The La Scala Opera House

The Teatro alla Scala is one of the most renowned opera houses in the world, and is Italy's crown jewel of the arts. Even if you have only a passing knowledge of opera, odds are, you know a name connected to the history of this legendary cultural hub. Read the show notes here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from house
stuff Works dot Com. Hello Love Podcast. I'm Holly Frown
and I'm Tracy Wilson. Tracy question, Yes, do you're like opera?
I would like to like opera? Right, Well, I love opera,

(00:25):
but I'm always a little bit um reticent to verbalize
that to people that know a lot about opera, because
what often happens is that they're then like excited and
off at a gallop, wanting to talk about like different
performances and you know, some very technical things, and I'm
kind of like, no, I just like to listen to it.
But I'm not really what you would call an opera scholar,
even on the most mild degree. But I really enjoy it.

(00:48):
And there are a lot of aspects of opera that
are actually inner daily lives and we don't even know
about um. And today we're going to talk about a
very famous opera house that has a legacy that touches
Probably anyone hearing this is life, whether they realize it
or not. If you grew up watching Bugs Bunny, if
you grew up watching television or film, you have heard

(01:08):
some of the work that came out of this sort
of hotbed of you know, really amazing cultural development. I
will make a brief aside about how one of them
got involved in my wedding, sort of when we get
to that part and we're talking about the La Scala
Opera house a La Scala, which is one of the
most renowned opera houses in all the world. It is
Italy's crown jewel of the arts. Really, But as I said,

(01:31):
even if you only have a passing knowledge of opera,
or really you don't think you have any knowledge of opera, odds,
are you know a name or two connected to the
history of this legendary place, Because it's one of those
amazing icons that really actually touches and sort of ties
together a lot of different pieces of history on the timeline.
So there are things that you may not associate with

(01:51):
opera that we'll kind of get connected here. So we
will start with how it got built in the first place.
On February six, eleventeen seventy six, the Royal Ducal Theater
burned to the ground in a fire. Since the theater
had really been the heart of opera in Milan, they
needed to build a replacement, and at the time, the
Royal House of Austria was actually ruling over Milan, and

(02:15):
Empress Maria Theresa spearheaded this plan to replace this lost
cultural landmark. And again to place Maria Theresa in context,
she was the mother of the famed Queen of France,
Marie Antoinette, as well as the mother of the Holy
Roman Emperor Leopold the Second. She had many many other
children and really kind of uh populated a lot of

(02:36):
royal houses throughout Europe. So that's the first person who's
kind of connected to this that you might not have
known about. The architect chosen for the task of designing
the new opera house was Giuseppe Pimarini. Pimorini is now
considered one of the great Neo classical architects, and he
was no stranger to high profile gigs. He had also
worked on the Royal Palace of Milan as well as

(02:59):
the Maria to raise the hall of the Broadens National Library,
also in Milan, and the cost of construction for this
new theater was funded by the people who had actually
already owned private boxes in the destroyed Ducal Theater, and
in return these donors got renewed ownership of their boxes.
So in the new theater, they would once again have
a box, as well as partial ownership of the land

(03:21):
where the theater was built. And prior to the theater
going up, the Church of Santa Maria alas Scala had
been standing on that land and had to be demolished
to make way for the new facility, and the name
uh La Scala was retained as a way to kind
of honor that church. It took a little more than
two years to build the new building, and on August three,

(03:45):
seventy eight, Milan's new opera house, Teatro alla Scala, which
translates to the theater at the Stairway, opened its stores.
The first opera performed there was Antonio Salieri's Euroba Revealed.
Mattie over Azzi wrote the libretto, which centers on the
story of Zeus's former lover Europa. The plot begins with

(04:06):
Europa being kidnapped but just before her wedding and forced
into marriage with the King of Crete. After lots of
dramatic twists and turns, Europa is placed on the throne
of Tire, although she quickly turns over the seat of
power to essay Oh and his new love Semila after
she performs their marriage, and so h Loscala continued to

