steal the Anno Verdi birthright.
Public investment runs into billions of lire.
The Teatro Regio has been gutted and rebuilt to resemble an arena of Verdi's era, in which the orchestra sat at the same level as the audience. The festival will be opened on January 27 by the indefatigable Valery Gergiev, importing his Kirov chorus and orchestra. Renata Scotto has been recruited to train young Italian soloists and Cagli predicts that by 2013, the bicentennial, Parma will serve as the nursery of Verdian renewal. The notable nay-sayer among its participants is the largest local opera house, which has studiously chosen to open the Verdi year with an opera by Wagner. The Teatro Communale in Bologna was Wagner's first foothold in Italy, and Verdi himself went there in 1871 to see Lohengrin .