Opera Diary: Milan – A Visit to La Scala (In Brief)

Last spring’s visit to Milan was very special, for many reasons. Primarily, though, we seriously enjoy opera, and if Milan is a destination for tourists in general, within the city Teatro La Scala is the sine qua non for opera lovers.

We were hardly settled into our hotel (about three New York-style “short” blocks from the opera house) before we walked around to see this much-talked about and much-honored musical “shrine.”

We began with a splendid tour of the opera house. Our guide was a very knowledgeable French lady, one of the La Scala vocal coaches, and she began by telling us some of company’s history. The first part of the tour took us into several of the 180 boxes surrounding the “horseshoe” of the auditorium, and the first one was a real treat, the Royal Box, just as glamorous and swell as you would expect it to be. We were taken into and out of other boxes and then led throughout the house, into the orchestra pit (being set up for the evening’s performance), and of course much attention was given to the backstage facilities. Given that La Scala has the largest stage of any opera house in Europe, there was much to see and to learn about.

When the tour ended, we discovered a special exhibition in La Scala’s museum. Called Franco Zeffirelli – The La Scala Years, the exhibition honored not only the centenary of the great designer’s birth but his many years working with La Scala in some twenty-one productions. We knew Zeffirelli’s work well in New York, for he created eleven productions at the Met, with two of them (La Bohème from 1981 and his Turandot from 1987) still with us and both continuing to be greatly popular to Met audiences. 

Of course our Milanese opera adventure included performances. We had two. First was a brand-new (and very beautiful) production of Lucia de Lammermoor, with our MET favorite Lisette Oropesa, and Juan Diego Flórez as her Edgardo. [And, I’m happy to report, the performance is available online at the Medici.tv streaming service – click here to listen – non-subscribers to the service can stream the opera at no charge with Medici’s “free trial” subscription.]

Our second performance was Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, which had premiered at La Scala in 1896. For the current run, a beautiful 2017 production, well-suited to this glorious opera house was used. Yusuf Eyvazov sang Chénier and Chiara Isotton sang Maddelena de Coigny and the quality of the singing was – as with the Lucia – enthusiastically received.

A more detailed version of this post can be found here.