(04:27):
offer operatic performances to great success for many years. So
again that was late seventeen hundreds when it reopened its doors,
or when it opened its doors to replace the previous theater.
But then in the early eighteen hundreds there were several
developments that happened that really sort of changed the complexion
of Lascala's artistic offerings and their focus. First, in eighteen twelve,

(04:49):
an opera by Joachino Rossini debut and it was called
The Touchstone. It was the story of love tested by
multiple suitors, with a libretto that was written by Luigi Romanelli.
This sparked a move to what's called opera syria or
serious opera, and the style focuses more on the solo
voice and bel canto or beautiful singing, although that's not

(05:10):
what it was called until a whole lot later. To
explain bocanto, will quote New York Times music writer Anthony Thomasini,
who wrote the following in two thousand eight, and it's
narrowest since belcanto opera refers to the early decades of
nineteenth century Italian opera, when Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti dominated
the field, but the overall concept of belcanto started much earlier,

(05:33):
with a consensus among opera enthusiasts that there was nothing
more ravishing than a beautiful voice singing a beautiful melodic
line beautifully, especially a melodic line driven by sensitive musical
setting of a poetic and singable text. So whereas prior
operas had really included more chorus and orchestra elements, uh
this style kind of put those in the background. It

(05:55):
favored a single exquisite voice for pieces of performing, and
Rossini's opera was instantly successful, and it was performed dozens
of times over the course of its run. With Opera
Syria now at the forefront of Malone's opera culture, Rassini
had lots of additional works performed at Las Scala over
the next thirteen years. These included ill Turco in Italia

(06:18):
or The Turkey in Italy, his version of Cinderella Il
Barbieri to Sivilia, or The Barbara of Seville, which you're
familiar with if you've watched Lots of Bugs, Bunny and Otello,
among others. So as a brief aside, I will tell
you that the Rabbit of Seville is my absolute favorite
bugs Bunny cartoon of all time. I also love What's
Opera Dock, But in the opera arena, the Rabbit of

(06:39):
Seville just works for me, largely because of all of
the great Um Charlie Chaplin callbacks they do so much.
So that is still from that cartoon is what was
on my wedding invitations. That's all I'm saying. So I
owe a little bit to Rossini there. The other significant
development for Las Scala during this time was the staging
of several ballets Salvatore Vigano and Carlo Blassie and Vegano

(07:03):
shifted the focus of ballet to a narrative style with
his choreography. In this case, the dance told a story
in one arc, rather than just being a series of
sort of well staged movements. His choreo drama, as it
came to be called, had been developed in Vienna before
he debuted to Italian audiences, and once he started having
showings at La Scala, it became very very popular, and

(07:24):
he ended up working at the famous opera house for
more than fifteen years, and during this time while he
was there, he staged, among others, Otelo didalo la Vestal
which is the Vestal Virgin and Itani which is the Titans.
Carlo Blassie was a dancer and a student of Vigano,
and in addition to continuing this narrative tradition of his

(07:45):
mentors choreography, he was also rigorous in systematizing the technique
of ballet. He performed all over the world as a dancer,
and he wrote his first treatise on dance while working
in Milan with Las Scala in eighteen twenty. His most
famous writing on the art was The Code of Terpsickory,
and in addition to advancing ballet technically, Lassie also promoted

(08:07):
the idea that artists could be cultured and familiar with
all of the arts, not just their own. Yeah, he
really kind of fostered this idea that any dancers who
were working with him needed to also be reading literature,
they needed to be studying music, they needed to be
really well rounded kind of Renaissance people in that regard.
Um and the work of both Vegano and Blassie established

(08:28):
Las Scala in the world of ballet as well as
the world of opera, uh where it had already been
succeeding and it sort of built its reputation as a
theater were just excellence prevailed amongst all manner of the arts.
So during that time too, particular composers became just prolific
at Las Scala. The first was Gaetano Donizetti, and he

(08:51):
premiered his opera Shiarra a Sara Fina in October of
eight two. The libretto was by Felice Romani. Because the
work had just been rushed due to all kinds of
problems and illnesses among the production members, the reception was mediocre.
In spite of that, he continued to produce work for
Las Scala as well as for many other opera houses

