4th November 1737. For Naples this is a date of great historical importance. On this happy day, in fact, there was a event that forever marked the history of the city: theinauguration of the San Carlo Theater, located near the famous Piazza del Plebiscito, where the church of San Francesco di Paola and the Royal Palace of Naples are located.
Built half a century before the Scala and the Fenice
On the evening of the inauguration of the San Carlo Theater in Naples, which took place on November 4, 1737, all those who had the honor of participating they gasped. The chosen date was very dear to the King Charles of Bourbon, ruler of Naples and Sicily from 1731 to 1739. He was, in fact, the day of his name day. It was the sovereign who wanted this great work and to carry it out he called important names such as the architect Giovanni Antonio Medrano and the builder Angelo Carasale. The work ended in about eight months of work (very few for the time) for an expense seventy-five thousand ducats.
The structure of the , è extraordinarily majestica large coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to dominate the scenic arch of the ,. The day of the inauguration the dominant color was blue, which was the official one of the Bourbon House, then replaced by the post-unitary Savoy red. What makes this place even more unique is its historical location. The San Carlo, in fact, was born well forty-one years before the Ladder of Milan and fifty-one before the Phoenix of Venice.
For the inauguration of the San Carlo Theater, theAchilles in Sciro by Metastasio
But what was the work chosen for the inauguration of the San Carlo Theater? To go on stage was theAchilles in Sciro by Metastasio, with maestro Domenico Sarro who set it to music and conducted the orchestra. As was the custom at that time, to impersonate the protagonist was a woman, Vittoria Tesi, called the Moretta, flanked by Anna Peruzzi, of Hairdresser, prima donna soprano, and the tenor Angelo Amorevoli. The evening was a resounding success, the news of which spread far beyond the borders of the kingdom, delivering the palm of European music capital. The San Carlo Theater, in fact, became the point of arrival of all the most famous singers and musicians of the continent.
That magnificent place, unfortunately, was a victim of one of the most tragic fires in the history of Naples. The night of the 12 1816 February, in fact, very little remained of the Real Teatro di San Carlo. The news soon went around the world. Thus the new ruler Ferdinand I of Bourbon, he immediately gave the assignment to the Tuscan architect Antonio Niccolini to rebuild the theater in a style as close as possible to the old building.
The new building was completed in just 300 days. The new work benefited from a significant improvement in acoustics. The decorations, made by important people, were also of great value court painters such as Camillo Guerra, Gennaro Maldarelli and Giuseppe Cammarano, who painted the ceiling. And so, the myth of the San Carlo Theater he could return to live and make people dream, up to the present day, the millions of spectators who attend it every day.
Cover image:
author Viva-Verdi License CC BY-SA 3.0
