Is this trip suitable in winter?

Winter offers La Scala's main season (which runs October–July), indoor performances in Florence and Rome, and Cremona and Bologna in their quietest, most authentic form. The Verona Arena is the only element that requires summer or early autumn scheduling.

What is the pricing structure?

This is a bespoke itinerary priced individually based on dates, group size, accommodation grade, and performance choices. Complete the planning form and a specialist responds within one business day.

9-Day Bespoke Journey

Italian Opera & the Performing Arts

La Scala, the Arena di Verona, and music in the country that invented it.

Available as Private Semi-Private Self-Guided

From €5,190 per person 9 days / 8 nights

View Itinerary

Tour Overview

9 days across Italy.

Italy invented opera, and the argument can be made that it has never been surpassed at it. This nine-day journey follows the country's great operatic geography: Milan's La Scala — the most famous opera house in the world, with a lineage stretching back to 1778 — then south to Cremona, where Stradivarius built violins that still play in every leading orchestra, then to Verona's Arena di Verona, the Roman amphitheatre where Aida and Nabucco are performed each summer under open sky before an audience of fifteen thousand. Florence and Rome complete the circuit. You will attend performances, visit rehearsals, meet instrument makers and conductors, eat in the restaurants that serious musicians have been eating in for decades, and hear music in spaces that were built for it before recording existed. This is not a tour for passive listeners.

Detailed Itinerary

Your journey, day by day.

Every day is designed with breathing room. Sleep in, take a detour, linger at lunch — the itinerary flexes around you, not the other way around.

Day 1

Arrival in Milan

Italy's most European city on the eve of something special.

Your private driver meets you at Milan Malpensa and carries you to your hotel near the Brera neighbourhood or the Via della Spiga — Milan's quietly elegant centre rather than the fashion district of the tourist imagination. The evening is deliberately free: Milan at dusk is a city of aperitivo bars where the Campari Spritz was invented, of Michelin-starred restaurants in rooms that don't announce themselves, and of bookshops that stay open until ten. Tomorrow begins the formal program — tonight is for the city itself, on your own terms.

Private transfer from Milan Malpensa
Brera neighbourhood at leisure
Aperitivo in Milan's bar culture

5★ hotel, Milan Brera / Quadrilatero

Day 2

La Scala: The House

Where Verdi wept and Callas made history.

The Teatro alla Scala opened in 1778 and has been the benchmark against which every opera house in the world is measured ever since. Your morning begins with a private guided visit: the horseshoe auditorium with its six tiers of gilded boxes, the stage that has hosted the world premieres of Otello, Falstaff, and Madama Butterfly, and the Museo Teatrale whose collections run from Verdi's conducting baton to Callas's costumes. If rehearsals are scheduled, your access may extend backstage — past the painted flats, the rigging, the costume rooms where wardrobes for productions are assembled over months. The afternoon is for Milan's other great collection: the Pinacoteca di Brera, whose Raphael Marriage of the Virgin and Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus hang in rooms that seem too modest for what they contain. The evening: a performance at La Scala — opera, ballet, or symphony depending on the season, reserved in advance in the best available positions.

Private La Scala guided tour — auditorium, stage, Museo Teatrale
Possible backstage rehearsal access
Pinacoteca di Brera — Raphael, Caravaggio
Evening performance at La Scala

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Milan

Day 3

Cremona: The City of Stradivarius

Where wood becomes music.

The drive from Milan to Cremona takes forty-five minutes through the flat Po valley. Cremona has been building the finest stringed instruments in the world since the 16th century — Amati, Guarneri, Stradivarius — and it still does. The Museo del Violino holds seventeen original Stradivarius instruments, playable and periodically played, and the exhibit on construction reveals the mathematics and physics behind the varnish formulas that still aren't fully understood. More extraordinary: a private visit to a working luthier's workshop, where instruments in various stages of completion hang from the walls, and the maker — trained in the Cremonese tradition — demonstrates the technique of bending sides, graduating the top, and fitting the sound post that gives the violin its voice. In the afternoon, a short private recital in the Duomo's Baptistery: the acoustic is so perfectly calibrated that a single unaccompanied violin fills the space without effort.

Museo del Violino — original Stradivarius instruments
Private luthier workshop visit
Private recital in Cremona's Baptistery
Transfer to Verona for evening arrival

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Verona (arriving evening)

Day 4

Verona by Day

The Romeo city and its extraordinary Roman inheritance.

Verona has been drawing visitors since the Grand Tour and has still not been diminished by the attention — its Roman Arena is intact to a degree that makes the Colosseum look ruined by comparison, and the medieval streets of the centre contain more layers of visible history per square metre than almost any city in Italy. Your private guide takes you through the Arena's interior in the morning — the seating, the stage, the technical infrastructure that allows Aida with its live animals, chorus of three hundred, and full orchestra to be staged under the stars for an audience of fifteen thousand. In the afternoon, the old city: the Piazza delle Erbe with its Roman column and mediaeval fountain, the Scaligeri tombs, and the Adige river curving around the Castel San Pietro hill with the Alps visible to the north when the weather is clear.

