THE opera world is eyeing two British-based conductors as potential saviours of La Scala opera house, which has cancelled this month’s programme amid a bitter power struggle and staff revolt.

Staff voted overwhelmingly at an emergency meeting this week for the removal of La Scala’s charismatic but allegedly dictatorial director of music. Barely three months after renovations costing €60 million (£43 million) were completed, the conductor, Riccardo Muti, has cancelled performances and told his rebellious musicians: “The conditions no longer exist for us to make music together.”

As La Scala moves closer to collapse with strikes, protests, writs and plotting worthy of a Verdi libretto, eyes are turning to Antonio Pappano, music director at Covent Garden, and Daniele Gatti, music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Bologna opera house, the Teatro Comunale.

They top a list of potential successors to Muti, 64, which includes Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly, and Claudio Abbado, who was Muti’s predecessor at La Scala.

Italian opera circles are keen to see the appointment of Pappano, who was born in London to Italian parents.

Neither La Scala nor Covent Garden would comment on the pay and perks needed to attract such high-profile appointments, but it is known that a name such as Pappano would receive broadly the same package wherever in Europe he worked. Only the Metropolitan Opera in New York is wealthy enough to offer pay in excess of $1 million.

Colleagues at the Royal Opera House, where Pappano has earned the sobriquet of “Mr Motivator” for his dynamism over the past three years, are convinced that he will stay in London. Pappano, 45, has had a meteoric rise, becoming music director of the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels at 32, and making acclaimed appearances at the Vienna Staatsoper and the Met in New York. Last year he took over a production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino from Muti after the latter left in a row over scenery.

Gatti, a former guest conductor at Covent Garden, is similarly admired by critics for his fire and flair and heart-on-sleeve lyricism.

The Indian-born Mehta is considered fully stretched as chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale opera house in Florence and music director for life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Abbado, music director of La Scala from 1968 until 1986, fell ill with stomach cancer five years ago, although he has recovered. Chailly appears a more likely candidate: born in Milan, he became chief conductor of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra in that city six years ago. The British contenders are relatively young and seen as innovators. By contrast, Muti, who has been music director of La Scala for 19 years, is said to have a conservative approach to repertoire.

For the rebels the rot set in two years ago, when Muti brought in Mauro Meli, former head of the Cagliari opera house, as artistic director, with the aim of installing him as general manager in place of Carlo Fontana. Muti and Fontana had long been at odds.

Last month the board removed Fontana and named Meli as his successor. “Muti got his way, but it was a step too far,” said one opera singer.

Renato Filisetti, chairman of the parliamentary commitee inquiry into the La Scala debacle, said the row was “like the end of a love affair — a break-up so personal it cannot be mended”.

THE HOUSE

The theatre was extensively rebuilt after damage by Allied bombing in the Second World War

La Scala closed for renovation in 2002. The number of seats was increased by 216 to 2,030 — each with its own screen for the libretto in Italian, English and French. The restoration cost €60 million

The work chosen for the reopening was Salieri's Europa Riconosciuta, first played at the theatre’s inauguration

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