The locus classicus for backstage shenanigans in the world of opera is the prologue to the jewel-like Ariadne auf Naxos, the most felicitous of Richard Strauss’s operas. Still, there’s room for other spoofs on the egos of divas, stage mothers, and histrionic personalities of all kinds you find in their orbit. Extending a recent series of Baroque gems from the archives, the Teatro alla Scala now dusts off L’Opera Seria. The libretto is by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, who scripted the verses for Gluck’s imperishable Orfeo ed Euridice and needs no introduction. The music is by the Bohemian composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who came of age in Venice and flourished in the court of Vienna. (For extra credit on the quiz, remember that Gassmann also taught the young Antonio Salieri.) His 20 operas show his flexibility in the settings of Pietro Metastasio, rock star of tragic Baroque librettists, as well as of Carlo Goldoni, who raised the impromptu slapstick of commedia dell’arte to the level of a higher art. Historically, Gassmann looks back to Gluck and forward to Mozart, which puts him in quite the sweet spot. The conductor for the La Scala revival is the Baroque specialist Christophe Rousset. The director is Laurent Pelly, a master in the comic vein. The cast includes no fewer than 11 named characters, which is a lot. One to keep an ear cocked for is Sospirio, a composer with cold feet, sung by the meltingly elegant lyric tenor Giovanni Sala. —Matthew Gurewitsch