Opening Night at La Scala

Tonight is the opening night for the opera season at La Scala, one of the glitziest events in the Milan social calendar, apart, of course, from Fashion Week. Opening night is always held on 7 December, the feast day of St. Ambrose, Milan’s patron saint. This year’s production is Verdi’s “Attila”, his ninth opera. But the importance of this occasion extends well beyond Milan, as it will be broadcast live on televisions across Italy as well as in France, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Switzerland.

Opening night at La Scala remains one of the most indelible memories of my early days in Milan. I had only moved to Italy about a month earlier, and I was still trying to navigate my way through a strange country and a foreign language. It was a lucky year, as Saint Ambrose’s feast day, a holiday for Milan, fell on a Monday, followed the next day by the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a national holiday. With an unexpected four-day weekend, I took the opportunity to explore my new city and do some holiday shopping. I just happened to walk past La Scala in the early evening and was amazed to see bright lights and televisions cameras, paparazzi, men in tuxedos and women in fur coats and diamonds. I joined the crowd around the piazza outside, trying to get a glimpse of the VIPs as they made their way into the theater. Later, I said to an Italian friend, “I guess something big is going on at La Scala tonight.” He looked at me, completely dumbfounded, “Something big???!!! It’s opening night!”

La Scala is one of Europe’s most famous opera houses and a landmark in Milan. In 1776, the original opera house, the Royal Ducal Theater, caught fire and burned to the ground during Carnival celebrations. At the time, the Lombardy region was under the rule of the Austrian Empire, and residents asked Empress Maria Theresa to commission the construction of a new building. She chose the site of the Church of Santa Maria alla Scala and had it deconsecrated and demolished, providing the new theater with its name. The architect was Giuseppe Piermarini, and it is for this reason that locals often refer to the theater as “La Piermarini”. The new opera house was officially opened in 1778 with a production of “Europa Riconosciuta” by Antonio Salieri. 

The original neo-classical design included 6 tiers of boxes for patrons. When aristocrats purchased a box, they were entitled to decorate the interior as they chose, an opportunity to show off their wealth and position. Those who could not afford the boxes could stand on the floor level, as there was no seating. Like most theaters in the 19th century, it also served as a casino, with gamblers carrying out their business in the foyer during the performance, often making it difficult to hear the production. In 1840, author Mary Shelley observed, “The theatre of La Scala serves, not only as the universal drawing-room for all the society of Milan, but every sort of trading transaction, from horse-dealing to stock-jobbing, is carried on in the pit; so that brief and far between are the snatches of melody one can catch.”

A feature that remains today are the “loggioni”, or galleries above the boxes. These are the cheap seats, near the ceiling, filled with the “loggionisti”, or the truly passionate opera fans who regularly attend. They can be brutal critics, and if the performance isn’t up to their standards, they are sure to make it known. In 2006, French tenor Roberto Alagna was booed off stage following his opening aria as Rademes, in “Aida”, which forced his understudy, Antonello Palombi, to replace him mid-scene. Palombi didn’t even have time to change into costume, coming on stage dressed in jeans. Alagna has never returned to La Scala. Even Luciano Pavarotti has had to face the wrath of the loggionisti: in 1992, his performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo was booed.

La Scala was the first theater in the world to be illuminated by electricity. On 26 December 1883, at the much-anticipated premiere of Ponchielli’s “Gioconda”, the audience stared in amazement at the effect of the 2,450 electric lights. Giuseppe Colombo was the engineer/entrepreneur behind the project. He had travelled to the U.S. the previous year to meet with Thomas Edison and participate in the opening of the first electric power plant, the Pearl Street Station in Manhattan. The two engineers worked together to design a power plant for Milan, the first in continental Europe, to which Colombo had obtained exclusive rights.

Along with Turin and Genoa, Milan was hit particularly hard during the Allied bombings of WWII. In the early hours of 15 August 1943, a bomb fell directly on the roof of La Scala, almost completely destroying it. After the war, reconstruction efforts were launched with a concert held amidst the wreckage, the audience sitting on simple chairs. It was completed in record time, opening on 11 May 1946, with a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Toscanini had a long association with La Scala, where he was the conductor from 1898 to 1908, returning to take the position of musical director from 1921 to 1929. After angering Mussolini’s fascist government, he moved to the US shortly before war broke out in Europe, becoming the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and a household name in his new country. He conducted his first NBC broadcast concert on 25 December 1937, in NBC Studio 8-H in Rockefeller Center, which was converted into television studio in 1950. It has been home to NBC’s Saturday Night Live since 1975.

La Scala recently underwent a major renovation, closing for nearly two years not long after the 2002 opening night performance of “Otello”. This renovation added 214 seats to the hall and extended the stage and backstage areas, allowing sets for up to three operas to be stored at one time, as well as installing an electronic libretto system in the seats, so spectators can follow along in Italian, English, and the original language. It reopened on St. Ambrose Day in 2004, once again staging “Europa Riconosciuta”, conducted by the world-renowned Riccardo Muti.

La Scala’s history is linked to some of opera’s most important composers and artists, hosting the premieres of Bellini’s Norma, Verdi’s Nabucco, Otello, and Falstaff, Boito’s Mefistofele, and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and Turandot. I finally had the opportunity to attend an opera at La Scala in 2013, but, alas, not for opening night, when tickets go for thousands of dollars. My husband and I saw Don Carlo in 2013, another experience of La Scala that I will never forget.

If you are interested in reading more articles about Italian language and culture, check out my blog at marymanning.net/blog.

Photo 2: La Scala's neo-classical exterior. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Photo 3: The famous conductor, Arturo Toscanini. Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Photo 4: Giuseppe Verdi. Photo credit: BBC Music