The venue’s artistic director, Isaak Karabtchevsky, said recently: “I was there when the opera [house] burnt down and each year that passes I am even less optimistic about the reopening. I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime.”Countess Barbara di Valmarana, president of the Friends of La Fenice, said: “We visited the building site last month after having not seen it for ages and it was so depressing seeing how little had been done. It might seem strange, but I [am] almost relieved because we have got rid of this uncertainty. Either they work or they don’t, and if they don’t work we get rid of them.”.

Russia retaliated last night against the United States after Washington said it would deport 51 Russian diplomats in the biggest mass expulsion since the height of the Cold War. The Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov announced the expulsion of 50 US diplomats. Russia retaliated last night against the United States after Washington said it would deport 51 Russian diplomats in the biggest mass expulsion since the height of the Cold War. The Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov announced the expulsion of 50 US diplomats.
The Russian news agency Itar-Tass earlier warned the Russian response to the American move would be “ingeniously unpleasant”. An unnamed American official said earlier that the US was expelling the diplomats partly in retaliation for the case of Robert Hanssen, the veteran FBI agent accused of spying for the Soviet Union and then Russia for 15 years.Sergei Prikhodko, a foreign policy aide to President Vladimir Putin, said: “Any campaign of spy mania and searching for enemies brings deep regret. This is a fallback to the Cold War era.” Mr Ivanov, said Russia would review its position carefully before it responded.An American official said six Russian diplomats were being expelled because they were directly involved in obtaining information from Mr Hanssen. Another 45 diplomats would be asked to leave by the summer because of their role in intelligence gathering.There has not been a bigger expulsion of Russian diplomats since several rounds of tit-for-tat moves in 1986.

Those ended after the Soviet Union withdrew 260 Soviet staff from the US embassy in Moscow. Whether Russia is now considering using a similar tactic is not clear.Russia’s security services might expel “hundreds” of American diplomats, said a source quoted by Ria-Novosti news agency. It claimed that 190 Russian diplomats worked in Washington compared with 1,100 American diplomats in Moscow.An American official said the real figure was between 650 and 700 diplomatic staff in Russia. The agency said that if Russia wanted to expel a proportionate number of Americans “Russia would have to expel hundreds of employees from the US embassy”.

The American ambassador, James Collins, had pre-arranged talks at the Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday but made no comment on the present crisis.Why the embassy in Moscow is so large is hard to explain. In 1986 it had 251 diplomatic staff, of whom other embassies estimated about one-third were engaged in spying.The biggest tit-for-tat expulsion between Britain and the Soviet Union was in 1985 when 31 Soviet diplomats and journalists were expelled, including a 25-man KGB station, after the defection of the former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky.The expulsion of the Russians is a sign of increasingly icy relations between Russia and the US since President George Bush took office. Washington has been dismissive of Russia’s pretension to be a great power and has publicised its belief that diplomatic engagement with Russia is not essential to its interests.Mr Putin is playing down the recent spy scandals. Speaking before the news of the expulsions broke, he said: “I think we should cut out theatrics. New administrations always revise the policies of their predecessors.This is true of all countries, and the United States is no exception.” Yet the election of Mr Bush increases the risk of the US breaching the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Russia sees as essential to the balance between the world’s two main nuclear powers.Russia is also angered by a planned meeting between American officials and Ilyas Akhmadov, the Chechen Foreign Minister.