The melodrama, or a national identity. “Gran Teatro Italia” by Alberto Mattioli

My grandfather used to say that when his father (at an unspecified moment in the early 1900s) had to conquer what would later become his wife, he resolved theimpasse looking at her with a certain intensity and saying “now let’s love each other heavenly woman”. A phrase that today could say little or nothing and that certainly would not be used for the purpose of conquest, I would say by anyone. Anyone who attends opera houses knows well that La Scala is not just a theatre, nor even the San Carlo, the Fenice, or the Costanzi: they are all small cultural and social ecosystems which, in the theater of the great world, have marked with indelible ink the life and development of our cities, large and small, and their inhabitants. The history of boxes and boxers (and sometimes also of the mirrors that were placed in the boxes) is the story of the social and cultural evolution of the country: of an Italy that went to the theater even five times a week, with seasons that strictly followed the liturgical calendar, from a social point of view; it is the story of a horizontal and inclusive cultural system, which cemented being a homeland long before political models.