The San Carlo Theatre, located in the heart of Naples’ historic Old Town, is a celebrated site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As one of the oldest continuously active opera houses in the world, it stands as a beacon of cultural and architectural splendor. Established in 1737, the San Carlo Theatre has hosted countless legendary performances and continues to be a vital part of Naples’ rich cultural tapestry. Its inclusion on the UNESCO list underscores its historical significance and the enduring legacy of the performing arts in Naples.
The oldest Opera House in Europe
The coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies dominates the majestic proscenium arch, blending with its colour scheme: at the centre the shield of the Bourbon family – three silver lilies on an azure background – and around this the 21 heraldic symbols of the houses related to the one reigning over Naples make up a fascinating symbol of the historical importance of a theatre which has now returned to its past glory, thanks to painstaking restoration.
The San Carlo is the oldest theatre in Europe that is still operational: built in 1737, this Italian temple to opera sits next to Piazza del Plebiscito, the symbol of the city of Naples, and was born 41 years earlier than La Scala in Milan and 51 years before La Fenice in Venice. Rebuilt in record time after the fire in 1816, it has never ceased its activities, not even during the Second World War: at the height of the conflict, a series of concerts for the Armed Forces replaced its ordinary performances. The Neapolitan Opera House also boasts another primacy: the oldest Italian ballet school, founded in 1812. Instead, its school of scenography dates back to 1816.
The theatre was erected by will of Charles of Bourbon, who had decided to give his capital a theatre to replace the ancient San Bartolomeo, the property of the Casa degli Incurabili. As a result, he assigned to this charitable institution an annuity of 2,500 ducats, equal to the profits it drew from running the theatre, and ordered the demolition and the recovery of the timber. At the same time, he commissioned the Royal Factories to design the new theatre in a more central location: as a result, on 4 March 1737, a contract was signed with the architect Giovanni Antonio Medrano and the contractor Angelo Carasale. The expenditure was calculated at 75,000 ducats, with the handover scheduled for the end of the same year.
The commitment was respected with extraordinary precision: on 4 November 1737, the Sovereign’s name-day, the San Carlo was inaugurated with the opera Achille in Sciro by Metastasio, with music by Domenico Sarro, who also directed the orchestra, and with two dances for the Intermezzo created by Francesco Aquilante. As was the custom at that time, the part of Achilles was played by a woman, Vittoria Tesi, known as “la Moretta”, accompanied by Anna Peruzzi, known as “la Parrucchierina”, as the leading soprano and the tenor Angelo Amorevoli. The theatre immediately won the admiration of Neapolitans and foreigners alike, with the result that in a short time it became an unrivalled attraction. Not only for the musical interest of its performances, but also for its grandeur, the magnificence of its architecture, the decorations in gold, the sumptuous ornaments in blue (the official colour of the Bourbon House so that, after the Unification of Italy, the velvet of this hue was replaced with red along with the coat of arms on the arch).
In those years, the Neapolitan School enjoyed undisputed glory throughout Europe not only in the field of comic opera, but also in serious opera: with Leo, Porpora, Traetta, Piccinni, Vinci, Anfossi, Durante, Jommelli, Cimarosa, and Paisiello, Naples became the capital of European music and foreign composers too began to consider the San Carlo as a career aspiration (including Hasse, who came to live in Naples, Haydn, Johann Christian Bach, and Gluck). In the same way, the most celebrated singers longed to perform on its stage to consecrate their fame, from Lucrezia Angujari, known as “la Bastardella”, Caterina Gabrielli, known as “la Cochetta”, the famous castrati Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano), Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), and Gizziello (Gioacchino Conti), all three from the conservatories of Naples, up until Gian Battista Velluti, the last castrato.
This first life cycle of the Opera House, whose exterior had been revamped in the meantime by the architect Antonio Niccolini on behalf of Gioacchino Murat, closed with the distressing episode of the fire that broke out on the night of 12 February 1816, which almost completely destroyed it. This was an event that threw the whole city into mourning and which newspapers all over Europe recounted with much emotion. Just as they gave the news with wonder and admiration, ten months later, at the end of the same year, that it had already risen from the ashes.
