Scala-ing the Heights

June 22 (that's a wrap!): One more big experience in Milan, one that perhaps has been near the top of Cindy's wish list (and something I never dreamed I could aspire to seeing).

Yes, we had tickets for the famous La Scala, on the next-to-last night of their season. We would see Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak (we now feel an affinity for Dvorak after our spring 2022 Chorale concert), and we had really good seats with a full view of the stage.

We found a restaurant that opened for dinner earlier than the normal 7pm, as we needed to get to La Scala by around 7:30 for the 8:00 start. The restaurant was close to the opera house, so perhaps they had deduced long ago that they could attract customers like us who were accustomed to having dinner before the performance. The dinner was lovely, although the only thing we can really remember about it was the dessert, a crème brûlée that came to us all aflame:

After that, we scampered across the piazza to La Scala.

Cindy meets Rossini

Anticipation!

We climbed to our seats, which were in Box 18 (circled in blue here)

Neither one of us realized that our seats were in a box, so it was a pleasant surprise to make this discovery.

There was one person already there, and he is a true-blue opera groupie who travels between Rome, Milan, and other European opera houses to experience it all. He knew how the box seating worked , and explained that our seats were in the second "row." His seat was behind ours. Our other box mates had not yet arrived to take their front seats. Here's what it looks like:

Not the most comfortable seating, but it suffices--and it looks very classy. But I don't think I would want to watch any of the Ring Cycle performances from here...

The blue light bars are for the supertitles, which are offered in Italian, English, and I think possibly one more language.

The couple who joined us had come to Milan from Germany, which gave Cindy a chance to practice a little German in anticipation of our future days in Germany and Austria. After the intermission, they asked if we would like to change seats with them, because the husband's neck was bothered by having to sit sideways. I liked that because my back was bothering me a bit. It worked out.

The opera was based on a fairy tale about a water sprite who falls in love with a man and wants to become human. Basically, this is a classic cautionary tale that just warns "be careful what you wish for." It really didn't end well. But the music was lovely, as one could expect from Dvorak. And the evening was magical. A couple more shots from our box:

And now, some interesting facts about the Teatro alla Scala:

*It was inaugurated on August 3, 1778

*It was built under the order of Maria Theresa, ruler of Austria, who had a huge influence over much of Europe in her time

*All of the boxes--called "stages" according to the translation I read--were owned outright and could be sold, bequeathed, traded loaned, whatever. That graphic shown above, when viewed on the La Scala website, has a hyperlink for every box (stage) with the history of their owners.

*Giuseppe Verdi premiered his Requiem there, and then Otello and later Falstaff--but these were after a rocky start when the orchestra modified some of his music. 😳

*La Scala closed during WWI. In 1920 Arturo Toscanini led a council that raised money to reopen it (I think it was at this time that the City of Milan expropriated the box ownerships).

Bombed during WWII, the theatre reopened in 1946, partly through funds raised by Toscanini. *In addition to saving the theatre twice, Toscanini's entire career was entwined with La Scala. His tenure as artistic director marked one of the finest periods in the theatre's existence.

Yes, this was one of our magical top-of-the-list experiences. We left feeling euphoric and reentered the Piazza del Duomo, via the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, to see that magnificent Duomo in all its nighttime splendor. So darned beautiful!

But before we leave Milan (and there's a story coming next about that departure), I'll give you a few moments of inanity. There is a myth/story that in the Galleria one must spin on the bull's balls. What??? You may ask.

The Galleria has four regional coats of arms in mosaic on the floor under the dome: Milan, Florence, Rome, and Turin. Turin's (Torino in Italian, which means bull) coat of arms of course has a bull, and somewhere along the way someone invented a tradition that you must spin backwards three times on this bull's balls for good luck.* Of course we had to take a spin:

But I feel kind of bad about this, because a beautiful mosaic is deeply marred by this practice. Probably millions of people have done this now.

*We have seen dozens of examples of human damage to historic artifacts, from David Hume's bare big toe (see "Aye, it's Scotland now") to various boots, a boob or two, and a shiny piece of crotch armor. People (and yes, that's me too) just have to feel part of what they're seeing.

Our second night in Milan was coming to a close, so we said farewell to the Duomo, and the people gathered in cafes and gelaterias all around there and walked back to our home that would soon no longer be ours, as we were moving on.

We would be leaving early the next morning for Tirano, near Lake Como at the edge of the Italian Alps. One of our most anticipated legs of the journey was coming right up.