The Museum Halls
PRECIOUS CERAMICS
Amongst the treasures of the museum, the superb collection of ceramic pieces, of varying quality but all directly connected to the world of the theatre.
The collection includes 170 pieces, most of which were purchased with the Sambon Auction. They are part and parcel of the theatrical tradition, of a form of miniature communication. The dominating theme is the Comedy of Art, with the masks, the groups in movement, or the musicians depicted with the particularity of rare popular instruments or of masks thrown in the rhythm of dance. Hard porcelain in Europe was first produced in Saxony in 1710 as an imitation of Chinese and Japanese porcelain that had been imported by the East India Companies.
THE PRIMA DONNAS OF THE BELCANTO
We are in the heaven of bel canto. Gazing down from the walls are the prima donnas of the Golden Age of Milan and of La Scala. The sumptuous Isabella Colbran (Rossini’s first wife in 1822) with peplum and lyre while interpreting Mayr’s Saffo. On the opposite side there is, with the ruby costume worn in Rossini’s Desdemona, Maria Malibran the idol of La Scala in the 1834-35-36 seasons. Giuditta Pasta, as a twenty-year old, sighing in Tancredi or domineering with the priestess-like majesty of Norma, for the first time interpreted by her at La Scala in 1831. In the semicircular room, we can also mention the marble bust of the choreographer Salvatore Viganò (1769-1821), who, at the glorious time of Rossini’s operas and of Alessandro Sanquirico’s grand stage settings, gave the first tangible sign of the greatness of the shows at the Scala.
GIUDITTA PASTA
A great singer, in the portrait by Gioacchino Serangeli. Giuditta Negri was born in Saronno, in Lombardy, in 1797. In 1816 she married the lawyer Giuseppe Pasta, who was also the tenor in the two operas she debuted with at Milan’s Teatro Filodrammatici. Developing an outstanding career in the whole of Europe, the artist remained culturally and sentimentally linked to Milan. Her true opera début at the Scala was with Bellini’s Norma in 1831: although the opening night was not a success (because she was physically exhausted), her following performances were such that her fame spread throughout Europe. Her interpretation, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes melancholic and sometimes with the white-hot impetus of fury, will stay forever in the history of singing.
IN THE PAINTING GALLERY
The Painting Gallery is crowded with portraits of 19th-century artists who share their common sense of belonging to La Scala. In the centre there is the famous painting by Inganni with the sun-basked Teatro alla Scala still (we are in 1852) overlooking a narrow street prior to the creation, following a major urban redevelopment, of the piazza in 1858. On the wall to the right, entirely dedicated to Verdi: Achille Scalese’s portrait of the composer, flanked by the portraits of his two wives Margherita Barezzi and Giuseppina Strepponi, and the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli who gave the young Verdi the libretto and the opportunity to perform Nabucco at La Scala. Under the portrait of Verdi the spinet that his father-in-law Antonio Barezzi gave him in 1832 in Busseto.
GIUSEPPE VERDI
The austere portrait by Achille Scalese depicts the composer when he was forty-five: strapping, strong-willed, a sullen gaze that looks far ahead. How often Verdi clashed with La Scala! Disappointed by the haste with which his works were performed, never satisfied of the stagings that didn’t comply with his precise and fussy indications, and of the lights and the singers during the rehearsals. And yet his musical life and his art are indissolubly linked to this theatre, from the triumphal debut of Nabucco and then (despite an absence of 24 years) until the three great masterpieces: Simon Boccanegra, Otello and Falstaff.