It was King Ferdinand I of Bourbon who ordered, just six days after the fire, that the San Carlo be rebuilt without further ado. The task was entrusted to Niccolini, with the commitment to restore it to its original state before the fire. Medrano’s plan was respected: the auditorium with its 28.6 metres in length and 22.5 in width, and the 184 boxes arranged in six orders plus the Royal one.
On that occasion, the acoustics were also significantly improved (still universally considered perfect) and the stage was expanded to 33.1 x 34.4 metres. Camillo Guerra and Gennaro Maldarelli renewed the decorations, including the bas-relief and the clock on the proscenium intrados. Joseph Cammarano painted the ceiling which has come down to us (Apollo Presenting the Greatest Poets in the World to Minerva) and the front curtain, later replaced in 1854 by that of Giuseppe Mancinelli (Parnassus).
In 2000, there was the inauguration of a new curtain designed by Mauro Carosi and the engineer Franco Malgrande (from a 19th-century print) and produced with a contribution from the Public Works Department of the Campania Region. Apart from the creation of the orchestra pit suggested by Verdi in 1872, the electric lighting system with consequent removal of the central chandelier (1890), and the construction of the new foyer with an adjoining lateral building for the artists’ dressing rooms (1937), the theatre has not undergone substantial changes. And today the auditorium is just as Stendhal saw it on the evening of its second inauguration on 12 January 1817: “… There is nothing in the whole of Europe, which I do not say comes close to this theatre, but even gives the faintest hint of it. The eyes are dazzled, the soul spirited away...”
That evening, they were giving Il sogno di Partenope, by Johannes Simon Mayr, written specially for the occasion, followed by a ballet created by Salvatore Viganò, one of the greatest exponents of the Neapolitan choreographic school who grew up at the turn of the century and dominated the European scene along with Giuseppe Salomoni, Gaetano Gioia, Salvatore Taglioni, Carlo Blasis and the two most famous ballerinas, who together with the Austrian Fanny Elssler, created the “romantic legend” of ballet: Maria Taglioni and Fanny Cerrito.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the glories of San Carlo were linked to the name of the man Alexandre Dumas dubbed “The Prince of Impresarios”: Domenico Barbaja. In spite of the fact that the Neapolitan school, with Zingarelli, Pacini, Mercadante, had substantially stayed in step with the times, Barbaja understood that for the San Carlo the time had come to look beyond the limitations of its tradition and so he engaged Gioachino Rossini as composer and artistic director of the Royal Music Theatres. Rossini would stay for eight years, from 1815 to 1822, writing Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, La Gazzetta (Teatro de’ Fiorentini, 1816), Otello (which was given at the Teatro del Fondo, while the San Carlo was under construction, passing then to the Massimo as the second opera of the inaugural season, with Manuel García as the lead), Armida, Ricciardo e Zoraide, Ermione, La donna del lago, Maometto II, and Zelmira.
View this post on Instagram
Among the “season singers” of Barbaja’s years the most important included, in addition to Manuel García and his daughter Maria Malibran, Giuditta Pasta, Isabella Colbran, Giovan Battista Rubini, Domenico Donzelli, and the two great French rivals Adolphe Nourrit and Gilbert Duprez, the “inventor” of the Chest C. And it was after a charity performance at the San Carlo on 8 March 1839 that, overcome by a crisis of despondency after failing to rival his younger fellow countryman, Nourrit committed suicide on returning to his hotel.
