Teatro Amintore Galli — Rimini’s Theatre by Luigi Poletti, Opened by Verdi in 1857 – Virtual Tour 360°

History

After a run of designs by local men, on 15 May 1841 Rimini gave the commission for its new theatre to Luigi Poletti, an architect from Modena trained in Rome and known for a purist neoclassicism he had begun to push beyond. Poletti designed a theatre in the Italian manner but with significant variations: an auditorium of four tiers with twenty-three boxes on each, which made it one of the largest theatres in the country. The contractor Pietro Bellini of Rimini took over the site on 17 March 1843, building the new theatre onto the forebuilding of the old municipal ovens.

Costs ran far beyond the estimates and the town had to borrow heavily; the work halted and only resumed in the spring of 1854. Poletti brought in first-rate craftsmen for the plasterwork and decoration, and the painter Francesco Coghetti was commissioned to paint the drop curtain: Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the local founding myth.

In the summer of 1857 the Teatro Nuovo opened with an opera season directed by Giuseppe Verdi, who brought a new work composed for the occasion, Aroldo. No other Italian theatre was opened by Verdi in person. Two years later, with Italian unification under way, the theatre was dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II. In 1898 the unfinished upper ballroom was fitted out as a smaller “child theatre”, later demolished.

Between 1916 and 1923 earthquake damage kept the building shut; the repairs brought electric light, a new chandelier and an orchestra pit cut into the stage. It reopened in 1923 with Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini and a second curtain showing Paolo and Francesca kissing. Between 1928 and 1931 the architect Gaspare Rastelli completed the Ridotto — today’s Sala Ressi — and the upper gallery, ignoring Poletti’s drawings in favour of his own neoclassical manner. The opera seasons of the 1930s ended in the spring of 1943; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was the last work staged.

On 28 December 1943 bombs struck the theatre and the roof of the hall came down. The auditorium was not completely destroyed, but the aftermath finished the job: the building was occupied by troops and then stripped by the people of Rimini themselves, who took the furnishings, the seats and the chandeliers to rebuild their bombed houses. In 1947 the ruin was dedicated to Amintore Galli (1845–1919), the Rimini-born music critic and composer whose Inno del Lavoratore, to words by Filippo Turati, had made him a national name.

The argument over what to do with the shell lasted decades. A competition for an entirely new theatre was set aside, and in 2010 the city approved instead the reconstruction of Poletti’s hall and stage. The restored foyer was handed back to Rimini on 28 March 2015; during the works the ballet room Poletti had planned in the second attic, unbuilt since 1857, was finally made. On 28 October 2018 the curtain went up again, on Cecilia Bartoli — by the theatre’s own count 27,333 days after the last one came down.