La Scala is a world famous opera house in Milan. It was inaugurated in August 1778 and was originally called Nuovo Reggio Ducale Teatro alla Scala. The first production on the stage of the theatre was Antonio Salieri's Acclaimed Europe. Over the past 200 years, almost all of Italy's great opera singers and a huge number of celebrities from all over the world have performed on the stage of La Scala. Today La Scala is considered one of the leading opera and ballet theatres in the world. The theatre's season traditionally begins on December 7, the Day of Saint Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan.
The Museum of La Scala Theatre, accessible through the theatre foyer, houses a collection of paintings, sketches, statues, costumes and other exhibits relating to the history of the theatre and opera in general.
In 1776, a terrible fire destroyed Milan's Teatro Reggio Ducale theatre. Immediately afterwards, a group of wealthy citizens who had their own boxes in the theatre wrote a letter to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria asking him to build a new theatre to replace the burned one. The neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini worked on the design of the new building, but his first draft was rejected. Only some time later Empress Maria Theresa approved a slightly modified idea of the architect.
The new theatre was built on the site of the church of Santa Maria alla Scala - hence its modern name. The architects Giuseppe Piermarini, Pietro Nozetti and Antonio and Giuseppe Fe worked on the construction of the building for 2 years. The new La Scala had a seating capacity of over 3,000 spectators and its stage was already then one of the largest in Italy (16.15 m x 20.4 m x 26 m). The costs of building the theatre were offset by the sale of boxes, which were richly decorated by the owners (one of the first, for example, was Stendhal). La Scala soon became a meeting place for the noble and wealthy of Milan, but less wealthy spectators could also visit the theatre - for them the so-called "loggione" was provided. Like most theatres of the time, La Scala also had a casino, with players housed in the foyer.
La Scala was originally lit by more than a thousand oil lamps, and in case of fire, several rooms of the building were filled with hundreds of sump pumps. The oil lamps were later replaced by gas lamps, and those, in turn, by electric ones in 1883.
In 1907 the building of La Scala was restored and the number of seats was slightly reduced to 2800. During World War II the theatre was seriously damaged by air strikes, but in 1946 it was rebuilt and reopened. The first post-war production was a concert under the direction of Arturo Toscanini, a pupil and associate of the great Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini.
