The Teatro Comunale (Communal Theatre) in Ferrara is an opera house, located in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, and built between 1786 and 1797 with seating for 990. Privately owned theatres with limited seating capacity had existed in the city for many years, but the arrival of Cardinal Spinelli, the new papal envoy, in 1786 spurred the construction of a new public theatre under the architects Cosimo Morelli and Antonio Foschini. However, their disagreements led to conflicting design concepts regarding the elliptical shape of the auditorium which were resolved through compromise. The theatre was finally ready for its inaugural presentation of Portogallo's Gli Orazi e i Curiazi on 2 September 1798.
The theatre is noted for staging the premiere of an early opera written by Gioacchino Rossini at the age of twenty, Ciro in Babilonia in March 1812.
Between 1825 and 1826 some renovation work was required, followed by some more in 1850, creating the theatre as seen today. In 1928 an orchestra pit was added. During the Second World War the theatre suffered badly from Allied bombing and, although it opened occasionally in the immediate post-war years, it closed in 1956, not to re-open until further restoration took place in the early 1960s and then once again between 1987 and 1989.
The present-day auditorium has 5 tiers, while the ceiling displays four scenes from the life of Julius Caesar. It now seats 890.
Following the Second World War and subsequent renovations, performances were fairly sporadic, but after the creation of “Ferrara Musica” in 1988, more operatic performances have been staged, some of obscure or little-known operas, and other, more popular works alongside other theatres in the Emilia-Romagna region. The conductor Claudio Abbado usually presents one opera every season and the 2007 schedule [1] shows four operas being staged between February and April, along with dance and theatre and other events of various kinds.
Between January and April 2008 the four operas performed were Motezuma by Vivaldi, Maria de Buenos Aires by Astor Piazolla, Tosca by Puccini and Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti. [2] The theatre's 2013/14 season shows performances of four operas. [3]
The Real Teatro di San Carlo, as originally named by the Bourbon monarchy but today known simply as the Teatro (di) San Carlo, is an opera house in Naples, Italy, connected to the Royal Palace and adjacent to the Piazza del Plebiscito. It is the oldest continuously active venue for opera in the world, having opened in 1737, decades before either Milan's La Scala or Venice's La Fenice.
The Teatro Comunale di Bologna is an opera house in Bologna, Italy. Typically, it presents eight operas with six performances during its November to April season.
Teatro Regio di Parma, originally constructed as the Nuovo Teatro Ducale, is an opera house and opera company in Parma, Italy.
The Teatro dell'Opera di Roma is an opera house in Rome, Italy. Originally opened in November 1880 as the 2,212 seat Costanzi Theatre, it has undergone several changes of name as well modifications and improvements. The present house seats 1,600.
The Teatro Massimo Bellini is an opera house located on Piazza Vincenzo Bellini in Catania, Sicily, southern Italy. Named after the local-born composer Vincenzo Bellini, it was inaugurated on 31 May 1890 with a performance of the composer's masterwork, Norma. It seats 1,200.
The Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi is an opera house located in Trieste, Italy and named after the composer Giuseppe Verdi. Privately constructed, it was inaugurated as the Teatro Nuovo to replace the smaller 800-seat "Cesareo Regio Teatro di San Pietro" on 21 April 1801 with a performance of Johann Simon Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia. Initially, the Nuovo had 1,400 seats. In 1821, it became known as the Teatro Grande.
The Music of Emilia-Romagna has the reputation of being one of the richest in Europe; there are six music conservatories alone in the region, and the sheer number of other musical venues and activities is astounding. The region, as the name implies, combines the traditions of two different, contiguous areas—Emilia and Romagna—and it is perhaps this blend that contributes to the wealth of musical culture.
The Teatro Comunale Alighieri is an opera house located at 2 Via Mariani in Ravenna, Italy and designed by the Venetian architects, Tommaso Meduna and his brother, Giambattista who had designed the second La Fenice theatre after the fire of 1836. The new Teatro Comunale Alighieri was inaugurated on 15 May 1852 with a production of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable, followed by Giovanni Pacini's Medea.