Private guided Arena di Verona tour — scale and staging
Piazza delle Erbe, Scaligeri tombs, Roman archaeology
Adige river panorama with Alpine views
Afternoon free in Verona's old centre

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Verona

Day 5

Opera Under the Stars

Two thousand years of stone and one of the world's great performances.

The day belongs to you. Verona's Adige bend contains some of Italy's least-visited Romanesque churches — Sant'Anastasia, San Zeno Maggiore (whose altar triptych is by Mantegna) — and the hills above the city have vineyard trails through Valpolicella country. In the late afternoon, the ritual of the Arena performance begins: the pre-performance dinner at a restaurant near the piazza, the crowds gathering, the candles handed out at the gate — the Arena's tradition is that the audience lights their candles for the overture, thirty thousand small flames rising into the dark. The performance itself is one of the singular theatrical experiences in Italy: Verdi or Puccini in a Roman amphitheatre, with the warm air and the bats wheeling over the stage as the third act builds. Your driver is waiting when it ends.

Morning at leisure — Valpolicella walk or San Zeno Maggiore
Pre-performance dinner at an Arena institution
Evening opera at the Arena di Verona — best reserved positions
The candle ceremony and the open-sky performance

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Verona

Day 6

Bologna: The Fat City

Italy's greatest food city and its serious musical heritage.

Bologna is famous for two things simultaneously: it has the oldest university in the Western world (founded 1088) and it is unambiguously Italy's most serious food city. The two are not unrelated — a university city of 400,000 with strong guild traditions produced the artisan butchers, pasta makers, and salumieri whose products carry the city's name around the world. Your morning is with a food guide: the Quadrilatero market, the acetaie selling aged balsamic, the tortellini maker at her table rolling pasta to a thickness that takes thirty years to master. A proper Bolognese lunch: tagliatelle al ragù, mortadella carved at the counter, dessert that nobody should skip. In the afternoon, a visit to the Conservatorio — Bologna's music academy, one of the oldest in Italy — and the Museo della Musica, whose collection includes manuscripts in Mozart's hand from his 1770 visit at fourteen, when the Accademia Filarmonica made him an honorary member.

Quadrilatero food market with guide
Tortellini and tagliatelle — the Bolognese masters
Conservatorio and Museo della Musica
Mozart's 1770 membership manuscript

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Florence (arriving evening)

Day 7

Florence: The Medici and the Music

Where opera was invented, in a city that still understands patronage.

Opera was born in Florence in the late 16th century — in the rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio and the gardens of the Medici villas, where a group of intellectuals calling themselves the Camerata fiorentina decided that ancient Greek drama should be accompanied by music, not just spoken. Your private guide takes you through this history in the morning: the Palazzo Vecchio's salone where Cosimo de' Medici's court entertainments were staged, then to the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino — Florence's main opera house, rebuilt in 2014 on a spectacular modernist campus — for a behind-the-scenes tour of the rehearsal rooms and principal stage. The afternoon is for the Uffizi's music in paint: Botticelli's instruments, Caravaggio's lute player, the Flemish still lives with their cellos and viols. In the evening, a private string quartet dinner in a historic palazzo — four musicians, a Florentine meal, and no audience except your table.

Palazzo Vecchio — where Medici court entertainments were staged
Teatro del Maggio Musicale backstage tour
Uffizi with a focus on music in Renaissance painting
Private string quartet dinner in a historic Florentine palazzo

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Florence

Day 8

Florence to Rome: The Final Stage

The city where opera season runs year-round.

The high-speed train from Santa Maria Novella to Roma Termini takes ninety minutes — time enough to read the program notes for tonight. Rome's musical life is sustained by the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of the world's great orchestras, and in summer the Terme di Caracalla — the 3rd-century Roman baths whose roofless shell now serves as an outdoor opera venue for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. You arrive in time for a late lunch in Parioli or Prati, a walk through the city in the long golden afternoon light, and then the evening performance: if the Caracalla season is running, an Aida or a Tosca in Roman ruins under the night sky is the ideal counterpoint to Verona. Your hotel is in the historic centre — the kind of Roman address where the breakfast is served on a terrace with a view of something built by Bernini.

First-class train Florence to Rome
Santa Cecilia or Terme di Caracalla evening performance
Caracalla Roman ruins outdoor opera (summer) or winter season concert
Rome at leisure between arrival and performance

Meals: Breakfast 5★ hotel, Rome historic centre

Day 9

Rome & Departure

One last Roman morning before the world reasserts itself.

