1.   The tour has been timed to allow visitors to attend the opening night of the Verona opera season.

2.   And at Barga there is a first-class summer opera season.

3.   Associated Press Laid-off metal workers demonstrated in Milan before the opening of the opera season at La Scala.

4.   But the next opera season will take place anyway, albeit in the Halle aux Grains.

5.   Despite those disruptions, the opera season was a success, with record box-office receipts.

6.   For Debussy, of course, there was apparently no such thing as a perfect opera season.

7.   Opening night of the opera season is as close as any U.S. city gets to old-world elegance, non-Hollywood glamour and blue-blooded wretched excess.

8.   Tanglewood is not an opera company running an opera season, and it cannot compete with places that are.

9.   The opera season that just ended was plagued by bad labor relations, financial problems and sometimes awful reviews.

10.   Placido Domingo and Waltraud Meier received standing ovations and several curtain calls in a triumphant opening of La Scala opera season Wednesday night.