ORCHESTRA DELL’ACCADEMIA TEATRO ALLA SCALA

Accademia Teatro alla Scala (La Scala Academy or “Academy”), led by President Giuseppe Vita and General Manager Luisa Vinci, is a unique training institute both within and outside of Europe with a program of courses that covers nearly all professions in the performing arts: artistic, technical, and managerial. Its uniqueness also derives from the fact that it is associated with one of the world’s most famous opera houses, whose artists and professionals team with the foremost experts in the performing arts to create a teaching staff with the mission not simply to assure a brilliant career to budding talents but also to carry forward a time-honored tradition through constant renewal. And that is what they have been doing since 1813, the year that the Ballet School was established, regaling the world with some of its finest dancers. In over two centuries of history, those twelve initial students have been followed by many others. There are now 1,600 students in a broad range of courses covering some thirty specializations and organized into four departments — Music, Dance, Stagecraft, and Management. The current makeup of the institute is the work of Carlo Fontana, appointed Superintendent in 1990, who worked towards its transformation from a department within Teatro alla Scala to an independent foundation in 2001.
Academy graduates enjoy very high placement numbers on the job market thanks to a teaching method that ensures fully rounded preparation, with an approach to theory and practice based on daily exercises both forestage and backstage and further refinement in an internship at a preeminent performing arts institution.
In addition to Teatro alla Scala, the Academy’s founding partners include Regione Lombardia, the Municipality of Milan, The Milan Chamber of Commerce, Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Milano per la Scala, Fondazione Bracco, Fondazione Berti, and Bocconi University.

THE LA SCALA ACADEMY ORCHESTRA

The two-year program of the La Scala Academy Orchestra prepares young musicians for their future career by offering them thorough preparation in the symphonic, opera, and ballet repertoire. The curriculum includes individual lessons in the chosen instrument, chamber music, and section rehearsals led by the First Chairs of the Teatro alla Scala Orchestra. This is complemented by an intensive performance schedule in Italy and abroad under the guidance of some of the world’s most eminent orchestra conductors.

The musicians have the opportunity, first and foremost, to perform at Teatro alla Scala, where they not only take part every year in a title on the regular La Scala opera program but are also engaged for Ballet Corps productions and numerous concerts. Performances in Piermarini’s auditorium between 2007 and 2019 have included Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, L’occasione fa il ladro, L’italiana in Algeri, Don Pasquale, La scala di seta, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Giselle, Onegin, Histoire de Manon, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Die Zauberflöte, Hänsel und Gretel, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Gianni Schicchi, Prima la musica e poi le parole, Rigoletto and Il matrimonio segreto. The Academy students have also provided the music for the “Big Shows for Little People” program, which has been acquainting children with musical theatre since 2014 with reduced versions of major titles: for the 2022-2023 season a new opera was commissioned based on one of the best loved titles in 20th-century literature, Le Petit Prince by Saint-Exupéry: the score was entrusted to the composer Pierangelo Valtinoni and the libretto to Paolo Madron, while stage sets and costumes are the work of Polly Graham, with music conducted by Vitali Alekseenok, Besides, in 2018, the Orchestra accompanied the Bolshoi Dance Company in La Bayadère, and the following year the Tokyo Ballet Company.

Among its most recent engagements, it is worth mentioning the concert held at Expo Dubai 2020 on 24 November 2021 on the occasion of Italy’s National Day, in the presence of the major Italian and Emirati institutional authorities, and the concert performed on 13 April 2022 at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele in Messina to celebrate 50 years of the Bonino-Pulejo Foundation and 70 years of the Gazzetta del Sud, in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. In 2023, with the Soloists of the La Scala Academy of Lyric Opera, the Choir and the dancers of the Ballet School, the Orchestra performed at the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman, Le nozze di Figaro the famous production by Giorgio Strehler, reprised by Marina Bianchi, and accompany the Ballet School Dancers in La fille mal gardée, a new choreography by Frédéric Olivieri at La Scala.

The Orchestra has performed in a long list of theatres, music societies, and international festivals, including the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia, the Royal Opera House in Muscat, the Harris Theatre in Chicago, Strathmore Hall in Washington D.C., the Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, the Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University, La Fenice of Venice, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Teatro Bellini in Catania, the RAI Auditorium in Turin, the Ravello Festival, the Kissinger Sommer Festival, and the Wolfegger Festspiele.

Eminent conductors have taken their turns on the podium: Roberto Abbado, Marc Albrecht, Giovanni Antonini, John Axelrod, Roland Böer, Paolo Carignani, David Coleman, Ottavio Dantone, Óliver Diaz, Placido Domingo, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Ivanovič Fedoseev, Iván Fischer, Ádám Fischer, Lawrence Foster, Marco Guidarini, Theodor Guschlbauer, Michael Halász, Manfred Honeck, Fabio Luisi, Susanna Mälkki, Michele Mariotti, Zubin Mehta, Pietro Mianiti, Gianandrea Noseda, Daniel Oren, Evelino Pidò, Sesto Quatrini, Stefano Ranzani, Donato Renzetti, Daniele Rustioni, Mikhail Tatarnikov, Yuri Temirkanov, Lorenzo Viotti, and Massimo Zanetti. The Orchestra has also accompanied artists of the caliber of David Fray, Herbie Hancock, Olga Kern, Lang Lang, Andrea Lucchesini, Francesco Manara, Fabrizio Meloni, Miriam Prandi, Alessandro Taverna, Simon Trpčeski, Alexei Volodin, Giovanni Andrea Zanon.