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Culture Milan’s cultural scene boasts interesting and diverse offerings for classical purists, as well as for those interested in the avant-garde. A visit to La Scala will never be forgotten and should be top of the billing for foreign visitors. Italian speakers should not ignore the stage too, as the Teatro Piccolo offers excellent performances all year round and has become one of the city’s best-known cultural institutions next to La Scala. Listings are best obtained from the Corriere della Sera (website: www.corriere.it) on Wednesdays. The free monthly information programme, Milano Mese, has listings and is available from the tourist information office and most hotels. Tickets for most events are available for purchase at Ricordi Box Office, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (tel: (02) 869 0683), La Prevendita, Virgin Megastore, Piazza Duomo 8 (tel: (02) 7200 3370), and Last Minute Tour, Fiorucci, Galleria Passarella 1. Tickets are also available online, at Ticketweb (website: www.ticketweb.it). Music: Opera lovers know the Teatro alla Scala, Piazza della Scala (tel: (02) 7200 3744; website: www.lascala.milano.it), or La Scala for short, the world over. Tickets are hard to come by close to performances but one trick is to queue outside for the 200 standing-room tickets (sold for €5 about 30 minutes beforehand) at least one hour in advance. Milan’s respected symphony orchestra, the Orchestra Verdi (tel: (02) 8338 9201; website: www.orchestrasinfonica.milano.it), founded in 1993 and conducted by Riccardo Chailly, frequently performs concerts in the Auditorium di Milano, Corso San Gottardo. Performances take place on Thursday and Friday at 2030 and on Sunday afternoon at 1600. Tickets cost €18-50. Another illustrious venue for classical concerts is the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Via Conservatorio 12. Tickets for the Cantelli Orchestra (tel: (02) 655 391; website: www.orchestracantelli.it), which plays at the Conservatory, cost from €18. Theatre: Milan has become a driving force behind Italian drama since the foundation of the Teatro Piccolo by Giorgio Strehler and Paolo Grassi in 1947. The company puts on a wide repertory of international, classical and experimental drama in three different theatres. Audiences can choose between programmes for the Teatro Grassi,Via Rovello, the experimental theatre Teatro Studio, Via Rivoli, and the new Teatro Strehler, Largo Greppi. The box office is at Via Rovello 2 (tel: (02) 7233 3222; website: www.piccoloteatro.org). Dance: The home of classical ballet in Milan is also at La Scala (see Music above), which is also the base for its renowned ballet school, the Scuola di ballo del Teatro alla Scala, Via Verdi 1 (tel: (02) 877 995). Film: Italians share a great passion for the cinema and Milan’s city centre has over 20 cinemas. Luchino Visconti’s masterpiece Rocco and His Brothers (1960), starring Alain Delon, was filmed extensively in and around Milan and along the Naviglio Grande. The area around Corso Vittorio Emmanuele is a good spot for cinemas with the latest releases, such as Ambasciatori (tel: (02) 7600 3306). For art movies, Cineteca Museo, Palazzo Dugnani, Via Manin 2/A (tel: (02) 655 4977), is a good option, while English-language films are shown on Monday at Anteo, Via Milazzo 9 (website: www.anteospaziocinema.com), on Tuesday at Arcobaleno, Viale Tunisia 11 (website: www.gruppounicinema.com/arcoba.htm), and on Thursday at Conema Centrale, Via Torino 30 (tel: (02) 874 826). Cultural events: Milan always has a series of events and minor festivals going on somewhere in the city. For information, the Commune of Milan (Municipality of Milan) regularly updates its website (www.commune.milano.it). There are usually a number of jazz, theatre and dance spectacles to be found around the city during the summer months, particularly in July. Visitors should not ignore the religious festivals, as these traditional festivals are often Milan’s best-loved and most charming features. Visitors will discover that the Milanesi are particularly fond of Christmas, kick-starting the celebrations on 7 December with the festival of O Bej, O Bej (since 1288) and finishing with the Procession of the Corteo dei Re Magi on Epiphany, 6 January. The main cultural centre, the Palazzo Triennale, located on the western flank of the Parco Sempione (tel: (02) 724 341; website: www.triennale.it), hosts a major international exposition of the Arts every three years, the next being in 2004. Literary Notes Modern Milan is a major centre for the publishing industry and not surprisingly retains a keen interest in literature. Visitors to the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II may happily wile away an hour or two over a coffee as they explore the bookshops Zanichielli and Ricordi. Academics are sure to head to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, next to the art gallery, to study the writings of Leonardo da Vinci and other historic texts in its significant collection. Alessandro Manzoni is the best-known Milanese author. His novel, The Betrothed (1827), is a tale of two lovers set against times of war and pestilence in Lombardy, during the 1620s. Many Italian authors have since ended up in Milan, including the 1959 Nobel Literary Prize winner, Salvatore Quasimodo, a Sicilian poet who is buried in Milan’s Monumental Cemetery. The most important Italian literary event of the year, the Bagutti Prize, originated in Milan’s Via Bagutti, where the founders of the Literary Review (Fiera Letteraria) used to eat and where they founded the prize in 1925. |
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