Does anyone know of any discounts for Opera tickets in Milan. Looking to purchase 5 tickets for May.

Because FTers are active travelers to many parts of the world, this site has many regional forums listed below the general travel and dining forums. Here, it looks as the Italy forum would be your best to pose thus and I'll move this there. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Unless you act soon, you won't find any tickets for May, discounted or regular ones!

The opera in Milan, La Scala, is arguably the most prestigious in the world. You have to hope to get tickets, not to get them at discount. Almost all seats to to season subscribers. What is left is put up for sale 60 days before the premiere of that opera. Not 60 days before the day you want to go, but 60 days before the first showing of that opera. They sell out right away. To sit in the main orchestra, for 5, figure on paying about $2,000-2,500, but it's not likely you'll all be sitting together for a box it's about the same price but they only seat 2. The others in the box have an obstructed view. Most of the seats that you can just pick up 60 days before are, "listening only." You can see very little of the stage. If you want to see an opera in Milan you will be lucky to get seats, and don't count on any discounts.

What are the absolute cheapest tickets available for a family of 5 (no children under 25 years old)

I have been lucky enough to get to La Scala several different times. I get single tickets at the box office. Since the location is convient, sometimes I go back a few times that day. Don't expect to sit together. Also, do NOT buy tickets on the street!!!

Hope you get to go, its quite an experience .

Is this because they are potentially fraudulent or overpriced?

Fraud!! Also, there are a great deal of young people that look like college students that will try to talk to you...they carry a newspaper to distract you and will try to pickpocket you. Sometimes they work with others, they seemed to recognize tourists. Its a wonderful city, and wonderful people, however, like big cities all over the world, use your common sense.
Have fun!

You have posted 5 questions here that have already been answered in numerous threads about where to eat in the cities you are visiting. If you want to know what are the "absolute cheapest" tickets for La Scala, go to their website. I'm guessing it's lascala.com.

Nobody is gong to sell you tickets for less than it costs you to buy them at the box office. There are no scams going on. I went to a Broadway play tonight. It was sold out, and has been sold out for some time. I bought my tickets ahead of time. On the way to the theatre people were offering to sell tickets, at much higher than face value. Asking if this is a scam is a bit insulting. There are always people standing outside of theaters and stadiums trying to sell tickets for a higher price than they paid for them. It has nothing to do with Milan. The same thing happens if you go to Denver and want to buy Bronco tickets.

No one is buying tickets to La Scala to sell them to you at a personal loss. There are no discounts when it comes to perpetually sold out tickets at La Scala. You either go on their website and buy them for about $200 a piece for the cheapest tickets with an obstructed view, or you show up and buy the same ticket from a scalper for twice the price.

The only way you are likely to get into La Scala on the cheap is to stay at a five star hotel that costs $1500 a room and might offer discounted La Scala tickets as a bonus. Opera in Milan, or in Italy in general, is not cheap.

There are other options for classical music in Milan that cost about 90% less than seeing an opera, like going to the Orchestra Verdi, Milano Chamber Orchestra, etc. 5 people cannot go to La Scala and sit together for less than $2,500 without being very lucky.

The primary opera production at La Scala in May is Turandot; almost all seats are sold out:

http://teatroallascala.ticketone.it/

This is not surprising, for these reasons:

* It is a new production of Puccini's work, in the opera house in which the opera had its premier in 1926

* It is conducted by Riccardo Chailly, a popular Italian who is in the running to take over the La Scala music director job when Daniel Barenboim leaves

* The title role is being sung by Nina Stemme, arguably one of the top interpreters of the role today, and also the Liu is local favorite Maria Agresta

One issue with La Scala is that many of the seats are held by subscrubers, leaving a relatively smaller percentage to be offered to single-ticket buyers.

Also, if you are seated in the Platea (orchestra/stalls) you are expected to wear a jacket and tie for men and approriate garb for women.

If looking at seats in a box, you MUST be in the front row or you will see relatively little; opera houses of this vintage were designed for "see and be seen" factors, not for optimal sight lines to the stage.

La Scala the world's most prestigious? Hardly - most prestigious in Italy maybe (although I'd rate the Regio in Turin under Gianandrea Noseda better on purely musical terms). I'd rank Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper, La Monnaie in Brussels and the combined three houses in Berlin as higher than Milan. And for difficulty of tickets, Bayreuth and Glyndebourne are tough tickets indeed.

YMMV, of course

As a data point, my wife and I got tickets last minute (day before from hotel concierge) for La Donna del Lago in 2010 (I believe). They were front row box, highest tier (nosebleed seats) and they went for, as I recall, $440 each.

If it's the most prestigious opera house in Italy, doesn't that make it the most prestigious in the world?

If it's the most prestigious opera house in Italy, doesn't that make it the most prestigious in the world ?

The evenings of Turandot next May are not free for me. If they were, I'm certain I would have gotten free tickets: My dogs are called Calaf (a 9-year old bracco italiano) and Liu, a 3-year old cutie that looks like a malinois. One of these days I'll upload to Youtube a video of Liu singing "Tu che di gel sei cinta" (or, better, something that is vaguely reminiscent of it).

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.0.1; XT1032 Build/LRX21Z.M002) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.109 Mobile Safari/537.36)

This is appropriate .... after all, the opera was written by "Pooch-ini".