On June 28, 1982, the New York Times (
visit link) ran the following story:
"IN MILAN, LA SCALA IS JUST AN OVERTURE
WILLIAM WEAVER is the author of several books on Italian opera, including ''The Golden Century of Italian Opera'' (Thames and Hudson). He lives in Tuscany. By WILLIAM WEAVER
For the Milanese, and for most visitors to the city, Milan begins in Piazza della Scala. Since its inauguration over two centuries ago, the legendary opera house has been, beyond dispute, the heart, emblem, pride of the Lombard capital. When the theater was nearly destroyed by bombs on the night of Aug. 13, 1943, the citizens were in despair; and within a few days of the liberation, in April 1945, the rebuilding of the house began, at popular insistence: the first major reconstruction in the city. Within a year, La Scala was ready; and on May 11, 1946, Arturo Toscanini, who had returned from selfimposed exile in America only two weeks before, conducted a historic re-opening concert of works by Rossini, Verdi, Boito, and Toscanini's own friend, Puccini.
Getting into a performance at La Scala nowadays is not easy: tickets are expensive and, as a rule, hard to come by. But to get at least an idea of the house and its significance one solution is a visit to the Museo Teatrale in the little wing of the building to the left of the portico. On an upper floor, in a well-arranged suite of rooms - once a gambling casino patronized by the less music-loving Milanese gentlemen while their ladies stayed in their boxes - an array of memorabilia includes old paintings and engravings of La Scala, portraits of the illustrious singers who have graced its stage, from Malibran to Callas, and, in the final rooms, several of Verdi's pianos (and the snaggle-tooth spinet on which he played his first notes), manuscripts, drawings, and his death-mask, with a few wisps of gray beard caught in the plaster. Unless a rehearsal is in progress on the stage, your admission to the museum also entitles you to peek into the house from a box.
Though Verdi was not born in Milan, he is the city's god. The street named for him runs along La Scala's left flank (Puccini, for many years, kept an apartment at No. 4, near the corner). Stretching northward, more or less, from the theater is the Via Manzoni; and halfway along it is the Grand Hotel et De Milan, where Verdi spent long periods in the latter part of his life, where he decided to write ''Otello,'' and where, in 1901, he died.
Opposite La Scala, across the square and behind the statue of Leonardo da Vinci (another prized guest of the city), is the Palazzo Marino, the city hall, dating from the 16th century but restored several times. To the left of the square, in a big 19th-century palazzo, is the Banca Commerciale; and in the corner of the opposite side is the high arched opening of the Galleria, the cruciform arcades of shops and cafes. Thus, in this one space, you have a synopsis of the city: art, business, government, commerce, fun.
In 1868, visiting Milan after a long absence, Verdi wrote to a French friend: ''The new Galleria is truly a beautiful thing. A true artistic, monumental thing. In our country still there is the sense of the Great united to the Beautiful.''
By ''great'' Verdi also meant physically big, and the Galleria is that, though to 20th-century eyes it may not seem beautiful. But, despite its reputation as a city of go-getting, materialistic businessmen, Milan does not think only of grandeur and show. On the contrary, it is a reticent, even understated city. A walk along the Via Manzoni, the Via Brera, or any of the narrow streets that make up the old part of the city, will be a revelation.
You will pass palaces, great urban residences built, many of them, in the 18th or early 19th centuries. The facade on the street, however elegant, is likely to be simple, plain. Through the large doorway, if the heavy doors are open, you will see a sober, harmonious paved court (now there may be shops on the ground floor, furnishing a good excuse to enter). But at the back of this court there is likely to be an open arch, another passage, leading to a vast garden with flowering magnolias, broad-branched cedars of Lebanon, leafy oaks. These almost-secret gardens, these hidden explosions of green, are for me a metaphor of Milan's reserved nature.
Of course, there are also public gardens, and in good weather they are a balm. One lies just beyond the Porta Nuova, the gate at the end of Via Manzoni. Within its confines are the Zoo, the Museum of Natural History, the Planetarium, and, along the Via Manin, the Palazzo Dugnani. This charming, dilapidated 18th-century building now houses municipal offices, but during the afternoon visitors are allowed to walk past the bulletin boards and posters (one illustrating the fish of Lombardy made me linger the other day) to the high-ceilinged, echoing ballroom, decorated with an airy ceiling fresco by Tiepolo. It is a strange experience, to stand in the dim room and admire the faded allegorical figures, while the clatter of municipal typewriters comes from the surrounding rooms.
A longish walk or short taxi ride will take you from Palazzo Dugnani, scene of private rococo charm, to the vast Castello Sforzesco, reminder of Milan's Renaissance grandeur, residence and stronghold of the Sforza lords of the city. Inside the collection is vast and heterogeneous (and the jazzy, self-important installation at times irksome), but worth a visit, at least to see the Rondanini Pieta, Michelangelo's haunting last work, bought in 1952 by the city from the Rondanini heirs. The painting gallery includes works by Mantegna, Lippi, and - most interesting in this context - many less familiar Lombard artists. Most of all, the castle's collection, which ranges from ceramics to harpsichords and tapestries to wrought iron, gives a sense of richness, artistic as well as material richness, that is peculiarly Milanese.
Outside, another park stretches across flat lawn to Porta Sempione, where an imposing Arco della Pace dates from Napoleonic times and resembles the Arc de Triomphe."