Court rules ballerina sacked for revealing anorexia among dancers must be rehired by La Scala

Mariafrancesca Garritano blew the whistle on the widespread problem of eating disorders in ballet in 2011

Mariafrancesca Garritano is still waiting for a call from La Scala managers (Getty Images)

La Scala has been ordered to rehire a ballerina sacked for claiming the prestigious opera house was responsible for eating disorders among its dancers.

Mariafrancesca Garritano, 37, told the Observer in 2011 that one in five ballerinas in the company was anorexic and others bulimic, with 70 per cent of her colleagues left unable to have children after their menstrual cycles stopped.

She revealed that while training as a teenager, the dance instructors would call her ‘Mozzarella’ and ‘Chinese dumpling’ in front of her peers, leaving her struggling under the pressure of perfection.

“I reduced my eating so much that my period stopped for a year and a half when I was 16 and I dropped to 43 kilos,” she said, adding that she still suffers from “serious intestinal pains and frequent bone fractures” as a result of intense dieting.

“I would get by on an apple and a yoghurt a day, relying on adrenaline to make it through rehearsal. Some dancers were rushed to hospital to be fed through tubes, others were hit by depression and still need counselling today.”

Garritano’s whistleblowing in interviews and her book The Truth, Please, About Ballet led to her firing for bringing the company into disrepute in 2012, but the Supreme Court in Rome has now ruled that the decision was unfair.

La Scala is refusing to comment on the written court order since its issuing on Friday but Garritano, who uses the stage name Mary Garret, is determined to return to the stage.

“All I am waiting for is a call from La Scala,” she told local Milan paper Il Giorno. “Already in 2014 [when she won a court appeal], I expected to be rehired after two years of interruption. Now I expect the same thing. I never stopped working on my physical condition to be in the best condition possible when the moment came.”