Candide in pants too much for La Scala

La Scala opera house is at the centre of a censorship row after it cancelled a staging of Leonard Bernstein's Candide featuring a drunk Silvio Berlusconi and other world leaders dancing in their underpants.



The historic Milan theatre, already in the spotlight this month after the tenor Roberto Alagna stormed off stage following catcalls, denied that the portrayal of the former Italian prime minister had prompted the ban. It said it had cancelled the production of the comic operetta because it was not "in line with artistic programming".

The operatic version of the Voltaire novella, co-produced by the English National Opera, is being staged in Paris this month and was due on stage in Milan next June before arriving in London.

In Voltaire's 18th century satire on the uselessness of philosophical speculation, the eponymous hero Candide meets five former kings on his travels. In the new staging of the operetta, directed by Bristol Old Vic-trained Carsen, actors wearing masks of Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, George Bush, Vladimir Putin and Mr Berlusconi perform a drunken dance dressed only in ties and underpants in their national colours.