(09:12):
for years afterward, including an opera entitled Lucrezia Borgia. He
continued to serve the popularity of the bel canto style. Yes,
since I know we have a lot of Borgia fans
in the listening audience on to make sure they knew
that there's an opera about Lucrezia. Uh. The other important
composer from this time is Vincenzo Bellini, and he debuted

(09:34):
his opera Il Perata or the Pirates in seven at Lascala,
and Bellini's signature was really his amazing talent for writing
vocal melody that's been characterized as both pure and sensuous,
and his influence as a parent throughout the world of opera,
following him in the works of many other famous composers,
including Wagner, Chopin, and liszt So. While the entirety of

(09:58):
La Scala is very fluential, he in particular influenced several
composers that came after him, like Donizetti. Bellini was another
artist who was linked to the belcanto style, although Bellini
is generally believed to be the more gifted of the
two in the area of vocal harmonies. Yes, some of
his work is just really beautiful to listen to. And
like I said, I you know, my knowledge of music

(10:21):
theory and opera is very limited, but I still just
him always struck by how absolutely beautiful some of these
pieces are. Uh. And then there isn't we get to
a time when another really huge name that everyone will
probably recognize that attached to Lascala kind of emerges and
that is uh. In eight thirty nine, Oberto Conte di

(10:42):
San Bonifacio, the Count of San Benefestio, debuted at Lascala
and This was the first work of Giuseppe Giuseppe Verdi
to do so, and it kicked off a very long
career for him and many years of debuts by the
composer at the famed Milan Opera House, and in fact,
uh Verdi is usually the most famous composer associated with Luscala.

(11:03):
Everyone sort of recognizes his name, even if they couldn't
maybe pull one of his tunes out of their memory.
Verity and Loscala became deeply linked to a degree beyond
that of any other composer. While working on his first opera,
he lost his infant daughter, and the second baby that
he had with his wife, a son, died roughly a
year after the debut of Oberto. It said that when

(11:27):
Verdi's wife died while he was working on his second
opera and the work Giorno di Regno or King for
a Day was not well received, it was the manager
of Luscala at the time who urged him to continue
composing and to find solace in his work instead of quitting,
which he had threatened to do. Yeah, so in that regard, Bartelreli,

(11:49):
who was the the manager of the theater at the time,
really kind of saved the creative life of verdi Um
and impacted him in a in a sort of reciprocal
way to the way that many of these composers were
impacting the opera house, because if he had quit, oh,
we would have been robbed with some beautiful stuff. Uh.
And while that second opera, uh Jeana Dao or King

(12:13):
for a Day didn't go so well, his third work
that he did after that, Nabuco, debuted in eighteen forty two,
and this was really like the moment where he sort
of rocketed to stardom. And that may sound like a
weird phrase, but I mean at this point, particularly in Italy,
in Europe in general, but Italy especially, composers were kind
of like rock stars. I mean, they were basically the

(12:33):
celebrities of the day. And so his career really just
uh kind of shot on a almost vertical trajectory at
this point. And as a consequence, his career with Loscala
lasted more than fifty years. He did retire for a
little bit in the towards the end of it, and
then he ended up working on his last couple of
pieces as collaborations with another composer. But he sort of

(12:56):
became famous and then stayed famous for decades working with Loscala.
Perhaps his most famous opera, which was the Tale of
enslaved Ethiopian Princess Aida, was rare and that it didn't
premiere at Las Scala. It was first presented at the
Cairo Opera House in eighteen seventy one, and then it
premiered at La Scala shortly afterward. Yeah, there's a story

(13:18):
that he did not attend the Cairo Opera House premiere,
but what he heard about how it had gone did
not really delight him. It was mostly um dignitaries and
invite only and kind of higher echelonda society. And he really,
you know, appreciated that opera was one of those things
that could be appreciated by anyone. Uh. And so he

(13:40):
really sort of considered the La Scala premiere the premiere
because there were people from all layers of society, not
only they're sort of wealthy and famous and privileged. Uh.
And among the famous pieces that Verdi did debut at
La Scala during his fifty year run there were Giovanna, Darco,
Otello and Falstaff, which was the last one. And he

