After the official opening on May 1st, the Milan World Expo promises to attract a large number of visitors: around 9 million people are expected to come to Milan over the next six months, and many of them are likely to spend some days in city.

In order to welcome these visitors, La Scala has prepared a rich program, with the curtain rising almost every night, offering opera and ballet performances, as well as concerts featuring various guest orchestras. The official program of ‘La Scala for Expo’ opened on May 1st with a glittering new production of Puccini’s Turandot, which also marked the beginning of Riccardo Chailly’s tenure as the company’s music director after the Barenboim era.

But already on April 30th the Philharmonic Orchestra of La Scala had offered an inaugural open air concert in the Dome square, starring Andrea Bocelli. The event was quite controversial, reportedly with Chailly being far from enthusiastic about the orchestra’s extra performance. Among singers invited to share the stage with Bocelli, Barbara Frittoli cancelled with a few days’ notice, allegedly because she didn’t want to duet with Bocelli. Some of the other singers, including Diana Damrau, Francesco Meli, Maria Luigia  Borsi, and Simone Piazzola, said they had decided to stay in order not to leave the tenor as the only representative of Italian opera. But it is doubtful that they achieved this result, as their names remained mostly unmentioned in the general press, with the exception of Damrau, who sang excerpts from La Traviata with Bocelli.

Anyhow, true opera lovers and voice maniacs will be served their favorite dishes in the weeks to come: already on May 4th Diana Damrau gave an exquisite recital featuring Lieder by Franz List, Richard Strauss, and Sergei Rachmaninov, with a wealth of encores, including two operatic arias, Adieu notre petite table  from Massenet’s Manon, and Oh mio babbino caro from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.

More recitals will follow as La Scala concentrates most concerts in their recital season during the Expo period: these will include René Pape, Anja Harteros, Daniela Barcellona and Ramon Vargas. Special recitals planned for Expo will feature Juan Diego Flórez on June 19th, Leo Nucci on June 21st and José Carreras on July 30th, and tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who had cancelled his appearance in Cavaleria rusticana, has agreed to give a concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra of La Scala on June 14th.

In addition to Turandot, which will be on stage until May 23rd, the company will present the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli’s new opera CO2, commissioned by La Scala (opening June 16th), and revivals of Lucia di Lammermoor, Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana  in the classic double bill with Pagliacci, and Tosca. July 4th will see the premiere of Gioacchino Rossini’s Otello, featuring an all stars cast with Juan Diego Flórez, Gregory Kunde, and John Elliot Gardiner in the pit.

In August the company normally has its summer break, but this year visitors will still be able to see Il barbiere di Siviglia, with young musicians and singers from the La Scala Academy, and La bohème, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar. After the summer break, normal activity will resume with revivals of L’elisir d’amore, Falstaff and, towards the end of October, Wozzeck.

Symphonic concerts started on May 2nd with a guest concert by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle, with a beautiful rendition of Leoš Janáček’s Sinfonietta and Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, and will continue with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Mariss Jansons (June 25th), the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer (August 1st), the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Andris Nelsons (September 1st), and the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Paavo Järvi (September 11th). From mid-August to early September, a number of youth orchestras from Venezuela will give life to the project ‘El sistema’.

The Philharmonic Orchestra of La Scala will return to the open air venue of Dome square on May 30th with Riccardo Chailly and violinist David Garrett, and to La Scala on July 19th under the baton of John Eliot Gardiner, with pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout.

The Teatro alla Scala Museum, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, will also give its contribution to the World Expo with temporary exhibits dedicated to Salvatore Fiume, to Turandot at La Scala, and, in line with the Expo’s theme, to food in opera. In addition, there will be guided tours, concerts, tableau-vivants dedicated to food, a photography contest, and, in partnership with Japan Tobacco International, the accessibility project, which will offer three days a month dedicated to visitors with disabilities.