SYMHC Classics: La Scala Opera House

This 2014 episode covers the Teatro alla Scala, one of the most renowned opera houses in the world. It's Italy's crown jewel of the arts, and 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. La Scala Opera House opened its doors on
August third, seventeen seventy eight, or two hundred and forty
six years ago today. If you're listening on drop Day,
so our episode on the Opera House is Today's Saturday Classic.
This originally came out on August eleventh, twenty fourteen. Enjoy

(00:25):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly from and
I'm Tracy Wilson. Tracy question, Yes, do you're like opera?
I would like to like opera, right, Well, I love opera,
but I'm always a little bit reticent to verbalize that
to people that know a lot about opera, because what

(00:57):
often happens is that they're then like excited and off again,
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.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
And there are a lot of aspects of opera that
are actually in our daily lives, and we don't even
know about, 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

(01:32):
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, the tetro 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

(01:54):
as I said, 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

(02:14):
that you may not associate with opera that will kind
of get connected here, so we will start with how
it got built in the first place. On February twenty sixth,
seventeen 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

(02:36):
Austria was actually ruling over Milan and 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

(02:58):
kind of populated the way a lot of royal houses
throughout Europe. So that's the first person.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
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 Pimerini. Pimerini is
now considered one of the great Neoclassical architects, and he
was no stranger to high profile gigs. He had also
worked on the Royal Palace of Milan, as well as
the Maria Teresa Hall of the Brudenci National Library, also

(03:27):
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 Dukyle 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 where the
theater was built. And prior to the theater going up,

(03:49):
the Church of Santa Maria Alascala had been standing on
that land and had to be demolished to make way
for the new facility, and the name Lascala 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 third, seventeen seventy eight, Milan's

(04:10):
new opera house, Teatro ela Scala, which translates to the
Theater at the Stairway, opened its doors. The first opera
performed there was Antonio Salieri's Europa Revealed. Mattia Varazzi wrote
the libretto, which centers on the story of Zeus's former
lover Europa. The plot begins with Europa being kidnapped but

(04:31):
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 Esao and
his new love Semila after she performs their marriage and
so Lescala continued to offer operatic performances to great success

(04:53):
for many years. So again that was late seventeen hundreds
when it reopened its doors, 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 La Scala's artistic offerings
and their focus. First, in eighteen twelve, an opera by

(05:13):
Joachino Rossini debuted 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
belcanto or beautiful singing, although that's not what it was

(05:34):
called until a whole lot later. To explain volcanto, will
quote New York Times music writer Anthony Thomassini, who wrote
the following in two thousand and eight. In its narrowest sense,
belcanto opera refers to the early decades of nineteenth century
Italian opera, when Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti dominated the field,

(05:54):
but the overall concept of valcanto started much earlier, 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.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
So whereas prior.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Operas had really included more chorus and orchestra elements, this
style kind of put those in the background. It favored
a single exquisite voice for pieces of performance, and Rossini's
opera was instantly successful, and it was performed dozens of
times over the course of its run. With Opera Siria
now at the forefront of Milan's apera culture, Rossini had

(06:34):
lots of additional works performed at La Scala over the
next thirteen years. These included Il Turco and Italia or
The Turk in Italy, his version of Cinderella Il Barbieri
de Sevilia or The Barber of Seville, which you're familiar
with if you've watched lots of books, Bunny and Otello,
among others. So as a brief aside, I will tell

(06:55):
you that The Rabbit of Seville is my absolute favorite
Bugs Bunny cartoon of all time. I also love What's
Opera Doc, But in the opera arena, the Rabbit of
Seville just works for me, largely because of all of
the great Charlie Chaplin callbacks they do so much. So
that is still from that cartoon is what was on
my wedding invitations. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
So I owe a little bit to Rossini there. The
other significant development for La Scala during this time was
the staging of several ballets by Salvadore Vegano and Carlo Blasi.
And Vigano 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

(07:38):
as it came to be called, had been developed in
Vienna before he debuted it to Italian audiences, and once
he started having showings at Las Scala, it became very,
very popular and 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, Otello
de dalo la Vestal which is the Vestal Virgin and

(08:00):
e Titani which is the Titans.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Carlo Blasi was a dancer and a student of Vigano,
and in addition to continuing this narrative tradition of his
mentor's 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 Le Scala in eighteen twenty. His most

(08:23):
famous writing on the art was the Code of Terpsickory.
And in addition to advancing ballet technically, Blasi also promoted
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 were
working with him needed to also be reading literature, they
needed to be studying music, They needed to be really

