Vittoria Crespi Morbio

A century ago Toscanini reigned over La Scala and played the role of mediator between the great divas: Burzio, Mazzoleni, Storchio… In the theatre the gorgeous costumes of the Belle Époque were not only flaunted in operas but also in parties with the stalls converted into a ballroom. There was but one man who dictated fashion and dressed singers, Mata Hari and the ladies of the industrial upper class: the Milanese Giuseppe Palanti (1881–1946). A great temperament, a controversial but equally benevolent character, the creator of a luxurious world of beautiful women, decorous residences, holidays at Milano Marittima (the garden-city he invented), masked balls and dazzling theatre parties, Palanti bestowed on his public paintings, furniture, fabrics, costumes, wrought iron, clothing articles, advertisement posters, turreted villas, and even a torpedo-tube. He worked for Puccini, Chaliapin, Grazia Deledda, Pius XI, but also innumerable accountants, barristers, merchants, noblewomen, and above all young models. Rediscovering his designs for La Scala between 1903 and 1916, the years of his most glowing hegemony, means opening the “nest of memories” of the world of yesterday, guileless and enchanting.