La Scala opera house introduces five-minute grace period for latecomers

Opera lovers used to have a reason to panic if they were running even a minute late to a performance at La Scala. But now the famous Milan opera house is easing up on its strict rules about punctuality, reflecting concern that late patrons are getting increasingly aggressive when they are forbidden by ushers from entering the theatre.

Performances will now begin five minutes after they are scheduled to start, which will allow opera fans a few more crucial seconds to take their seats.

It is a sea change for an opera house that regularly forbade tardy theatregoers from entering, forcing them to wait for an interval. In some cases, people had to wait up to 85 minutes for a break in the action.

So well known was the rule against tardiness that the only documented exception was made in 1972, when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton arrived 10 minutes late for the opening night of Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) by Giuseppe Verdi, swarmed by paparazzi. The then head of the opera, Paolo Grassi, was incensed by the delay.

“Late arrivals at La Scala are not allowed,” he said at the time.

This week’s change was made primarily for the wellbeing of La Scala’s beleaguered staff, according to Alexander Pereira, the new general manager and artistic director.

“Every time spectators who had paid full price for expensive tickets were stopped from going in, even if they were only one minute late, they would invariably take it out on the ushers,” he told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

“Introducing this grace period means that anyone arriving more than five minutes late now has no grounds for protest.”

At the Royal Opera House in London, patrons are advised to arrive at least 30 minutes before the performance starts and are alerted 10, five, and two minutes before the curtains come up. “Latecomers cannot be admitted”, the website says.

Fred Plotkin, the former performance manager at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, said he became “a little famous” for not allowing several tardy VIPs to their seats when he was enforcing the US opera house’s policy against late entries, including Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister of India, and Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state.

“I even had money thrown at me by a desperate medical student who had been invited to the opera by his professor. Of course I didn’t touch it,” he said.