May 11, 1946. Evening. Arturo Toscanini steps up the podium to conduct the reopening concert of the restored Scala Theatre. The whole event is rendered by the fragmented image from the screens of the video wall created by Studio Azzurro.

On the night of August 16, 1943, bombing raids began on historic downtown Milan. Fascism had recently fallen and Badoglio’s armistice negotiations were timid. La Scala was hit, too. The roof and vault, the first and second galleries and the entire proscenium collapsed. Posters from the Milanese who invoked Toscanini’s return, a few hours after Mussolini’s resignation, were still on the walls. And when on April 25, 1945, Milan rose up and got free, in a city full of rubble, the first thought was to rebuild La Scala.