Chorus

The Teatro alla Scala Chorus is synonymous with prestige and artistic quality, in Italy and worldwide.

The level of excellence attained is the fruit of the patient and meticulous work carried out over the years by chorus masters with the greatest sensitivity.

Important names should be mentioned: Vittore Veneziani, called by Toscanini in the immediate post-war period; Norberto Mola; the very strict Roberto Benaglio, a real sound engineer, between the 60s and 70s; Romano Gandolfi with Claudio Abbado.

More recently, Giulio Bertola, at the top of his skills, succeeded in giving as much importance to the symphony as to the opera repertoire. Then, in the 90s, Roberto Gabbiani gave Riccardo Muti a choir with gothic strings. He also strengthened the modern repertoire (Dallapiccola, Petrassi, Penderecki...) and the ancient (Gesualdo da Venosa), as well as Richard Strauss’s.

Bruno Casoni, Chorus Master until 2021, is a fine musician and expert connoisseur of voices, including treble voices. He has refined with great rhythmic discipline, and with a special work of "instrument construction", the Chorus' sound in the typical operatic form, powerful and poignant at the same time, which impresses audiences and critics all over the world. As of September 2021, Alberto Malazzi, who joined La Scala in 1993 and was later assistant to Maestro Casoni, had taken over the direction of the Chorus, after holding the same position at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna from 2019.

Although the chorus mainly performs the opera repertoire, its flexibility allows it to face different types of concert: from the choral-symphony repertoire to chamber music, from the polyphonic repertoire to musicological researches, to the contemporary 20th century repertoire, with especially-composed pieces. Among these repertoires, it is worth mentioning the Mottetti and the Tres sacrae cantiones by Gesualdo da Venosa, the Missa Super iniquos odio habui by Luca Marenzio, the Missa L'homme armé by Carissimi and, above of all, the Messa da Requiem by Verdi, which is considered the highlight of the Chorus repertoire.

Over the years, the Chorus, as well as all the other companies of the Teatro alla Scala, has taken part in numerous and successful European and world tours in Russia, the United States, Canada, Japan and Korea.