At the end of a performance of Zelmira, Rossini eloped from Naples with Colbran, who had been Barbaja’s lover up to that moment; in his place the impresario would engage another rising star in the world of opera, Gaetano Donizetti. He too artistic director of the Royal Theatres, Donizetti would remain at the San Carlo from 1822 to 1838, composing sixteen works for the theatre, including Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereux, Poliuto and the immortal Lucia di Lammermoor, written for the soprano Tacchinardi-Persiani and the tenor Duprez. A few years earlier, in 1826, Barbaja had shown trust in another musician, a Sicilian student of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory, by staging his first opera, Bianca e Gernando. His name was Vincenzo Bellini.
Even with the end of the nineteenth century and the great season of romantic melodrama, the San Carlo remained among the leading lights of the new Italian and European musical trends. Giacomo Puccini and the “Young School”, from Mascagni to four Neapolitans (by birth or study) ‒ Leoncavallo, Giordano, Cilea, and Alfano, found the San Carlo ready to welcome their works (the 1900-1901 season opened with the Neapolitan première of Tosca) while the sensitivity of a great musician and conductor, Giuseppe Martucci, was deemed appropriate to introduce Wagner’s music into the theatre’s routine. The merit of the San Carlo, in the first years of the twentieth century, was also that it decisively contributed to the pre-eminence of the figure of the conductor in an opera performance: Leopoldo Mugnone, Neapolitan, a great rival (but also a very dear friend) of Arturo Toscanini, directed alone numerous, wonderful seasons, as did Eduardo Vitale, Ettore Panizza (who then found himself contributing to the affirmation of the Metropolitan Opera in New York), Eduardo Mascheroni, who in 1908, personally accompanied Richard Strauss onto the podium, handing hm the baton to direct the Italian première of his Salome. And then Cleofonte Campanini, Vittorio Gui, Gino Marinuzzi and Pietro Mascagni, a full-time director from 1915 to 1922. It was from 1915 that we find another major impresario, namely Augusto Laganà, who guided the theatre up to its constitution as an autonomous entity (1927), introducing the habit from 1920 which would last for ten years, of opening the season with an opera by Wagner; but equally sensitive to the new triumphs of Italian opera, as demonstrated by the world premières of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini (15 January 1921) and Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Fedra (16 April 1924), both with librettos by Gabriele D’Annunzio.
In these same years, the greatest singers performed regularly at the San Carlo, from Fernando De Lucia, who sang there for twenty years running, to Roberto Stagno and Gemma Bellincioni, Gilda Dalla Rizza, Riccardo Stracciari, Fjodor Scialiapin, Aurelio Pertile, Gabriella Besanzoni, and Nazareno De Angelis. Long-term runs included those of Tito Schipa (debut in 1913, last performance in 1944), Beniamino Gigli (debut in 1915, last performance in 1953), and Toti dal Monte (debut in 1919, last performance in 1944).
Substantially spared by the events of WWII, albeit with damage to some structures, the San Carlo was requisitioned by the British military authorities in October 1943. On 26 December of that year, the performances resumed expressly for the allied troops. Civilians were able to attend, but only in the galleries. The occupation lasted until 1946. With the restoration of self-management in ’48 under Pasquale Di Costanzo, the San Carlo rapidly regained its leading position among European musical institutions. Onto the podium stepped conductors of great prestige, such as Toscanini, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Sawallisch, Gui, Serafin, Molinari Pradelli, Santini, Gavazzeni, Fricsay, Scherchen, Cluytens, Knappertsbusch, Mitropoulos, Furtwangler, and Böhm (who directed the première of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck on 26 December 1949), Von Karajan, Busoni, Celibidache, Giulini, Boulez and more recently Abbado, Maazel, Muti, Sinopoli, Kuhn, Pappano, Oren, Tate, and Mehta. Many of the Italian premières have been outstanding, including Dukas’ Ariadne and Bluebeard, Schoenberg’s From today till Tomorrow, Orff’s Carmina Burana and The Moon, Weill’s The Protagonist, etc.
