La Scala exhibition celebrates the theater’s ballet corps with candid behind-the-scenes photos

MILAN | Photographer Gérard Uféras was granted full access to the La Scala ballet corps’ backstage over six years to produce a series of emotional, candid portraits at the heart of a new exhibition at the theater’s museum and a soon-to-be published book.

The opera house’s general manager, Dominique Meyer, conceded Tuesday that an exhibition on ballet at the theater most associated with opera was “rare.”

Yet the show titled “The Hidden Gaze, Dance Behind the Curtain” also emphasizes that ballet has been part of the theater’s mission since its inception. A timeline in the exhibition’s first room recounts that La Scala’s inaugural performance of Antonio Salieri’s “L’Europa riconosciuta,” on Aug. 3, 1778, was accompanied by two ballets.

Manuel Legris, the head of La Scala’s ballet corps, said that he gave Uféras “complete freedom” to roam backstage and rehearsal halls to “find these special moments.”

They include La Scala’s star principal dancer Nicoletta Manni caught in a backstage embrace with her husband, principal dancer Timofej Andrijashenko, her face showing complete surrender after giving it all on stage. The fetching title photograph shows a young ballerina in a white tutu from behind as she peeks from behind the curtain on the stage, recalling the work of French impressionist Edgar Degas.

Dancers are photographed from above the stage lights, collapsed with legs splayed backstage, backlit as they prepare to make their entrance.

“Your work brings our art to life,” Legris told Uféras in a video that accompanies the exhibition.

The photographs — some in black and white, others in color — are interspersed with white paper sculptures of ballet costumes by Caterina Crepax, from flowing Romantic-era skirts to more contemporary short dresses. A dragonfly-inspired ballet dress was dedicated to the late La Scala star and principal dancer Carla Fracci.

The exhibition in Teatro alla Scala’s museum runs from Wednesday through Sept. 14. The book accompanying the exhibition will be published later this month.