The building of the Municipal Theatre Giuseppe Verdi was approved by the City Council of Salerno Dec. 15, 1863, at the proposal of the then Mayor Matteo Luciani.
History
The design and construction management were entrusted to architects Antonio D’Amora and Giuseppe mannequins were based on the measurements and proportions of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.
The decoration work was instead directed by Gaetano D’Agostino, a painter of great value that came alongside the most prestigious names of the Neapolitan art world.
The theater was inaugurated April 15, 1872 with the performance of Rigoletto; March 27, 1901 the theater was named after Giuseppe Verdi, who died on January 1 of that year.
Rendered unusable by the earthquake of 1980, the theater was closed for nearly 14 years. It has been renovated and re-opened July 6, 1994, during the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Salerno Capital.
The restoration has brought back to the historical-artistic ambience light that make it even more valuable Theatre, among the few in Italy, nineteenth century and perfectly preserved wooden structure.
On 22 January 1997 the staging of Verdi’s Falstaff, played by baritone Rolando Panerai, inaugurates the first opera at the recent history of the theater, strongly supported by the administration of Vincenzo De Luca, Mayor then and still, and the Artistic Director of the moment, Janos Acs. The event is also linked to the founding of the Coro Lirico Theatre.
At the First Opera Season others will follow every year, always with larger audience and critics.
The Theatre hosts today, in addition to the Opera Season, Ballet and Concerts, theater seasons, festivals, concerts, events for young people, workshops, research seasons. Thousands of students have come to know and appreciate, thanks to the guided tours scheduled.
The city administration sensitivity has meant that the find himself city finally his temple of music and culture.
A culmination of a historical journey of music, has come on the occasion of the tenth anniversary, the appointment of an artistic director of the
Architectural History
The need to find an area that can accommodate a new theater building in Salerno is already alive at the dawn of the fifth century decade.
On 15 November 1843, in fact, the Intendant of the Province offers two locations for the buildings to be constructed construction:
- the off Santa Teresa, located in the western part of the city
- the off the outside Portanuova barrier, which extends on the other side
The debate on whether to opt for one or the other site, the problems associated with dell’opere financing and the slowness of the Bourbon bureaucracy impede, for twenty years, that the building is carried out. The intricate story knows his positive dissolved only after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, when the age-old controversy on the municipal theater returns to the honor of representing them chronicles, in all its urgency, the post-Risorgimento political class. At the sitting of 15 December 1863, the City Council, for the determination of the new mayor Matteo Luciani, addresses the controversial issue, choosing the Santa Teresa area as a place where will be built the building.
The first project, designed by Petrilli engineers and De Luca in 1844, is reviewed by the architect Antonio Genovese.
A draw, however, the final one are Antonino D’Amora, chief engineer of Salerno Civil Engineers, and the architect Giuseppe Dummies. They will also be entrusted with the direction of the opera works.
The building consists of a body of the building along m. 65 m wide. 35; It presents the short ends two symmetrical appendages, corresponding respectively to the entrance area and the backstage. In exterior joints, especially in its front elevation, it proposes the neoclassical scheme, already tested by Piermarini for La Scala in Milan and the Piccolini for the Neapolitan Massimo; the inner sole of the San Carlo is also rispresa, abridged and adapted to that of the Salerno Municipal.
The April 1864 he begins to work , entrusted by the contractor Vincenzo Fiorillo which, in 1867, to the increased design difficulties and the consequent economic burden, are also associated Bonaventura of Monica, with the support of capital, and the company of Antonio Avallone, for the realization of complex work of building.
The October of 1869 the country is completed and gives rein to the decoration works . The image master of the Municipal Theatre is Gaetano D’Agostino, a painter and a very talented decorator, who chooses to be supported by the most prestigious names of the Neapolitan academia.