The San Carlo was the first Italian theatre to start touring abroad in the period after the second world war, starting with Covent Garden, London in 1946. In 1951, it participated in the Strasbourg Festival, continuing to the Paris Opera for its Verdi Celebrations. It returned to Paris in 1956 for the Festival of Nations and participated in the Edinburgh Festival in 1963. With a one-way journey of 5,180 miles, the San Carlo made the longest tour ever tackled by an opera house, with all its artists, technicians and scenery, by going to Brazil in 1969. And then Budapest, Dortmund, Baku, Tunis and the Wiesbaden Festival, Spoleto in the American Charleston edition of 1983, Versailles, and Dresden. In 1987, the San Carlo was in New York where, in the monumental church of Saint John the Divine it staged Serva Padrona and the Stabat Mater of Pergolesi-De Simone. Shortly afterwards it was in France with Il Flaminio, again written by De Simone, in May 1995 again in Wiesbaden with Tosca and in 1998 with its symphonic orchestra, the Erl Festival in Austria. Today, more than before, the San Carlo keeps this tradition alive, crossing national borders as part of an increasingly conscious internationalization of its artistic and cultural identity. In fact, in recent years, the Opera House has touched three different continents on its long tours, confirming itself as an ambassador for the world of Italian culture and the Neapolitan school in particular. After its successes in Chile, Russia and China, and more recently in Oman, the San Carlo has engaged in other important tours abroad, in particular to San Francisco, Budapest, Astana, Hong Kong, Taipei, Dubai, Singapore, Granada, Beijing, Montreal, and Buenos Aires.
San Carlo and its Oscars – The Franco Abbiati Prizes
The San Carlo Theatre has been awarded a good seven Abbiati Prizes since 2002. The Königskinder of Engelbert Humperdinck received the Prize for Best Performance: “For the rarity of the proposal, the quality of the work by Jeffrey Tate who obtained from the orchestra the discipline of chamber music with romantic impulses, the rigorous fairy-tale staging of Scottish director Paul Curran (sets and costumes by Kevin Knight), the refinement of the cast led by Olaf Bär and Juliane Banse, which also included the voices of the Tölzer Knabenchor.”
That same year it received another award for the interpretation of Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, the protagonist of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The following year, 2003, it was the turn of Elektra by Richard Strauss, which won Best Performance: “For the poetic intensity of the direction by Klaus Grüber Michael, and the extraordinary presence as scenery-costume designer of Anselm Kiefer, who set the story in a sort of monumental wreck of Industrial Greece with an extraordinary visual impact and penetrating tragic effectiveness.”
In 2004, the sets and costumes of Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner won the prize “For their visual design and the exceptional accuracy in the realization of the sets by Ezio Frigerio, the pictorial quotations and costumes by Franca Squarciapino which distinguished the production.”
In 2005, Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries won again for the sets and costumes: “For the sets by Giulio Paolini, master of conceptual Italian art and author of a modern metaphorical design which gave breathing space to the particular setting of the Valkyries, offering a further precious outcome to the project of interaction between contemporary artists and the performances of opera and ballet undertaken by the Neapolitan theatre. For the costumes of Giovanna Buzzi, for their elegance and the pertinence of their references to the late nineteenth century clothes of the characters which strengthened the profound and consistent imagery of the performance.”
And yet again, in the same year, the jury of the Abbiati assigned the special prize to Elegy for Young Lovers by Hans Werner Henze (a co-production with the Teatro delle Muse of Ancona): “For the opera directed by Lothar Koenigs and with the spectacular scenery of Pier Luigi Pizzi, a remarkable and fitting tribute to the best theatre of the composer and an appreciable example of a programme dedicated to documenting the less obvious repertoire.”
Last but not least, in the 2011-2012 season, the prize went to Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni – conducted by Pinchas Steinberg and directed by Pippo Delbono – for the sets by Sergio Tramonti.
Guided visits to the San Carlo Theatre
Every day, from Monday to Sunday, you can see around the San Carlo Theatre thanks to a new guided visit service. Visits are organized in six slots per day (three in the morning and three in the afternoon, on Sundays only three in the morning), and include a guided tour around the historic theatre, including the orders of boxes. It is also possible to integrate the visit with that to the MEMUS, the San Carlo Theatre’s Multimedia Museum, by purchasing an additional ticket at the ticket office.
