To find a free place, you have to scroll down to the date of January 2nd, the last of eight performances, and even there the choice, by now, is reduced. "La Forza del destino" by Giuseppe Verdi, which will inaugurate the opera season of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on December 7 (in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella), is sold out. And the situation is no different for the concerts and for Rudolf Nureyev's "The Nutcracker" which, on December 18, will kick off the Ballet season. At the end of the year, spectators could reach 400 thousand (298 thousand last year), with a record occupancy rate of 90%, and revenues close to 34 million euros. Numbers that tell of a theater in health and loved by its community, explains the superintendent Dominique Meyer, also made up of many foreigners (about a third of total spectators), as well as young people under 35, who have now come to represent a third of the audience (they were 23% in 2019). "I am leaving a theater with its accounts in order, more modern and younger”, Meyer said yesterday, presenting his last December 7 as superintendent, a position that next March will pass to Fortunato Ortombina, currently at the helm of the Fenice in Venice.