Teatro dell'Opera di Roma
Rome's opera house, the former Teatro Costanzi, staging opera, ballet and concerts at Piazza Gigli.
The theatre opened in 1880 as the Teatro Costanzi, built at his own expense by the contractor Domenico Costanzi to designs by the Milanese architect Achille Sfondrini. It quickly became one of Italy's leading stages: Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana was first performed here in 1890 and Puccini's Tosca in 1900. The city of Rome bought the house in 1926 and Marcello Piacentini remodelled it, adding a fourth tier of boxes; he returned in the late 1950s to give the building its present entrance front and foyer.
Today the Fondazione Teatro dell'Opera di Roma runs a year-round programme of opera, ballet and concerts in the Teatro Costanzi, with further performances at the Teatro Nazionale nearby and, in summer, open-air stagings among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. The company maintains its own orchestra, chorus and corps de ballet, together with a ballet school. The horseshoe auditorium seats around sixteen hundred under a chandelier of Bohemian crystal set into a painted ceiling.
Highlights
- Horseshoe auditorium remodelled by Marcello Piacentini in the 1920s
- Site of the premieres of Cavalleria rusticana and Tosca
- Resident orchestra, chorus and corps de ballet with its own ballet school
- Summer season staged in the open air at the Baths of Caracalla