MeMus – The Museum and Historical Archives of the San Carlo Theatre
“MeMus” is the Museum and Historical Archives of the San Carlo Theatre housed in rooms of the Royal Palace. Inaugurated on the first of October 2011, this new space of the Neapolitan Opera House is not designed like a traditional museum but is a fitting multipurpose centre equipped with the most modern technology to tell the story of a theatre, the San Carlo, which has existed for almost three hundred years.
The acronym “Me-Mus” combines the words “memory” and “music”, already proclaiming its mission from its inception: the turning of its Historical Archives into a museum, in order to share memories that can live and breathe again thanks to this valorization of its legacy.
A place of memory and innovation, multimedia visions and distinctive signs, to revive the great artistic vicissitudes that have lit up the history of the oldest opera house in Europe. “MeMus” is a permanent institution in the service of the community, which keeps, conserves, valorizes and promotes the study and learning of its collections, documents and the legacy constituted by its bequest in general. A museum that seeks to offer a privileged window onto the immense patrimony of a theatre that has always been the heart of the city, the landmark par excellence of experimentation and the avant-garde. The Historical Archives of the San Carlo were born from a desire to recover, store, and communicate the historical heritage of the San Carlo Theatre, never properly inventoried since 1737 (the year when the theatre was built), and to do so it uses the latest technology.
The different types of documents – from programmes to librettos, from sketches of sets to costume designs, from autograph manuscripts to historical photos of the greatest artists who have trod the stage of this theatre, and also a wealth of audio-video material – all come to life thanks to technology, in an exciting fact-finding journey complemented by an exhibition area of 300m2, a 3D virtual gallery, an auditorium for events with a minimum of 50 seats, and, finally, a documentation centre illustrating the theatre’s prestigious history, in which the media testimonials are available on iPad and can be shared on the web via email and the social networks.
View this post on Instagram
An archive “open” to sharing, that “lives and breathes” inside MeMus, through memories of the performances and a reinterpretation of their imagery: a digital archive that has no intention of “mummifying” its contents, but makes them active and reactive for everyone’s enjoyment.
The Coat of Arms
A fascinating symbol of the historical importance of a theatre that is unique in the world, the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies hangs above the arc of the proscenium. The centre is dominated by the shield of the Bourbon family with its three silver lilies on a blue background, and all around are the heraldic symbols of the houses related to the one reigning over Naples. The Bourbon coat of arms was reinstated in 1980, replacing that of the Savoy installed by their wishes following Unification.
The Royal Box
At the centre of the second order of boxes we find the Royal Box, whose magnificence dominates the auditorium. Its projecting rounded balustrade is supported by two columns of oriental granite and by a ledge consisting of a wreath of palm trees; on the parapet are carved two mermaids who originally held an effigy of the sovereign, later replaced with the coat of arms. The interior of the box features a barrel vault corresponding to the third order of boxes and above it, reaching up to the fourth order, is a great golden crown whose purple drapery is held aloft by two winged Victories.
The auditorium
The beauty of this auditorium extends beyond time and space to reach our own days, imbued with an ancient charm but still living: fixed in the pages of the diaries of illustrious travellers, brought to Naples by the Grand Tour, it is an emotional experience that colours the memories and impressions of a place that is unique in the world.
The admiration of visitors extended from the auditorium to the six orders of boxes, 185 in all, including the Royal Box, a symbol of majesty and magnificence unique in the world. Nowadays, the theatre can count on a total of 1,402 seats and a Royal Box that can accommodate 24 seats.
