A flash mob waves Ukrainian flags as La Scala features a Russian opera for its gala season premiere

MILAN — Milan's storied Teatro alla Scala celebrated its gala season premiere Sunday with a Russian opera for the second time since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year, instead of drawing protests for showcasing the invader's culture, a flash mob demonstrated for peace.

La Scala's music director Riccardo Chailly conducted Dmitry Shostakovich's ''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' for the gala season opener that draws luminaries from culture, business and politics for one of the most anticipated events of the European cultural calendar.

Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli was joined by the senator for life Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, and Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in the royal box.

Shostakovich's 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin's Soviet Union, and was blacklisted just days after the communist leader saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.

A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration removed from the La Scala hubub that aimed ''to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by (President Vladimir) Putin's Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.''

The party underlined that Shostakovich's opera exposes the abuse of power and the role of personal resistance.

Another, larger, demonstration of several dozen people in front of city hall called for freedom for the Palestinians and an end to colonialism, but was kept far from arriving dignitaries by a police cordon. Demonstrations against war and other forms of inequality have long countered the glitz of the gala season premiere.

Chailly began working with Russian stage director Vasily Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the 2022 gala season premiere of the Russian opera ''Boris Godunov,'' which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom separated Russia's politicians from its culture.

But outside the Godunov premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture during a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture. The Ukrainian community did not announce any separate protests this year.

Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich's ''Lady Macbeth" at La Scala for just the fourth time ''a must.''

''It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,'' Chailly told a news conference last month.

La Scala's new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich's ''Lady Macbeth'' and Modest Mussorgsky's ''Boris Godunov " at the theater best known for its Italian repertoire.

An American soprano makes her La Scala Debut

American soprano Sara Jakubiak made her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she dies. It's the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich's Katerina is full of challenges.

''That I'm a murderess, that I'm singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,'' Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. ''You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?' But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we're just going to go for the ride.''

Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was ''squeezing'' Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer's intent.

''Whenever I prepare a role, it's always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,'' she said. ''First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we're actually somewhat similar in that regard.''

Stage direction highlights Stalin's end

Barkhatov, who at 42 has has a flourishing international career, said ''Lady Macbeth'' is a ''very brave and exciting" choice.

Barkhatov's stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin's regime, rather than a 19th-century rural village as written for the 1930s premier.

For Barkhatov, Stalin's regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place.

Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as ''a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.''