(14:00):
wrote more than two dozen operas during his career, So
when you think about a fifty year career, that's an
opera every couple of years, uh, which is really quite
uh busy. I can't I certainly can't imagine doing it.
But that would be like an author writing a book
every two years, which some do, but very few keep
up that pace. Often mentioned a second only to Verity

(14:20):
among Italian composers, Puccini emerged as the composer celeb of
Lascala as the eight hundreds were ending, but he is
responsible for one of the most famous, if not the
most proud incidents at the theater. In December of nineteen
o four, Jacomo Puccini debuted Madama Butterfly. Although the opening

(14:41):
night was really something of a fiasco, and the word
fiasco gets used almost every time someone writes about this
particular event. Uh. It's a rather famous tale among opera
enthusiasts and opera fans because it's just so crazy. Uh.
And while Puccini was brimming with confidence regarding the qual
pity of this particular work, the production itself was played

(15:03):
with problems, as the opera was only recently completed. When
Puccini arrived in Milan for rehearsals, The singers got their
parts only a few pages at a time. On top
of that, music was not allowed to leave the theater,
and the press was not allowed to sit in on rehearsals,
which was the privilege they had enjoyed for a long time.
This only served to make critics angry and predisposed to

(15:26):
dislike the piece. And while the crowd on opening night,
according to at least some witnesses, was hostile from the
get go, the entrance of Butterfly is really when things
tarted to just go south in a hurry. And remember
that um opera huge in Italy at the time. Crowds

(15:49):
very familiar with the work of famous composers, and so
a portion of the melody that she sang sounded to
some people similar to an element from Puccini's previous work
La bo M, and some members of the crowd started
to call out what they felt was lazy composing, and
they started yelling during the performance bo M bo M

(16:09):
because they were trying to point out that he was
sort of plagiarizing himself. At this point, the crowd became
polarized between supporters and detractors, and attend he started yelling
at each other in the stage so much that no
one could hear the singing, and during the intermezzo, when
performers had been placed around the theater with bird whistles
to create this realistic soundscape of dawn breaking, Heckler's in

(16:33):
the audience saw this bird song as their cue to
make other animal noises, so they you know, started doing
all kinds of other bizarre and rude noises and just
basically kind of having their own little heyday with things.
And the entire opera went on this way, uh, with
an unruly crowd basically bent on ruining the debut. And

(16:54):
there's some debate over sort of what really caused the
sort of rabble rousing. Uh. There are some stories that
say that Puccini's rivals sort of were working prior to
this debut really trying to like jab at the critics
and point out how poorly they have been treated in
not being allowed into rehearsals and kind of stirring the pot.
But others just say, like there there was just this

(17:15):
general sense of distrust of the whole thing, in part
because of that and because nobody had heard the music.
This was again a time when it was so popular
that sheet music would be sold kind of to the
general public to consume, much the same way you would
buy an album of a band that you were going
to see before the concert happened, and none of that

(17:37):
was allowed since the music had been held so tightly.
So it was kind of just this perfect storm of
people being grumpy about the premiere of Madama Butterfly. I
feel like it's like Spider Man Unlock the Dark, except
to the best of my knowledge, no one died in
terrible stunts. I don't think anybody died in Spider Man,
but there were some injuries. So the reviews were terrible.

(18:01):
But Puccini always thought that Butterfly was his best work,
and when he staged it the following year in the
northern Italian city of Brescia, people created it much more warmly.
It's really come to be recognized as the amazing work
that it is. Um sort of transcended that horrible opening,
and even despite the Butterfly incident, Puccini was really much

(18:22):
loved by Italy, and when he died uh some time
later in ur while he was working on his final opera, Toronto,
the entire country really mourned. Suddenly been described this as
a morning that went on for a couple of years.
They really felt the loss of this artist. So we've
talked a lot about composers up to this point, but
there have been other figures who had a significant impact

