vincenzo marsella

Review of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

Domenico Costanzi participated in the urbanization...

Domenico Costanzi participated in the urbanization of Rome and bought land, on which he first built the Hotel Quirinale and in 1874, the Opera House. The hotel communicated with the theater through an underground passage, which guaranteed maximum privacy for the artists (who only had to cross it to reach the stage where they performed, and also for this reason they greatly appreciated the accommodation).
The architect Achille Sfondrini in 1878, in just two years built the theater, in the neo-Renaissance style that was fashionable at the time. The theater was not large (1,100 seats), but it had excellent acoustics and a beautiful dome painted by Annibale Brugnoli. The work was inaugurated in the presence of King Umberto I of Savoy and Queen Margherita of Savoy on November 27, 1880, with Rossini's Semiramide. The enterprise, however, did not prove to be particularly profitable: Costanzi had to pledge his own assets and remain an entrepreneur until his death when his son Enrico succeeded him.
The administrative management of the theater was taken over in 1907 by the impresario Walter Mocchi. In 1912 Emma Carelli, Mocchi's wife, became director and manager of the new "Impresa Costanzi". In 1926 the Municipality of Rome bought the theater and took over its management. The completion, expansion and renovation works were entrusted to the architect Marcello Piacentini, who, with the closing of the theater on November 15, 1926, completely rebuilt the external elevations and increased the three orders of original boxes by one and had an extraordinary crystal chandelier installed. the largest in Europe.
The theater therefore took on the new name of Teatro Reale dell'Opera and was re-inaugurated on February 27, 1928 with the Nerone by Arrigo Boito directed by Gino Marinuzzi. The main entrance was then moved from via Firenze to via del Viminale, but it was not possible, due to the tightness of time, to create the new facade on the square according to a more radical project prepared by Piacentini and still unpublished.
In 1930 a pipe organ with a keyboard and pedal board was set up by the organ-building company Buccolini, concealed on the right of the stage by an expressive grid. The organ was restored by the same company in 2004.
Eliminated the royal epithet with the passage to the Republic, in 1956 the Municipality of Rome entrusted Piacentini himself with the task of taking care of a new extension and restoration intervention. The works, which included, among other things, the creation of a grand staircase and a foyer of the boxes, office spaces, the installation of new furnishings and the reconstruction of the facade in a twentieth-century style, were completed in 1960. The Rome Opera House has a current capacity of about 1600 seats. On 23 December 2013 Carlo Fuortes was appointed Superintendent of the theater