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The current Ballet of the Teatro alla Scala boasts a glorious past whose roots go back to the centuries before the eighteenth-century inauguration, in 1778, of the most famous musical theater in the world, which is still home to it. Distinguished choreographers, such as Gasparo Angiolini and Salvatore Viganò exerted a great influence on European ballet even before the foundation, in 1813, of the Imperial Royal Academy of Dance of the Scala. From here Carlo Blasis, illustrious teacher and theorist, introduced the ballet into the Romantic atmosphere, contributing to the technical innovation of his style. In Russia, Enrico Cecchetti projected the Italian teaching of academic technique there and made it rise in the world through Sergej Djagilev's Ballets Russes with which he joined before ending his career at the Teatro alla Scala.