Teatro alla Scala – Piermarini's opera house and the 2026–27 season

La Scala's season opens on 7 December, the feast of Milan's patron saint, and this year it opens with Verdi's Otello under a new music director. The history behind the red-and-gold auditorium, how to get a seat, and how to see the hall without one.

From Piazza della Scala the theatre looks almost modest: a neoclassical front with a carriage porch, facing Leonardo's statue and the Palazzo Marino across the square. Inside is one of the most famous rooms in music, a horseshoe of red-and-gold boxes rising in tiers to the gallery under the roof, where Verdi, Puccini and Bellini had their premieres and where the regulars in the cheap seats are still feared by singers.

You do not need to be an opera lover to feel it. This is about how the house came to be, what makes a night here different, and the practical side: the season, the box office, and the museum that lets you look into the hall by day.

01Piermarini's theatre

On 25 February 1776 a fire after a carnival gala destroyed Milan's court theatre, the Teatro Regio Ducale. Ninety wealthy Milanese who owned boxes there asked Archduke Ferdinand for a new house, and the neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini drew it; his second design was approved by Empress Maria Theresa. It was built on the site of the church of Santa Maria della Scala, which was demolished and gave the theatre its name, and it opened on 3 August 1778 with Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

The boxes were sold to pay for the building, and their owners decorated them lavishly enough to impress Stendhal. For decades the main floor had no seats, the orchestra played in full view, and the foyer doubled as a casino. Mary Shelley, at the opera in September 1840, complained that every kind of business "from horse-dealing to stock-jobbing" was done in the pit. The house was lit by oil lamps, then gas, and from 1883 by electricity.

02Verdi, Puccini and Toscanini

La Scala gave the first performances of Bellini's Norma in 1831, Verdi's Nabucco in 1842, Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893, Puccini's Madama Butterfly in 1904 and Turandot in 1926. Verdi kept his operas away for years after a quarrel over Giovanna d'Arco in 1845, then came back to conduct his Requiem here on 25 May 1874. Arturo Toscanini was principal conductor three times. When Allied bombs wrecked the theatre in 1943, it was rebuilt and reopened on 11 May 1946 with a concert conducted by Toscanini, at which the young soprano Renata Tebaldi caused a sensation.

Insider tip

No ticket? Buy a museum ticket in the morning and look into the hall from a third-tier box.

03Mario Botta's renovation

After the opening run of Otello in December 2001 the theatre closed for a renovation by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, while the company moved to the new Teatro degli Arcimboldi in the Bicocca district. The stage was rebuilt and the backstage enlarged, the heavy red carpets that dulled the sound were taken out, and seat-back screens now show the libretto in Italian and English. La Scala reopened on 7 December 2004 with Riccardo Muti conducting the opera it had opened with in 1778, Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

04The loggione

Above the boxes is the gallery, the loggione, where the cheapest seats are and the most demanding listeners sit. The loggionisti can make a career or break an evening: in 2006 the tenor Roberto Alagna walked off the stage in Aida after being booed, and his understudy went on mid-scene without time to change into costume. Performances must end before midnight, so long operas begin early.

05The 2026–2027 season

The season is the first under Myung-Whun Chung as music director, succeeding Riccardo Chailly, and it opens on 7 December 2026 with Verdi's Otello, directed by Damiano Michieletto, with Brian Jagde as Otello, Eleonora Buratto as Desdemona and Luca Salsi as Iago; a preview for audiences under 30 is given on 4 December. Later highlights include Robert Carsen's Don Giovanni, Franco Zeffirelli's La Bohème, Chailly conducting Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Chung returning for a new Macbeth directed by Barrie Kosky, and John Adams's Nixon in China under Kent Nagano.

06The museum and the view from the box

The Museo Teatrale alla Scala, entered from Largo Ghiringhelli beside the theatre, holds paintings, costumes, instruments and documents from the house's history. Its ticket also lets you look into the auditorium from the boxes of the third tier, as long as there is no rehearsal, performance or event under way – the closest most visitors come to the room.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.