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Rossini’s work signalled La Scala’s shift from comic opera and Neo-Classical works to Romantic melodrama.

This is Milan’s – indeed, one of the world’s – top opera companies, where Verdi was once house composer, Callas formerly graced the stage and costumes are designed by top fashion artistes. Performances have now returned to this gloriously restored 18th-century theatre after three years at the purpose-built Teatro degli Arcimboldi.

This arty Brera hold-out of bohemianism squeezes a tiny stage and an enthusiastic crowd into a narrow space to enjoy live music. It’s as popular as it is small; don’t expect to get a table, or be able to hear the person next to you.

Salieri’s bellicose but lighthearted opera opened La Scala on 3 August 1778.

Puccini’s tale of enduring love between a Japanese geisha and an American soldier.

Cavernous Magazzini Generali is a little bit of everything. It has a stage and auditorium that seats 1,000 for live acts, it can become a huge disco, it has a gallery for exhibitions, and it fits in live poetry readings and more besides.

Boito’s first great success led to a collaboration with Verdi that produced Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893.

Vittorio de Sica’s 1951 fable of a magical dove that grants wishes to the inhabitants of a Milan slum uses an early version of “special effects”, bridging the popular Neo-Realistic style of Italy’s post-war cinema with the era of magical realism in film-making that Fellini would make famous.

Verdi would become La Scala’s greatest home-grown composer, but he suffered two flops before this hit.

Of Bellini’s three La Scala premieres, the most famous is Norma , a Druid-Roman love triangle that ends badly.