A curiosity
The number of candles that the lords placed outside their boxes defined the lesser or greater importance of their nobility and social status, so much so that to speak of a lord who was not enjoying great economic fortune the popular saying was: “He’s a lord of two candles.” In other words, he could only afford two candles. A stunned condition that involves all the senses and which still today manages to transmit that ancient “wonder” sought by the first king of the Bourbon House to “add decoration to his kingship.”
The clock
Still working perfectly today, the clock sits at the centre of the imposing proscenium arch. We find on the left, Poetry, Music and Dance, and at the bottom “Time, whose foot the sickle has fallen on, and around whom revolve the companion hours. A Siren, in the act of stopping the driver of the years, is being pointed at by the Muses, and it seems that they are inviting him to move more slowly until the Arts can relate the sweet illusion intended to form a pleasure that is unique to the world on the stage of a hundred delights. A kind of Zodiac, wherein are engraved the hourly digits, revolves above Time and marks the hours with the index finger of his right hand.” – Emanuele Taddei, Del Real Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, 1817.
The ceiling of Cammarano and the curtain of Mancinelli
The pillars of the sixth order of boxes become golden shafts holding aloft the ceiling. Painted by Giuseppe Cammarano – father of the famous librettist Salvatore Cammarano – based on a sketch by Antonio Niccolini, it depicts in the centre of the ceiling Apollo Presenting the Greatest Poets to Athena (represented within the sun). The figures also include that of Dante (in green) with Beatrice, Virgil, and Homer.
The curtain was created in 1854 by Giuseppe Mancinelli, director of the School of Design of the Institute of Fine Arts. Parnassus – this is the title of the work – symbolically represents the place which, according to Greek mythology, was dedicated to the cult of Apollo and the Muses. Against this background are arranged the Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations and the modern Italian one in their greatest representatives: above all, Homer, Sappho, Herodotus, Socrates, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Virgil, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, to name but a few.
Rossini, Donizetti and the “Prince of Impresarios”
With the “Prince of Impresarios” began a period of great seasons directed by Rossini and Donizetti. At the time, Naples was a culturally vibrant city, firmly rooted in the tradition of the great Neapolitan school but also capable of comprehending trends in the European panorama, anticipating changes and reforms, through a sensibility which placed it at the centre of the main artistic revolutions. In Naples, history was written: with Barbaja, the oldest opera house became the most coveted stage, the theatre of the greats.
On 4 October 1815, a promising young composer, 23 years old, saw his first opera performed at the San Carlo: Elisabetta Regina d’Inghilterra. Gioachino Rossini debuted in the only theatre where the success of the public could consecrate a brilliant career, above any reasonable doubt. And Rossini staged his Elisabetta at the San Carlo using a stellar cast: Isabella Colbran, Andrea Nozzari, and Manuel García.
These were glorious years for the stage of the oldest opera house in Italy. Barbaja promised the best musicians, the soloists most in vogue, most loved and most proficient. The conservatories fuelled the artistic production, training and churning out talent destined for fame, creating extraordinary premières and linking their renown to the success of the performance at San Carlo. Barbaja later passed the sceptre of direction to another “rising star” in the world of opera, Gaetano Donizetti, who composed seventeen works for the San Carlo (of which one, Poliuto, was performed posthumously on 30 November 1848, four years after Caterina Cornaro, his last work to be staged at the Neapolitan Opera House), including Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereux, and the immortal Lucia di Lammermoor.
The second inauguration: 1817
After the fire of 1816, the city was in mourning. In less than a week, King Ferdinand emanated a decree: “May the San Carlo Theatre be returned to this beloved capital…”
But at that time the “lord of the miracles” was Barbaja. It would be he who oversaw the reconstruction, keeping his promise to rebuild the theatre in record time. And so it was: in less than a year, the doors of the San Carlo Theatre reopened. It was 12 January 1817. In the auditorium, among the audience for the evening of the second inauguration was Stendhal.
