A night at the opera with Alfas and Lancias
Time: The Italian Opera season of 1927-28. Place: You are settling in at the world’s most famous opera house to see a performance of Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment, and you have great seats, E 15 and 16 on the Destra side of the main floor. On your arm is a dazzling beauty with bobbed hair and a daringly short shimmering dress. The world is yours.
Alas, you’d rather be elsewhere.
Fortunately, during the performance, you notice that your date has held on to the “Official Program” for the season. You ask to see it. Perhaps something will engage your interest, like the Pirelli floor in the Atrio of La Scala, which demonstrated the many qualities of a rubber based floor. What will they think of next?
Paging through the program, it is more interesting than you might have imagined, and there are a lot of color advertisements.
And a lot of cars, like the new Jano-designed Alfa Romeo six cylinder 1500. Now there is a car… and the trials and tribulations of Maria and Tonio can be forgotten for a while.
Rubber floors? For those who have to sneak in at night without waking the Mrs.
On the back cover, there is an ad for the Lancias, those Lambdas with the unit frame construction. Most amazing automobiles, and right down at the dealer on the Via P. Tenaglia…
While a Lambda might be a bit costly, perhaps Garavini can build a less expensive body on a Fiat. Didn’t Garavini just join up with Mario Revelli de Beumont? “Plumelastica”, isn’t that their version of Weymann construction?
A Citroen would be ok, but it is French after all…
What about an American car? Isn’t the Italian market going to open up to U.S. cars and even a Ford factory?
Here are more…all being sold by a dealer over in Brescia. Will that affect the sale of cars built in Italy?
And Oldsmobile too. Expensive here, no doubt.
Perhaps it is best just to keep the Fiat running.
The Countess has just found Tonio in her drawing room – the opera is almost over. Thankfully it was not the Ring Cycle. But we’ll take this program home with us.
All ads and images aside from the lead photo are from the above program.
What a fun article! And the auto ads are truly beautiful. Our opera programs here in Chicago aren’t nearly that artistic, and certainly not with that many cars!
Clever marketing. Of course opera patrons would have been just the sort of customer that would have bought these beautiful automobiles!
Enrico Minetti, the most important Lancia dealer in Italy since 1910, got the idea before sponsoring the inauguration evening at La Scala in 1923. He was a pioneer in the Italian car market creating the commercial branch, applying the co-marketing and opening a showroom in New York in 1929.