World City Guide

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 pullout in the Corriere della Sera (website: www.vivimilano.corriere.it ) on Wednesdays. The free monthly information programme, Milano Mese, in Italian, has listings and is available from the tourist information office and most hotels. The English language HelloMilan and Milan Where, When, How are available free from hotels, bars and the Duomo tourist office. 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, La Scala for short, the world over. The theatre is currently undergoing a full interior modernisation. All performances have been transferred to the new Teatro degli Archimboldi. Hopefully, La Scala will reopen on 7 December 2004, the beginning of the 2004 opera season. The Teatro degli Archimboldi is a new theatre built by the City of Milan in collaboration with Pirelli. Its larger capacity means that about 500 more seats are currently available. The new theatre box office opens two hours before performances start at 2000. The Museo Teatrale alla Scala has moved to Palazzo Busca, Collegio San Carlo, Corso Magenta 71. The main ticket office remains under the Piazza Duomo, admittance from the stairs of the Duomo Metro; opening times 1200-1800 daily.
Teatro degli Arcimboldi
Viale dell’Innovazione
Tel: 02 7200 3744.
Website: www.teatroallascala.org
Transport: Shuttle bus from Piazza Duomo on performance evenings, every five minutes from 1845-1700. This service is free for season ticket holders; all others should buy a normal metro ticket. Metro (M1) to Precotto, then shuttle to Biococca), every 8-10 minutes. Bus 44 from Metro (M2) Cascina Gobba to Biococca (via Brecotto). Tram 7 from Lagosta to Mattei (via M3 Zara). Trains from Porta Garibaldi, Lambrate, Rogoredo and sometimes from Stazione Centrale to the Greco-Pirelli station, using a normal ATM ticket. There is a special train on performance nights (about 600 seats) from Greco-Pirelli railway station to Milano Centrale and Porta Garibaldi Station; this is free for season ticket holders and all others should purchase a normal ATM ticket for the city network. This train departs 20 minutes and 40 minutes after performances.
Opening hours: Usually two hours before the performance.
Admission: depends on the performance and seats available.

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). CRT (Centro di Ricerca per il Teatro) at Teatro dell’Arte, Viale Alemagna 6 (website: www.teatrocrt.org ) is Milan’s main advocate for contemporary dance, organising performances and festivals like Short Formats Festival in May which investigates all the latest trends in European dance.

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 Emanuele 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 (tel: 02 2940 6054, website: www.gruppounicinema.com/arcoba.htm ), and on Thursday at Cinema Centrale, Via Torino 30 (tel: 02 874 826).

Milan has not been a particularly popular location for films. This is partly due to the great old buildings being part of a modern cityscape rather than being in isolation as in Rome, and partly to Italian post-war neo-realism with its emphasis on the south of the country. Vittorio De Sica's socially conscious fairy tale, Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1950) includes fantasy elements like the boy Toto being found in a cabbage patch, angels and a dove which grants wishes, against a story of poor squaters fighting eviction by a rich landowner. Lichino Visconti's Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960) describes the problems of a poor Sicilian farming family who move to Milan; although primarily set in the northern industrial suburb of Bovisa, there are scenes in the centre of the city including a dramatic one near the outside top of the Duomo. There was a brief revival of interest in Milan in the 1980s, although most films merely had small sections where the characters were leaving the city for somewhere else, as in the 1989 film Marrakech Express. Michele Sordillo's Acquario (late 1990s) is a triptych of stories concerning love, care for the aged and problems arising from having someone stay in one's apartment. Renato Castellani's 1982 superb docu-drama The Life of Verdi (the Italian edition is simply called Verdi) has many accurate reconstructions of 19th century Milan and Venice; the 580 minute programmes were made by European television companies and have been released on video.

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.comune.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 3410; website: www.triennale.it ), hosts a major international exposition of the arts every three years, the next being in 2004 (22 Mar-13 Jun).

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 Emanuele II may happily while away an hour or two 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, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed, 1827), is a tale of two lovers set against times of war and pestilence in Lombardy, during the 1620s. Gabriele D’Annunzio’s early autobiographical novel Il Piacere (The Child of Pleasure, 1898) is a classic of the decadence movement; his poetry is also excellent. Part of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms takes place in Milan. 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 Bagutti Ristorante (see Restaurants section), Via Bagutti, where the founders of the Literary Review (Fiera Letteraria) used to eat and where they founded the prize in 1925.