Saturday March 27, World Theatre Day, at 6pm on the websites and social media channels of the Academy and Teatro alla Scala: “Queens, Saints, and Femmes Fatales”, a concert featuring the talents of the La Scala Opera Academy accompanied by Michele D’Elia, the first in a series of live-streamed artistic events. 

A better date could not have been found to inaugurate Accademia 20×20, one of many initiatives to celebrate the first 20 years of the La Scala Academy as a private foundation.

While the Academy traces its history back to 1813, when the Ballet School was established, its twenty years as a private foundation, ensuring that it can continue its time-honored tradition, is also a significant milestone.

The Milanese theatre’s vocation for cultivating young talents who go on to grace the world’s most prestigious stages boasts more than two centuries of history. Other milestones include the Scuola di canto in 1946 (from 1953 I Cadetti della Scala), the Set Design course in the 1970s, and the progressive expansion of the curriculum in the 1990s. In 2001, the Academy assumed its current status as a foundation, its structure as four departments (Music, Dance, Stagecraft, Management), and more than thirty different courses covering all the professions associated with the performing arts.

The Academy, now chaired by Giuseppe Vita and directed by Luisa Vinci, prepares students from all over the world for a professional career in the performing arts. Its impressive job placement record is particularly reassuring, particularly during this current period of deep uncertainty.

Accademia 20×20 is a program of twenty live-streamed concerts and performances which will remain accessible for a week on the Academy and Teatro alla Scala websites.

A partnership between Fondazione Cariplo and the Academy, the project brings high quality music to the broadest possible audience while also providing cultural support in the form of talks by musicologists, critics, and artists. Special presentations will be addressed to schools, correctional facilities, cultural associations, and advocacy groups to ensure maximum inclusion and engagement.

The first concert, titled “Regine, Sante e Femmes Fatales” [Queens, Saints, and Femmes Fatales], presents a very refined program with rarely performed pieces arranged by the curriculum director of the La Scala Opera Academy, Luciana D’Intino. The accent will be placed on the many female figures dominating opera, both actual historical figures and fictional characters drawn from literature or the imagination of the librettist. 

The sopranos Clarissa Costanzo, Arianna Giuffrida, Forooz Razavi, and Francesa Pia Vitale and the mezzo-soprano Martina Serra will incarnate indomitable or tragic heroines, deceived or abandoned girls, and seductive, bewitching women from operas by Weber (Oberon), Mercadante (Le due illustri rivali), Donizetti (Caterina Cornaro), Verdi (Giovanna D’Arco), Borodin (Prince Igor), Ponchielli (I promessi sposi), Massenet (Cléopâtre, Hérodiade), Puccini (Le Villi), and Mascagni (Lodoletta).

The concert will be introduced by a conversation between Luciana D’Intino and the musicologist Fabio Sartorelli illustrating the central theme in each piece by sharing tidbits of information and intriguing stimuli.