As always Milan's most famous Opera House, Teatro alla Scala, opens its winter season on Friday December 7^th. The season starts in the world-famous La Scala Opera House, but will move to Teatro degli Arcimboldi in January when restoration work will begin in La Scala's Piermarini room. This is the first time since the Second World War, that the performances have to be temporarily transferred to another location.
The Arcimboldi theatre is modern, with cutting-edge technology, more than 2400 places, excellent reception facilities and a high level of comfort. It is just outside the centre and attracts visitors from both the hinterland and province of Milan. This season's programme was devised in order to appeal to a new, wider audience and includes both opera classics as well as favourites from the worlds of ballet and classic music.

The season pays tribute to Giuseppe Verdi, opening with Otello conducted by Riccardo Muti and with Placido Domingo in the titular role.
Verdi, with Muti at the helm once more, opens the Scala's season at the Arcimboldi Theatre with La Traviata featuring Liliana Cavani's acclaimed sets. Muti will be back in front of the orchestra once more in May for Giorgio Strehler's celebrated version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro which recently premiered in Vienna to an ecstatic audience. Speaking of Verdi, the winner work in the Giuseppe Verdi Composition Competition, Il processo (The trial) by the Piedmontese composer Alberto Colla, will be performed in the Strehler Theatre at the end of the season. The work is based on the eponymous novel by Franz Kafka.
Besides the opera and ballet season the theatre is also involved in numerous other activities - music schools, masterclasses etc, - all of which would be impossible to list here.
So here's to the new season, which sees tradition triumph over the new but which also uses its relocation to the Arcimboldi Theatre as the ideal chance to make classical opera and ballet available to as wide an audience as possible.