(18:44):
on the development and direction of Las Scala through the years.
Our Turo Toscanini was appointed artistic director of Lascalan in
eighteen ninety eight, so as uh, you know, Verity's stuff
was wrapping up and Puccini was coming in uh and
Toskin Toscanini was renewed own as a conductor. He said
to have stepped in to conduct a performance of Aida

(19:04):
at the Rio de Janeiro Opera House as a last
minute fill in when he was only nineteen, and he
performed the entire opera from memory, and he had a
wonderful memory that apparently served him very well as he
got older, because he lost his eyesight and had to
start conducting exclusively from memory. But in terms of his
leadership role at Las Scala, he completely reorganized the entire

(19:26):
structure of the theater, both from an artistic and an
administrative perspective. He restaged many of the works of the
opera house's most famous composers, and his interpretations reinvigorated a
lot of pieces for the public. Ear He said to
have been able to pull the finest playing from the orchestra.
He also brought the performance of symphonic works into Lascala's

(19:49):
performance calendar, which allowed the orchestra to be the star
instead of the singers. Yeah, similar to how you know
the choreographers had have expanded Las Scala's repertoire to include ballet.
He really expanded it by not only staging operas but
also just huge symphonies. Uh. And then in more recent years,

(20:12):
Las Scala has had some off stage drama to contend with.
At the end of two thousand one, the theater concluded
its run of Hotelo and it temporarily closed its doors
for a pretty significant renovation. So from two thousand to
January two thousand to to late two thousand four, this
major construction project was underway, and there were really a

(20:33):
lot of fears uh among Italians and even worldwide among
people that were just huge fans and recognized the historic
and important nature of Las Scala that modernizing this facility
was going to destroy some of the building's heritage. Despite
the concerns, this entirely rebuilt stage let the theater perform
three different shows in a single day, and the sound

(20:55):
quality of the venue was improved when the heavy hallway
carpets were taken away. Seating capacity was expanded to two thousand,
one hundred five seats from one thousand, eight hundred and
during the restoration, a walled over fireplace was found in
one of the boxes along the second level, and the
boxes which used to be privately owned were all refurbished. Yeah,

(21:17):
they tried to um even though they were modernizing a
lot of stuff. They did sort of some complete kind
of historical restoration type decor and some of the boxes. Uh.
And on December five of two thousand four, the New
York Times reported that Lascala had reopened exactly on time,
just a little bit over budget, and with fantastic new acoustics.

(21:37):
So this all sounded great. Uh. The theater opened with
the staging of the same opera which had run when
it first opened its doors in Saliaris, Europa, rick On Shuda,
and tickets for this performance ran into the thousands of
dollars range. People were very excited, uh to be part
of this new reopening. But just a year later, the

(21:58):
BBC ran a story that seemed to suggest a gloomy
future for the opera house. Budgets for the arts in
Italy were being splashed, and Las Scallet's future really didn't
seem all that secure. And the months preceding that article,
the head of the theater had been fired and the
conductor of fifteen years, Ricardo Muti quit. Uh. Yeah, Look,

(22:19):
there was a while where there was a lot of
head shaking and um, you know, sort of glowery faces
and people really thinking that La Scala had finally been
you know, after two d years kind of run into
the ground. But in fact, thankfully the theater has weathered
the storm. Uh, you know, through some some strong leadership
and some really devoted staff, it's been able to kind

(22:41):
of get through those rough times and put together business
plan that's kept it going. Uh. It's about to have
a planned change of leadership this year this coming October
went Stefon Listener, who has been there for a while,
is going to leave his position. He's going to the
Paris Opera Uh, and Alexander Pereira is going to take
over the position. He comes from. I believe an opera

(23:03):
house in Germany in addition to its theatrical opera productions.
Lascala also still houses its ballet company, a ballet school,
and a voice school. While the theater still does get
a government subsidy, the operating costs are also covered by
ticket sales and the municipal tax. So yeah, it's still
thankfully going strong. And it's one of those things I

(23:26):
wanted to cover because it is the artists that we're
sort of supported by this theater where have been so
impactful and and like I said, there are so many
songs that you hear that you don't even realize are
by composers that came out of Lascala, So it's important stuff.
Do you also have listener mail? I do have a
couple of pieces of listener mail. Uh. One is from

