His audience is considered one of the most demanding. It is located in the Scala square, flanked by the Theatre Museum. It was built in 1776-1778 by order of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and designed by the neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini.

In 1812, with the advent of Rossini's La Scala becomes the "location" of the Italian opera, of its century long evolution and of its performance tradition up to the present day, through the primacy achieved by the works of Donizetti, Bellini, Puccini and especially Giuseppe Verdi, the composer who, more than any other is linked to the history of La Scala, whose works, due to the strong patriotic feeling which awakens in Milan crossed from the ferment of the nascent Italian Risorgimento, strengthen the roots of popular melodrama and identify the same image with la Scala.

Arturo Toscanini was the most famous of a long series of artistic directors: he in his early twenties in 1900 takes twice the direction and promotes a radical reform of the theater (he was responsible for the execution mode of the operas as today we are used all over the world) and in 1946 he opened the Scala, rebuilt after the devastating bombing of World War II, directing a famous concert, when - in addition to 3,000 people in theater - thousands people were in the streets and squares surrounding the theatre to listen through the speakers