Giuseppe Verdi at the San Carlo
Giuseppe Verdi became part of the San Carlo Theatre story with the Neapolitan première of his Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio (2 June 1841). Four years later it was the turn of I due Foscari (9 February 1845), welcomed favourably by the Neapolitan public, and Alzira, the first of the operas written specially for the San Carlo, which saw a lukewarm response (12 August 1845). Instead, more enthusiasm was won by Ernani, with the title Il Proscritto (13 May 1847). Verdi’s success bloomed with Attila (29 January 1848), Nabucco (22 March 1848) and – after the interlude of the revolutionary movements – I Lombardi alla prima crociata (7 October 1848), Macbeth (22 January 1849), I Masnadieri (16 May 1849), and Luisa Miller, the second work born for the Neapolitan stage (8 December 1849).
Verdi’s star continued to shine uncontested in subsequent seasons, which hosted the Neapolitan “firsts” of the new works, some of which had changed their title and setting for censorship reasons: Il Trovatore (4 October 1853), Il Corsaro (2 July 1854), Violetta – i.e. La Traviata – (28 January 1855), Lionello – i.e. Rigoletto – (1 March 1855), Orietta di Lesbo – i.e. Giovanna d’Arco – (15 November 1855), Guglielmo Wellingrode – i.e. Aroldo – (24 November 1855), Batilde di Touraine – i.e. I Vespri Siciliani – (5 September 1857). In 1858, the censorship obstructed the staging of the third work commissioned by the theatre, Gustav III, which Verdi withdrew, annoyed by the demands for radical changes to the characters and story. Instead, at the San Carlo in that same season Simon Boccanegra was given (28 November 1858). In the changed climate of Unification, the audience applauded La battaglia di Legnano (13 January 1861) and triumphantly welcomed Un ballo in maschera (18 February 1862), namely, that same Gustav III, withdrawn from the Neapolitan stage and performed under a new title at the Apollo Theatre in Rome, on 17 February 1859.
In 1870, Verdi was invited to direct the Naples Conservatory, a post which had become vacant by the death of Saverio Mercadante. The composer declined the invitation. Naples continued to applaud the new Verdi premières: Don Carlo (6 March 1871), Aida (30 March 1873), the latter in the presence of the composer himself, who had returned to Naples to oversee the staging of the opera, born in Cairo on 24 December 1871 and performed in Milan at La Scala in February of the following year. For this occasion, Verdi wrote for the “first desks” of the San Carlo Theatre Orchestra a String Quartet, his sole chamber music composition (now kept in the library of the “San Pietro a Majella” Conservatory of Naples).
Just a few years later, the San Carlo welcomed with great enthusiasm La forza del destino (21 December 1876). Faithful to its uninterrupted relationship with the Maestro, Naples was always eager to applaud the latest works by Verdi: Otello (4 February 1888), exactly one year from its opening at La Scala (5 February 1887), and Falstaff (19 February 1894) again one year after its première in Milan (9 February 1893).
Guided Visits are from Monday to Sunday. Each visit lasts approximately 45 minutes, excluding the MeMus. The visits are hourly.
Early: 10.30am; 11.30am; 12.30pm
Late: 2.30pm; 3.30pm; 4.30pm
Not to be missed
A 3D multimedia gallery, where interactive video projections and installations make it possible to set up complex, exciting scenarios. The virtual then becomes the creative simulation of the “staging”, enhanced by technologies which make the environment more dynamic and immersive, developing solutions that respond to emotional patterns.
A documentation centre equipped with seats where it is possible to consult the San Carlo Theatre archive through a specific workstation – containing the documents related to the MeMus exhibition visit – and the archive on iPad, where, thanks to a special app developed for iPad, it is possible to access contents for tablets, and share them via email or Facebook.
Opening times:
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 9 am – 5 pm
Sunday 9 am – 2 pm
Closing day: Monday – Wednesday
Information and reservations:
Contacts: +39 081/7972412 or email: visiteguidate@teatrosancarlo.it
Ticket Office
Contacts: +39 7972331/421 or email: biglietteria@teatrosancarlo.it, teatrosancarlo.it
