The Museum Halls
ENTERING THE MUSEUM
We are welcomed by music instruments: a virginal painted by Guaracino in 1667, a few psalteries, lutes and lyre-guitars, the Sommer fortepiano that belonged to Verdi. Around the instruments, against the wall, a 17th-century painting by Baschenis, and below it the showcase of antique instruments. And then the bust of Verdi sculpted by Gemito in 1874, and below it, as a historical thread linkings the two La Scala protagonists, a portrait of Piermarini, the architect who was called by Empress Maria Teresa to build the Teatro alla Scala.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Evaristo Baschenis’s oil on canvas Strumenti musicali, is a still life of musical instruments placed with recherché elegance on a table covered with an Oriental carpet. The painting shows five musical instruments: a lute, a guitar, a violin and bow, a mandola and a spinet. Then there is a wooden box, a book, two musical scores and a piece of fruit.
The carefully studied attention to the way the shapes are placed next to each other and the sophisticated colours of the instruments are enhanced by the wave of light that slides over the sinuous curves of the sound boxes and by the presence of fruit, which never lacks from the compositions of the painter from Bergamo.
A RARE SPINET
A 17th-century spinet with a warning above the keyboard. A writing in Latin that tells anyone coming nearer "Inexpert hand, touch me not!" seems to refer to a commission coming from privileged quarters. Onofrio Guarracino, a musical instrument maker, was active in Naples in the second half of the 17th century. Yet this instrument reserves another precious thing: the top painted in 1669 by Angelo Solimena, a great painter from the area of Salerno. Precisely from this painting one can hypothesise that the spinet has been made for a female as indicated by the heroic figure of "Judith with the Head of Holophernes", received by the procession of female musicians.
THE ARCHITECT OF LA SCALA
Giuseppe Piermarini, here in the portrait by Martino Knoller, is the architect of La Scala. When the Teatro Ducale burnt in 1776, inside the Palazzo di Corte, in Piazza del Duomo, he had been working in Milan for some years. The painting shows him with in his hands one of his work instruments, the compass. In this period Piermarini was at his busiest in Milan, involved as he was in the construction not only of the Royal Palace and Teatro Grande alla Scala, inaugurated in 1778, but also of the successively renamed Teatro Lirico, the Palazzo Belgioioso and the Villa Reale in Monza, besides restructuring the Brera courtyard. In designing Milan’s new theatre, top-most in Piermarini’s mind were considerations of maximum functionality, with the definition of accessory spaces for workshops, lunch and games rooms, and bathrooms, as well as a state-of-the art technology for the stage. The innovative choice of horseshoe-shaped hall was considered at the time to be the best for acoustics.
THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE
We are now in the room devoted to the Commedia dell’Arte. Drama between the 16th and 18th centuries: the actors improvise mixing recitation, acrobatics and songs. Jacques Callot’s etchings document the free vitality of the theatre of piazza. The collection of theatre- and music-related porcelains coming from Europe’s famed porcelain factories: Capodimonte, Doccia, Meissen, Chelsea, Sèvres. Fantasy, vivacity, chromatic beauty and realism of lived scenes. The two showcase tables contain small musical instruments (amongst which a crystal flute) and a selection of very rare medals of artists and composers, which comprises pieces coined for the museum.
