Nineteenth-century musical Italy is, according to Bruno Barilli's famous definition, 'the country of melodrama', and the theatre is its space par excellence, and La Scala favoured the establishment of Milan as the capital of the opera industry. This requires an articulate and complex organisation that, in addition to the artists, includes agents, impresarios and technical personnel in the sector and enables the 'turnkey' transfer of Italian opera performances to the other side of the planet. And in Milan, the Teatro alla Scala was built with the intention of being the centre of this production system. The theatre, inaugurated in 1778, was built thanks to the obstinate, tenacious and passionate determination of the most illustrious families of the Lombard aristocracy, after a fire had destroyed the Regio Ducal Teatro on the night of 25 February 1776. It was the nobles who entirely financed the construction of the new Teatro Grande at La Scala, receiving in exchange a box with an adjoining dressing room.