Milan postscript

Home now, after the fog lifted enough at both Linate and Heathrow airports to enable, after a delay of nearly five hours, our respective departure and arrival.

I should perhaps mention the high and low points of our four day sojourn in what the Milanese certainly believe to be the most civilised and sophisticated city in Italy. The high point was perhaps our visit to Leonardo's celebrated "Last Supper". Painted, rather appropriately, on a wall at one end of a huge monastery refectory, we were admitted in a group of just 30 people, given 20 minutes to drink in its mastery and to absorb the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of that very special space. Very different, then, from the near-hysterical atmosphere of the Sisteen Chapel in the Vatican, where the crowds are packed in, shoulder to smelly shoulder.

The low point was our visit to La Scala to see Rossini's opera "The Lady of the Lake", based, apparently, on a poem by Sir Walter Scott. Having paid 120 euros each for tickets in a box, we found the warning that came with the tickets, that a view of the stage might be difficult, proved all too correct. The forward seat, at the front of the box, was all right, but the rear seat offered no view whatever of the action. Again, information which came with the tickets anticipated this, saying that it is "the music one comes to experience".

Very possibly. But while sitting in the shadows at the rear of the box, I had time to count the boxes around the sides of the auditorium, and calculated that upwards of 200 people had spent a substantial sum of money that evening to enjoy no better a view of proceedings than I did. I call this a shameless exploitation of the opera going public, who can, one might argue, probably afford it, but I still think it is wrong that La Scala should get away with trading on their exalted reputation as the most famous opera house in the World in order to rip people off. Pelagius says: it's a disgrace!