(08:45):
well rounded kind of Renaissance people in that regard. The
work of both Vegano and Blasi established Le Scala in
the world of ballet as well as the world of opera,
where it had already been succeeding, and it sort of
built its reputation as a theater where which just excellence
prevailed amongst all manner of the arts. So during that

(09:15):
time two particular composers became just prolific at Lascala. The
first was Gaetano Donizetti, and he premiered his opera Schiara
a Serafina in October of eighteen twenty two. The libretto
was by Felice Romani. Because the work had just been
rushed due to all kinds of problems and illnesses among

(09:36):
the production members, the reception was mediocre. In spite of that,
he continued to produce work for Lascala as well as
for many other opera houses for years afterward, including an
opera entitled Lucregia Borgia. He continued to serve the popularity
of the belcanto style Yeah since I know we have

(09:56):
a lot of Borgia fans in the listening audience on
to make sure they knew that there's an opera about Lucrezia.
The other important composer from this time is Vincenzo Bellini,
and he debuted his opera Il Perata or The Pirate
in eighteen twenty seven at La Scala. 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

(10:20):
as apparent 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 La Scala is
very influential, 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

(10:43):
to be the more gifted of the two in the
area of vocal harmonies. Yeah, some of his work is
just really beautiful to listen to you, And like I said,
I you know, my knowledge of music theory and opera
is very limited. But I still just am always struck
by how absolutely beautiful some of these pieces are.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
And then there isn't we get to a time when
another really huge name that everyone will probably recognize that's
attached to Lascala kind of emerges, and that is in
eighteen thirty nine, Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio, the Count
of San Benifescio, debuted at Lascala, and this was the
first work of Giuseppe Verdi to do so, and it

(11:23):
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, Verdi is usually the most
famous composer associated with Lascala. Everyone sort of recognizes his name,
even if they couldn't maybe pull one of his tunes
out of their memory. Verdi and Lascala became deeply linked,
to a degree beyond that of any other composer. While

(11:47):
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 Verdi's wife died while he was
working on his second opera and the work in Giorno
di regno or King for a Day was not well received.

(12:08):
It was the manager of Loscala 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.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, so in that regard, Bartolomeo Merelli, who was the
manager of the theater at the time, really kind of
saved the creative life of Verity and impacted him 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 of

(12:39):
some beautiful stuff. And while that second opera, Gianna d'r
reno or King 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 Illa, in Europe in general, but

(13:01):
Italy especially, composers were kind of like rock stars. I mean,
they were basically the celebrities of the day. And so
his career really just kind of shot on an almost
vertical trajectory at this point, and as a consequence, his
career with Lascala lasted more than fifty years. He did
retire for a little bit in the towards the end

(13:22):
of it, and then he ended up working on his
last couple of pieces as collaborations with another composer. But
he sort of became famous and then stayed famous for
decades working with Lascala. Perhaps his most famous opera, which
was the Tale of enslaved Ethiopian Princess Aida, was rare
in that it didn't premiere at Lascala. It was first
presented at the Cairo Opera House in eighteen seventy one,

(13:45):
and then it premiered at La Scala shortly afterward.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, there's a story that he did not attend the
Cairo Opera House premiere, but what he heard about how
it had gone did not really delight him.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
It was mostly dignitaries and invite only and kind of
higher echelonza society. And he really appreciated that opera was
one of those things that could be appreciated by anyone,
and so he really sort of considered the La Scala
premiere the premier because there were people from all layers
of society, not only the sort of wealthy and famous

(14:21):
and privileged. 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 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, which is really quite.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
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 Verdi among
Italian composers, Puccini emerged as the composer celeb of La
Scala as the eighteen hundreds were ending, but he is
responsible for one of the most famous, if not the

(15:03):
most proud, incidents at the theater. In December of nineteen
oh four, Jacomo Puccini debuted Madama Butterfly. Although the opening
night was really something of a fiasco, and the word
fiasco gets used almost every time someone writes about this
particular event, it's a rather famous tale among opera enthusiasts

(15:24):
and opera fans because it's just so crazy. And while
Puccini was brimming with confidence regarding the quality of this
particular work, the production itself was played 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

(15:47):
was not allowed.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
To leave the theater, and the press was not allowed
to sit in on rehearsals, which was a privilege they
had enjoyed for a long time. This only served to
make critics angry and predisposed to dislike the piece. And
while the crowd on opening night, according to at least
some witnesses, was hostile from the get go, the entrance

(16:10):
of Butterfly is really when things started to just go
south in a hurry. And remember that opera huge in
Italy at the time. Crowds 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

(16:30):
element from Puccini's previous work. La Boem and some members
of the crowd started to call out what they felt
was lazy composing, and they started yelling during the performance
Boem Boem 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 attendees started

