Description
The Museo Teatrale alla Scala is Milan's opera museum, in the Casino Ricordi, the building next to the Teatro alla Scala. Fourteen rooms of portraits, antique instruments, set sketches and paintings tell two centuries of opera and theater.
The route is made of faces: busts and portraits of composers, conductors and singers. There are portraits of two prima donnas, Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, the portrait of Verdi and the bust of Nicola Tacchinardi, sculpted by Canova.
Among the instruments are Franz Liszt's piano, a Steinway, and a 17th-century virginal by Francesco Guaracino, fully decorated. Above the keyboard is a warning: "Inexperienced hand, do not touch me."
Some paintings show the Scala of the past. A picture by Angelo Inganni shows it in 1852, when the entrance was still hemmed in by the buildings and the square in front had not yet been opened up. Then there are the Capodimonte, Doccia and Meissen porcelains with commedia dell'arte masks.
Paris, 1911: the theater collection of the antiques dealer Giulio Sambon goes up for auction. Among the possible buyers is the American billionaire J.P. Morgan. Milan has one week to keep those treasures from taking the road to America.
An emergency committee is formed: the City, the government and fifty citizens who each pay 5,000 lire, a considerable sum. Through letters, telegrams and trips to Paris, the price drops from 700,000 to 450,000 lire. And the collection arrives in Milan.
The museum, wanted among others by Arrigo Boito, opened on March 8, 1913. At first it told the story of the stage in general, from antiquity onward, with no link to La Scala. Through donations and purchases it has become the theater's memory. After the war it was reorganized by Fernanda Wittgens.
Attached to the "Livia Simoni" library and archive are manuscripts by Verdi, Rossini, Puccini and Donizetti, including the Messa da Requiem and Tancredi. The museum also holds a portrait of Domenico Barbaja, Rossini's impresario, to whom we owe the barbagliata, a cocoa treat.
The route is made of faces: busts and portraits of composers, conductors and singers. There are portraits of two prima donnas, Maria Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, the portrait of Verdi and the bust of Nicola Tacchinardi, sculpted by Canova.
Among the instruments are Franz Liszt's piano, a Steinway, and a 17th-century virginal by Francesco Guaracino, fully decorated. Above the keyboard is a warning: "Inexperienced hand, do not touch me."
Some paintings show the Scala of the past. A picture by Angelo Inganni shows it in 1852, when the entrance was still hemmed in by the buildings and the square in front had not yet been opened up. Then there are the Capodimonte, Doccia and Meissen porcelains with commedia dell'arte masks.
Paris, 1911: the theater collection of the antiques dealer Giulio Sambon goes up for auction. Among the possible buyers is the American billionaire J.P. Morgan. Milan has one week to keep those treasures from taking the road to America.
An emergency committee is formed: the City, the government and fifty citizens who each pay 5,000 lire, a considerable sum. Through letters, telegrams and trips to Paris, the price drops from 700,000 to 450,000 lire. And the collection arrives in Milan.
The museum, wanted among others by Arrigo Boito, opened on March 8, 1913. At first it told the story of the stage in general, from antiquity onward, with no link to La Scala. Through donations and purchases it has become the theater's memory. After the war it was reorganized by Fernanda Wittgens.
Attached to the "Livia Simoni" library and archive are manuscripts by Verdi, Rossini, Puccini and Donizetti, including the Messa da Requiem and Tancredi. The museum also holds a portrait of Domenico Barbaja, Rossini's impresario, to whom we owe the barbagliata, a cocoa treat.