Rome's mornings are best before nine — the light on the Pantheon, the fountains without crowds, the coffee bar on the corner of the Piazza della Rotonda where the barista has been working since before the buses start. The schedule today is genuinely yours: the Galleria Borghese if you haven't been (Bernini's sculptures are not in the same category as sculpture generally — they are in a category of their own), or simply the neighbourhoods: Trastevere, Testaccio, the Janiculum hill with its panorama of the whole city. Your private driver transfers you to Fiumicino at the agreed time. The music tends to continue after you're home — that is the intended effect.

Rome at leisure — Galleria Borghese optional
Trastevere or Testaccio neighbourhood morning
Private transfer to Rome Fiumicino

Meals: Breakfast

Where You'll Stay

Hand-picked hotels, every night.

We choose properties for character, location, and the kind of service that makes you feel looked after — not just checked in. Every hotel can be swapped for an alternative if you prefer.

Milan

2 nights

5★ hotel, Brera / Quadrilatero

Central Milan near the Brera gallery

Walking distance to La Scala; Brera neighbourhood for evening dining

Verona

2 nights

5★ hotel

Historic centre near the Arena

Walking distance to the Arena di Verona for evening performances

Florence

2 nights

5★ hotel

Historic centre

Close to Santa Croce or Oltrarno; city walkable throughout

Rome

2 nights

5★ hotel, historic centre

Near the Pantheon or Spanish Steps

Central Rome; transfer to Terme di Caracalla by car in summer

Hotels shown are indicative of the standard we book. Upon request, we will provide a detailed itinerary with specific hotel options tailored to your preferences and budget.

What's in the Price

Included

8 nights in 5★ hotels throughout
Daily breakfast at your hotel
Evening performance at La Scala (best available positions, season-dependent)
Evening opera at the Arena di Verona (best reserved positions)
Evening performance in Rome — Santa Cecilia or Terme di Caracalla
Private La Scala morning tour including Museo Teatrale
Private luthier workshop visit in Cremona
Private Teatro del Maggio Musicale backstage tour, Florence
Private guides in Milan, Verona, Bologna, and Florence
First-class train Florence–Rome
All private vehicle transfers throughout
All entrance fees for guided visits
24/7 travel specialist support
Hamilton & Chase digital travel booklet with performance notes and programme history

Not Included

International flights to/from Milan or Rome
Travel insurance (required — we can arrange on request)
Meals not listed in the itinerary
Additional opera or concert tickets beyond those listed
Personal expenses
Gratuities for guides and drivers

Good to Know

The Arena di Verona opera season runs June through early September. Outside this window, we substitute an indoor Verona performance or reroute via a different Italian opera house — your specialist will advise.
La Scala's season runs October through July. Summer visits include museum and backstage access; live performances are available outside the August recess.
The Terme di Caracalla outdoor season in Rome runs July–August. Year-round indoor performances at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma are available as an alternative.
Performance programs are confirmed six months before travel; we always secure the best available positions and will advise on repertoire.
All experiences and guides are arranged exclusively for your group.

Make It Yours

Optional add-ons & upgrades.

Every trip is different. These extras can be woven into your itinerary — just let your travel specialist know what catches your eye.

La Scala box seats upgrade

A private box at La Scala for the evening performance — the traditional way to experience the house, with complete privacy and the best acoustics in the horseshoe

Price on Request

Conductor or singer meet-and-greet

Arranged introductions to a cast member or conductor after a performance — subject to artist availability and willingness

Price on Request

Harpsichord recital in a Florentine palazzo

A private early-music recital in a 17th-century room, performed on period instruments, arranged for your group only

Price on Request

Valpolicella wine estate visit

A morning at an Amarone estate in the hills above Verona — the wine that requires four years of drying grapes before vinification

Price on Request

"The Arena at night with thirty thousand candles is something that no recording can prepare you for. And La Scala in the morning, empty — the guide showed us Verdi's box, told us what he saw from it on opening night of Otello. Hamilton & Chase got us access to things we simply couldn't have arranged ourselves."

James & Sophia T.

New York, USA · Italian Opera & the Performing Arts, July 2024

Common Questions

Questions about this trip.

What if we don't speak Italian or know opera well?

The guides on this itinerary explain everything in context — you don't need to arrive knowing opera to find the Arena di Verona at night one of the most extraordinary experiences you can have in Italy. Many guests who have never attended an opera before find it more accessible than they expected when the performance is outdoors in a Roman amphitheatre under warm stars.

Can the route be reversed, starting in Rome?

Yes — the itinerary works equally well in reverse order, starting in Rome and ending in Milan. Some guests prefer this because it builds toward La Scala as the finale. Your specialist will advise based on your flight connections.

Bespoke Journey

Italian Opera & the Performing Arts

9 days / 8 nights

From €5,190

per person

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