(16:51):
yelling at each other in the stage so much that
no one could hear the singing and during the intermetso
when performers had been placed around the theater bird whistles
to create this realistic soundscape of dawn breaking, Heckler's in
the audience saw this bird song as their cue to
make other animal noises, so they you know, started doing

(17:12):
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 with an
unruly crowd basically bent on ruining the debut. And there's
some debate over sort of what really caused the sort
of rabble rousing. There are some stories that say that

(17:34):
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 had been treated in not being
allowed into rehearsals and kind of stirring the pot. But
others just say like there was just this general sense
of distrust of the whole thing, in part because of
that and because nobody had heard the music. This was

(17:54):
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 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

(18:19):
it's like Spider Man Unlock the Dark, except to the
best of my knowledge, no one died in terrible stunts. No,
I don't think anybody died in Spider Man. But there
were some injuries, right, So the reviews were terrible. But

(18:41):
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. Sort of transcended that horrible opening, and
even despite the butterfly incident, Puccini was really much loved

(19:02):
by Italy, and when he died sometime later in nineteen
twenty four, while he was working on his final opera, Torondeau,
the entire country really mourned. Some will even 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

(19:23):
on the development and direction of La Scala through the years.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Arturo Toscanini was appointed artistic director of La Scala in
eighteen ninety eight, so, as you know, Verdi's stuff was
wrapping up and Puccini was coming in. Toscanini was renowned
as a conductor. He said to have stepped in to
conduct a performance of Aida at the Rio de Genio
opera House as a last minute fill in when he

(19:48):
was only nineteen, and he performed the entire opera from memory.
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 memory but in terms
of his leadership role at Lascala, he completely reorganized the
entire structure of the theater, both from an artistic and
an administrative perspective. He restaged many of the works of

(20:12):
the opera house's most famous composers, and his interpretations reinvigorated
a lot of pieces for the public ear He's said
to have been able to pull the finest playing from
the orchestra. He also brought the performance of symphonic works
into Lascala's performance calendar, which allowed the orchestra to be
the star instead of the singers. Yeah, similar to how

(20:36):
you know, the choreographers had kind of expanded Lascala's repertoire
to include ballet. He really expanded it by not only
staging operas but also just huge symphonies. And then in
more recent years, Lascala has had some off stage drama
to contend with. At the end of two thousand and one,

(20:56):
the theater concluded its run of Otello and it temporarily
closed its doors for a pretty significant renovation. So from
two thousand and two January two thousand and two to
late two thousand and four, this major construction project was
underway and there were really a lot of fears among
Italians and even worldwide among people that were just huge

(21:19):
fans and recognized the historic and important nature of La
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 quality of the venue was
improved when the heavy hallway carpets were taken away. Seating

(21:40):
capacity was expanded to twoy 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, they tried to even
though they were modernized a lot of stuff. They did

(22:01):
sort of some complete kind of historical restoration type decor
in some of the boxes. And on December fifth of
two thousand and four, the New York Times reported that
La Scala had reopened exactly on time, just a little
bit over budget, and with fantastic new acoustics. So this
all sounded great. The theater opened with the staging of
the same opera, which had run when it first opened

(22:23):
its doors in seventeen seventy eight Salieri's Europa Riconciuda, and
tickets for this performance ran into the thousands of dollars range.
People were very excited to be part of this new reopening.
But just a year later, the BBC ran a story
that seemed to suggest a bloomy future for the opera house.

(22:43):
Budgets for the arts in Italy were being slashed and
Lascala's future really didn't seem all that secure. In the
months preceding that article, the head of the theater had
been fired and the conductor of fifteen years, Ricardo Muti quit. Yeah,
looked there was a while where there was a lot
of head shaking and you know, sort of glowery faces

(23:03):
and people really thinking that Lascala had finally been, you know,
after two hundred years kind of run into the ground.
But in fact, thankfully the theater has weathered the storm.
You know, through some strong leadership and some really devoted staff.
It's been able to kind of get through those rough
times and put together a business plan that's kept it going.

(23:27):
It's about to have a planned change of leadership this year,
this coming October, when stefan listener who has been there
for a while, is going to leave his position. He's
going to the Paris Opera and Alexander Pereira is going
to take over the position he comes from, I believe,
an opera house in Germany. In addition to its theatrical
opera productions, Lascala also still houses its ballet company, a

(23:51):
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 immuniiciple tacks.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
So yeah, it is still thankfully going strong, and it's
one of those things I wanted to cover because it
is the artists that were sort of supported by this
theater have been so impactful, 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 La Scala,
So it's important. Stuffs. Thanks so much for joining us

(24:29):
on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
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(24:52):
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