The are next: Domenico Morelli, Pasquale Di Criscito, Ignazio Perricci, Giuseppe Sciuti and a large group of Salernitana: his brother Antonio, his cousin Ermenegildo Caputo, Matthew Amendola and the sculptor Giovan Battista Amendola, originally from Bishop Sarno. Far from the foyer, the iconographic design is outlined very clearly: the selected images must communicate the intended use of the site, conceived as a temple of music and, in particular, of the bel canto tradition. At the center of the peristyle there is the Giovan Battista Amendola sculpture depicting the dying Pergolesi, whose symbolic function is to introduce the viewer inside the temple of music. It is undisputed master Gioachino Rossini, at the center of the ceiling, from a balustrade, becomes the supreme expression of Italian and Neapolitan musical genius, having the artist dominated the Neapolitan scene in the years between 1815 and 1822. The muses the surrounding villages, proceeding from the bleu of Prussia of the sky and holding hands in a choreographic carousel. Sisters minor superb and graceful Paolo Veronese’s divinity, the flowery and voluptuous figures of Peter da Cortona, of those milder and air of Tiepolo, the ceiling muses Salerno scandalized the while cultured Francis Xavier Malpica.
These, while considering the Di Criscito painter uncommon qualities, in two letters addressed to a friend in 1872, and then published in Salerno, wrote that in the ceiling of the Municipal Theatre was not able to locate a while distant glimmer of artistic inspiration, being Rossini portrait with a “moon face” and muses as “… .donne big and fat that wiggling buttocks, legs and arms ….” , and therefore unworthy of any demure look. Regardless of such clamor, nine sisters doth abundant graces neo-baroque, wrapping, in their festive swirl, allegory of the musicality, in bleu robe and white hand to his ear; the melody, portrayed the musical power, which alluded intensity is entrusted to the sound of a bugle, which gives breath a sea creature.
Behind Rossini opens a sequence of paintings inspired by his most important works, written in Italian before leaving for Paris: Tancredi, Armida, Otello, The Barber of Seville, Moses in Egypt and Semiramide .
If the sky Di Criscito represents the consecration of the great season of Italian opera hall, the curtain is entrusted with the task of celebrating the city’s history, evoking a glorious episode of the past. Thanks to his personal friendship, D’Agostino gets to be the Domenico Morelli master at creating the most emblematic work of the theater.
The selected episode is the Expulsion of Saracens from Salerno , which occurred in the summer of 871, when the Salernitani, led by Prince Guaiferio, resisted the black cherry invaders, led by the violent Abdila. Literary sources Morelli abridging the time when boldly Saracens, strong in their military superiority, they advance to avenge seventy men of their ranks, killed by opponents during a raid lightning over the walls. The alliance of three city bells Salerno, Benevento and Capua, illustrated in the upper medallion in the center of the curtain, the popular competition, exemplified in the figures of archers and women, painted in the eight frame cameos, symbolize the heroic and victorious resistance of Salerno. Twenty-four preparatory drawings, the final sketch, two studies of large central episode in size, are the entire process of Morellian work. In fact, the work’s implementation on the 122 square meters tarpaulin is performed by two painters drew near to the teacher: Giuseppe Sciuti, Sicilian of Zafferana, which paints all the figures, Ignazio Perricci, Monopoli architect of Bari, which processes precious frame.
It constitutes the true originality of the magnificent curtain. Its elegant yellow-blue medallions are an excellent fit with the historical story, built sull’abile dose of great choreography melodrama and exotic touches oriental to Mariano Fortuny. Foremen, of proven craft carvers and gilders alongside the D’Agostino in the realization of the decorations. On the parapets of the boxes in the first tier stand putti supporting a medallion; second, there are mighty giant neo-mannerist with flowery body into the lower end of the cup; third, female figures are combined to draw a cameo, which houses the effigy of a poet, a painter and a musician.
In these medallions, from right to left, compared to those who enter the room, they are depicting: Vincenzo Bellini, Domenico Cimarosa, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Carlo Goldoni, Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vittorio Alfieri, Torquato Tasso, Dante Alighieri, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea Sabatini, Benvenuto Cellini, Salvator Rosa and Giuseppe Verdi . The Municipal Theatre of Salerno (Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in 1902, by resolution of the City Council) was inaugurated on March 30, 1872 , which displays the Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi .
Source: website