The Teatro Comunale di Firenze is an opera house in Florence, Italy. It was originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele, which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and which seated 6,000 people. It became the focus on cultural life in the city. After closure caused by fire, it reopened in April 1864 and acquired a roof in 1882. By 1911 it had both electricity and heating.
The Teatro degli Arcimboldi is a theatre and opera house in Milan. It was built over a 27-month period in anticipation of the closure and subsequent nearly three-year-long renovation of Milan's La Scala opera house in December 2001. It is located 4.5 miles from the city centre in a converted Pirelli tire factory, in an area known as Bicocca.
The Teatro Comunale di Modena is an opera house in the town of Modena,, Italy. The idea for the creation of the present theatre dates from 1838, when it became apparent that the then-existing Teatro Comunale di via Emilia was no longer suitable for staging opera. However, this house had been the venue for presentations of all of the works of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini up to this time, and a flourishing operatic culture existed in Modena.
The Teatro Valle is a theatre and former opera house in Rome, Italy. It was built in 1726 for the Capranica family. In the middle of the 19th century, it switched from staging opera and theatre to only performances of spoken drama. After closing down in 2010, it was squatted in 2011, then evicted in 2014.
Elisabetta Manfredini-Guarmani was an Italian opera singer best known for having created the leading soprano roles in four of Rossini's operas, roles which he wrote specifically for her voice. She was born Antonia Elisabetta Manfredini in Bologna and was the daughter of the composer and music theorist Vincenzo Manfredini. After her stage debut in 1810 when she sang in the premiere of Stefano Pavesi's Il trionfo di Gedeone at Bologna's Teatro del Corso, she went on to perform at La Fenice, La Scala, Teatro Regio di Torino, Rome's Teatro Argentina and several other opera houses, primarily in Northern Italy. In addition to the roles she created in Rossini's operas, she also sang in the world premieres of operas by several composers who are lesser known today, including Pietro Raimondi, Simon Mayr, and Ferdinando Paër. Her last known appearance was in 1828 after which there is no further trace of her. The date and place of her death are unknown.
The Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Borgatti is a 19th-century theatre and music performance hall located on Via Campagnoli Bartolomeo in Cento, Province of Ferrara, Region of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The theater is named after the prominent tenor from Cento, Giuseppe Borgatti (1871–1950).
George Andguladze is a Georgian operatic bass.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.
Michele Mariotti, born in 1979 in Urbino, near Pesaro, is an Italian conductor, the direttore musicale since 2014 of Teatro Comunale di Bologna. A graduate in composition of Pesaro's Conservatorio Rossini, where he also studied orchestral conducting, he made his professional opera debut with Il barbiere di Siviglia in Salerno on Oct. 12, 2005. As of April 2017, his repertory included nine Rossini and eight Verdi operas, an extraordinary achievement, as well as symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert, the Rossini Stabat mater, the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi Requiem.
The Teatro Contavalli was an opera house and theatre located at Via Mentana #2, in Bologna, region of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Long since utilized as a theater, the site is now occupied by offices for the Centro Italiano di Documentazione sulla Cooperazione e L' Economia Sociale.
The Teatro Mario Del Monaco is an opera house and theatre in Treviso, Italy. It was previously known as the Teatro Onigo from 1692 to 1846, the Teatro Sociale from 1847 to 1930, and the Teatro Comunale from 1931 to 2011. In 2011, it was renamed in honour of the Italian tenor Mario Del Monaco who lived in Treviso from 1975 until his death in 1982. It is located in the historic centre of the city on the Corso del Popolo and since 2019 has been run by the Teatro Stabile del Veneto which also runs the Teatro Goldoni in Venice and the Teatro Verdi in Padua.
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