(23:49):
our listener Devon, and she was writing us about um
uh in response to our Battle of Blare Mountain episode,
but she's actually writing us in response to the listener mail,
and she is uh. You both mentioned owning some very
old sewing machines and said that relatively little maintenance is
required to keep them happy. I was wondering if either
of you could suggest any resources for light maintenance on

(24:11):
vintage or antique machines. I have a deluxe precision sewing machine,
a clone of a Singer fifteen made in post World
War two Japan, and I'm having trouble with the upper
thread tension and have yet to find any useful advice.
It runs beautifully otherwise and was acquired cheaply. And my
understanding is that many many of these machines were made
under all kinds of brands, including Macy's and Sears. Mine

(24:31):
is branded simply Domestic, which I find very amusing and
I would like to be able to use it more.
I would suggest wherever you are at UH, doing an
online search for sewing machine service, and I would actually
shop around. Make sure you find somebody that UH is
familiar with all machines. You are exactly right. There are
many clones that were made UH, as we talked about

(24:53):
in our sewing machine Patent episode UH once the combination
patent had appened, and there were a lot of companies
that were sort of licensing, making different pieces of it,
and even making whole machines that were kind of duplicates
of some of these UH. Sometimes you get very lucky
and you'll find a sewing machine UH serviceman who will

(25:15):
do house calls, which is handy when you have one
of these bigger, older machines. I used to have a
guy here in Atlanta who was amazing, and he would
do fifteen bucks a machine for any number of machines
at your house. Like, so I'd be like, I have
these four, they all need some work, and it would
be a sixty dollar service call. And everything worked perfectly
when he left and then he retired, and I cried, um,
But that's the scoop. I would look for a good

(25:36):
service person in your area, even though it's probably something
you can do yourself, if you're pretty crafty or you know,
kind of mechanically minded. With something that old, I always
like to get a pro involved first so they can
coach me through how to maintain it going forward. Mine
right now needs a new belt, So that's a scoop. Uh.
The other one is from our listener Catherine, and she

(25:56):
sent us a link to an article I just absolutely love.
She says, High Holly and Tracy, I ran in quotes
across this article see what I did there online, and
thought what you might be and thought that you might
be interested. I believe at least one of you mentioned
that you are a runner. Maybe I am Tracy has been.
I don't know how much she's running lately, but we
have we have run a half marathon together. So uh,

(26:19):
in any case, looks like shin splints afflicted humans along
before the current running craze, if only they had been
fitted properly for a pair of running shoes. And she
linked to this great article which is in Runners World,
but it is called a case of medieval shin splints
and basically, um, there was an article in Acta Orthopedica,
which is an orthopedics trade journal, and these researchers for

(26:43):
the University of Athens School of Medicine had studied the
skeleton that had been found in a Byzantine graveyard in Rhodes, Greece,
and they found that it had a medio tibial stress syndrome,
which we know more commonly as shin splints. And the
rees cher's talk about kind of the uh, the age

(27:03):
of the gentleman. He was between twenty and thirty years
old when he died, and they estimate his death on
the timeline between five and eight hundred years ago. And
even ocean splints are most you know, believed to be
thought of as exercise induced. They're basically, you know, any
the result of any kind of repetitive weight bearing activity.
So this could have been, uh, you know, anything that

(27:25):
involved repetitive loading of the lower legs, so it could
have been like pushing a plow or doing some other
sort of heavy farm work. But it was kind of
a fascinating thing. And we'll linked to this article because
it is a it's a short but really fun read,
and it links to the the Actor Orthopedica article if
you want more in depth medical stuff. Uh. And then
they make a Jeff Galloway joke, which if you are

(27:48):
a runner you will appreciate. If you would like to
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(28:11):
you can go to our parent website, which how stuff Works.
Have taken the word opera in the search bar and
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it'll be sort of an American counterpoint to what we
talked about today, sort of the important things that the
MET has done throughout the years. You can also visit
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dot com if you would like to just history it

(28:32):
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