Opera house as wealthy patrons and it continues to have a large number of working opera houses such as Teatro Massimo in Palermo (the biggest in Italy), Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (the world's oldest working opera house) and Teatro La Scala in Milan. In contrast, there was no opera house in London when Henry Purcell was composing and the first opera house in Germany was built in Hamburg in 1678. In the 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambition and social
Santa Maria la Scala Santa Maria la Scala Santa Maria la Scala is a Baroque style church in a Piazzetta of the same name in Naples, Italy. The complex was built in 1054, when merchants of the town of Scala in the peninsula of Sorrento, traded with Neapolitans, thus were granted a plot which then stood outside the city walls, to erect a church complex. By the 15th century, the church stood inside the walls of the city. As trade between Naples and Scala declined, the church fell in disuse. The church was reconstructed in the 17th and 18th century as the home of