It is called «La Magnifica Fabbrica» and it is the tender that will allow the creation, within five years, of the new laboratories and warehouses of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in the Rubattino district. To promote it, the Municipality of Milan and the Teatro alla Scala Foundation, with the aim of bringing together laboratories and warehouses in one place. «They will be modern and of excellent quality and then with the mayor we want to include this city in the city – explained the superintendent of the theater, Dominique Meyer – so it will be accessible, there will be a room with 600 seats and there will be open rehearsals. We do not want to close the Scala inside four walls, but to open it to the city. I hope it will be ready as soon as possible, but it is a great operation ».
The competition will end in May 2022, the first phase will end in January with the choice of the seven best projects and in May there will be the winner. “This project – adds the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, who is also president of the Foundation – is combined with the administration’s policies on sustainability, there will be a different handling of goods”.
The total investment for the construction of the new laboratories and warehouses of the La Scala theater, in the former industrial area where the Innocenti was located in the Rubattino district, is 120 million euros, of which 98 for the part relating to the laboratories and deposits of La Scala. and 22 for the extension of the Lambretta park.
The “Magnifica Fabbrica” della Scala will have workshops dedicated to scenography, mechanics, carpentry, tailoring, the creation of costumes, more than 70 thousand people own the theater. “An important treasure,” according to superintendent Dominique Meyer. Thanks to the new computerized repositories, you will always know where each piece is. There will be several rehearsal rooms, two for the choir, a large rehearsal room for the orchestra, which will be added to the Palazzina Verdi being built behind the Piermrini, which will cover 70% of the rehearsals, but is limited in size.
There will also be a 3,700 square meter complex of rehearsal rooms for direction, equivalent to three stages, a multipurpose space with 600 seats open to the city. The warehouses will be modern and computerized, with 2,500 containers in which to keep, adds Meyer, “70 productions in order, according to a conservation system that will be compatible with the needs of large international theaters, given that we also do many co-productions”.