Teatro di San Carlo

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(see also Music of Naples)

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Façade of Teatro San Carlo.

The Teatro di San Carlo is an opera house in Naples, Italy, the oldest still active in Europe and it is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The theatre designed by the architects Giovanni Antonio Medrano and Angelo Carasale for the Bourbon monarch Charles III of Naples (Carlo III in Italian). Charles wanted to endow Naples with a new and larger theatre to replace the old and dilapidated Teatro San Bartolomeo of 1621.

The theatre was inaugurated on the 4 November 1737 — the king’s name day — with a performance of Domenico Sarro’s Achille in Sciro, an opera based on the play by the famous poet and dramatist who went by the name of Metastasio. Sarro also conducted the orchestra in two ballets as intermezzi, created by Grossatesta. At the time, it was the largest opera house in the world, seating 3,300.

The new theatre was much admired for its architecture, its gold decorations, and the sumptuous blue upholstery (blue and gold being the official colours of the Bourbons).

1 The great age of Neapolitan opera
- 1.1 Original theatre rebuilt
- 1.2 Composers in residence
2 References
3 External links

[edit] The great age of Neapolitan opera

At the time, Neapolitan opera enjoyed great success all over Europe, not only in the field of opera buffa but also in that of opera seria. The Neapolitan school of opera composers includes Feo, Porpora, Traetta, Piccinni, Vinci, Anfossi, Durante, Jommelli, Cimarosa, Paisiello and Zingarelli. Naples became the capital of European music and even foreign composers considered the San Carlo theatre as the goal of their career: Hasse (who later settled in Naples) Haydn, Johann Christian Bach and Gluck.

Similarly the most prominent singers performed at the San Carlo, and many of them consolidated their fame in Naples, from Lucrezia Anguiari, called “La Cochetta”, to the renowned castrati Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano), Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), and Gizziello (Gioacchino Conti—the three of them coming from the conservatories of Naples—to Gian Battista Velluti, the last castrato.

Teatro San Carlo today.

[edit] Original theatre rebuilt

On 12 February 1816 the San Carlo was destroyed by fire. However, it was re-designed by the architect Antonio Niccolini and rebuilt within ten months on order of King Ferdinand IV, another Bourbon monarch. On 12 January 1817, the rebuilt theatre was inaugurated with Simon Mayr’s Il sogno di Partenope. Stendhal attended the second night of the inauguration and wrote: “There is nothing in all Europe, I won’t say comparable to this theatre, but which gives the slightest idea of what it is like..., it dazzles the eyes, it enraptures the soul...”. It was designed as a traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium with 1,444 seats, and the proscenium is 33.5m wide and 30m high. The stage is 34.5m deep.

In 1845 there was additional refurbishment and, by 1854, the theatre’s interior appearance changed to the now-traditional red and gold. Apart from the creation of the orchestra pit suggested by Verdi in 1872, the installation of electricity in 1890, the subsequent abolition of the central chandelier and the construction of the new foyer and a new wing for dressing rooms, the theatre underwent no substantial changes until the bombing of the Second World War in 1943. However, the theatre was quickly repaired by the occupying Allied forces, and it re-opened within six months on 16 December 1943.

[edit] Composers in residence

From 1815 to 1822, Gioacchino Rossini was house composer and artistic director of the royal opera houses, including the San Carlo, and he wrote ten operas during this time. These were Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra (1815), La Gazzetta, Otello, ossia il Moro di Venezia (1816), Armida (1817), Mosè in Egitto, Ricciardo e Zoraide (1818), Ermione, Bianca e Falliero, Edoardo e Cristina, La donna del lago (1819), Maometto secondo (1820), and Zelmira (1822).

Regular singers of the period included Manuel Garcia and his daughter Maria Malibran, Giuditta Pasta, Isabella Colbran, Giovanni Battista Rubini, Domenico Donzelli and the two great French rivals Adolphe Nourrit and Gilbert Duprez—the inventor of the C from the chest.

After the composition of Zelmira, Rossini left Naples with Colbran who had previously been the lover of the theatre’s impresario, Domenico Barbaja. The couple were married shortly thereafter.

To replace Rossini, Barbaja signed up another rising star of Italian opera: Gaetano Donizetti. As artistic director of the royal opera houses, Donizetti remained in Naples from 1822 until 1838, composing sixteen operas for the theatre, among which Maria Stuarda (1834), Roberto Devereux (1837), Poliuto (1838) and the famous Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), written for soprano Tacchinardi-Persiani and for tenor Duprez.

Vincenzo Bellini, Sicilian by birth, also staged his first work, Bianca e Gernando, at the San Carlo.

Giuseppe Verdi was also associated with the theatre. In 1841, his Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio was performed there and in 1845 he wrote his first opera for the theatre, Alzira; a second, Luisa Miller, followed in 1849. His third should have been Gustavo III but it was forbidden at the last minute by the censor; it was later performed in Rome with the changed title of Un ballo in maschera.

By the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, Giacomo Puccini and other composers of verismo operas, such as the great Pietro Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano, and Cilea, staged their works there.

[edit] References

Allison, John (ed.), Great Opera Houses of the World, supplement to Opera Magazine, London 2003
Beauvert, Thierry, Opera Houses of the World, The Vendome Press, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-86565-978-8
Zeitz, Karyl Lynn, Opera: the Guide to Western Europe’s Great Houses, Santa Fe, New Mexico: John Muir Publications, 1991. ISBN 0-945465-81-5