Teatro Degollado
Neoclassical 1866 opera house in central Guadalajara, home of the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra.
Work on the Teatro Degollado began in 1856 to designs by the Guadalajara architect Jacobo Gálvez, who laid the first stone and directed the building. Named after the Jalisco governor Santos Degollado, it opened on 13 September 1866 with Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, sung by the soprano Ángela Peralta. Sixteen Corinthian columns front the neoclassical facade and carry a pediment, filled between 1953 and 1959 with Roberto Montenegro's mosaic of Apollo and the nine muses. A long bronze frieze of the city's founders stands alongside.
The horseshoe auditorium rises through five tiers and seats a little over a thousand. Its ceiling was painted in 1861 by Gálvez and Gerardo Suárez with scenes drawn from the fourth canto of Dante's Divine Comedy, while the gilding and stucco of the hall were completed between 1880 and 1890. The theatre is the home stage of the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra and of the University of Guadalajara folk ballet, and also presents opera, dance and the concerts of the summer mariachi festival.
Highlights
- Sixteen Corinthian columns and Montenegro's Apollo and the Muses mosaic
- Ceiling paintings of 1861 after the fourth canto of Dante's Divine Comedy
- Home stage of the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra
- Opened in 1866 with Ángela Peralta singing Lucia di Lammermoor
