A vivid collage of opera culture bursts from this mid-century Italian chrome card devoted to Milan's Teatro alla Scala — three photographs of the legendary opera house (its sunlit piazza facade, its illuminated night exterior, and its breathtaking horseshoe auditorium packed with red velvet and gilded tiers) set against a theatrical backdrop of overlapping opera album covers and programs: Tosca, Aida, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Gioconda, Cavalleria Rusticana, and Puccini's name in bold — a postcard that is itself a love letter to Italian operatic tradition. Mailed in May 1965 from Florence by a traveler signing herself only as "Mom," the card is addressed to a "Bert" at an apartment on West 114th Street in New York City, ZIP 10025 — the upper reaches of Morningside Heights, a neighborhood then home to students and faculty of Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music. Her message is breathless with the joy of first encounter with Europe: a beautiful bus ride from Milan, nine men and nine women in the group, a German guide eager to show them his own country next, and the country itself "too beautiful to bother to stretch out." She signs off: "Thrilled with Europe so far. Love, Mom." The 100-lire Italian stamp depicts a bearded Renaissance figure, machine-cancelled at the Firenze Ferroviaria (railway) post office on 9 May 1965.