I. VISCONTI AT LA SCALA

La Scala was home to eight Visconti productions: the work of an artist who believed that opera was “a

distillation of life itself.” It was here, on 7 December 1954, that Visconti’s career as an opera director of- ficially began. He would soon make his mark on theatres in Italy and abroad, from London’s Covent Gar- den to the Vienna Staatsoper.