Ravenna Festival

In 1838 the increasing state of decay of the Teatro Comunitativo, Ravenna’s main theatre in those days, led the Municipal Administration to start building another. The most suitable space was identified as the central Piazzetta degli Svizzeri. Having rejected the designs by architect Ignazio Sarti from Bologna and architect Nabruzzi from Ravenna, the creation of the building was entrusted, not without polemics, to the young Venetian architects Tomaso and Giovan Battista Meduna who had recently been in charge of restoration of the Teatro alla Fenice in Venice. Initially the Medunas planned a building with a monumental façade towards the square but the definitive, smaller one (1840) had a longitudinal orientation with the front overlooking the street of the old Seminary (today Via Mariani). The first stone laid in September of the same year resulted in a neoclassical plan building not very different, at least in its essential traits, from the Venetian model.

Externally divided in two levels, the façade has a projecting pronaus with access stairs and portico on the lower floor with four Ionic capital columns bearing an architrave. The upper floor wall, crowned by a tympanum, has three small balconies alternated with four niches (the statues were added in 1967). The side overlooking the square is punctuated by two series of recesses enclosing windows and access door with a strip in simulated lapidary decoration enlivening the masonry of the lower order. The atrium with coffered ceiling, flanked by two spaces formerly housing a trattoria and a café, proceeds to the staircases leading to the stalls and boxes. The theatre space itself, in traditional semi-elliptical form, had four orders of twenty-five boxes (the central box of the first order was replaced by the entrance to the stalls) plus the gallery with no internal divisions. The stalls, set on an inclined plane, were less extensive than today, to the advantage of the proscenium and the orchestra pit.

For the rich decorations in neoclassical style Meduna employed Venetian painters Giuseppe Voltan and Giuseppe Lorenzo Gatteri, aided by Pietro Garbato for the wood and papier-mâché work and Carlo Franco for the gilding. Another Venetian involved was Giovanni Busato who painted a curtain depicting Theodoric’s entry into Ravenna. Voltan and Gatteri also supervised decoration of the great room of the Casino (today the small theatre) which stood over the portico and atrium, flanked by rooms for gambling and conversation.

The official opening took place on 15th May 1852 with Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, conducted by Giovanni Nostini and featuring Adelaide Cortesi, Marco Viani and Feliciano Pons, immediately followed by the ballet La Zingara with the étoile Augusta Maywood.

Over the following decades the Alighieri cut out a not inconsiderable niche among Italian provincial theatres and was a usual venue for leading theatre stars (Salvini, Novelli, Ristori, Gramatica, Zacconi, Ruggeri, Moissi, Gandusio, Benassi, Ricci, Musco, Baseggio, Ninchi, Falconi, Abba) and also staged opera seasons which, at least up to the post-Great War period, were in constant harmony with the new works appearing in major Italian opera houses which were put on within only a few years from the premières and with notably prestigious casts. The repertoire of the mature Verdi was almost always kept up to date: Rigoletto (1853), Trovatore (1854), Aroldo (1959, with Salvini-Donatelli and Leone Giraldoni), Vespri (1861), Ballo in maschera (1862), La forza del destino (1874), Aida (1876), Don Carlo (1884, with Navarrini) and Otello (1892, with Ferrani). The same goes for Puccini – Manon Lescaut (1895), Bohème (1897, with Gorga), Tosca (1908, with Magini Coletti, conducted by Guarnieri), Butterfly (1913, with Baldassarre Tedeschi), Turandot (1929, with Scacciati, Saraceni and Melandri) – and for the creations of the maestros of realism - Cavalleria and Pagliacci (1893, conductor Usiglio), Andrea Chènier (1898), Fedora (1899 with Garbin and Stehle), Adriana Lecouvreur (1905, with Krusceniski), Zazà (1906, with Carelli, conducted by Leoncavallo), Amica (1908, with Poli Randaccio, conducted by Mascagni), Isabeau (1912, with Llacer and De Muro) and Francesca da Rimini (1921, with Rakowska, Merli and Nessi, conducted by Serafin). Especially significant was the attention paid to the French scene: Gounod’s Faust in 1872 and again in 1878, with Ormondo Maini and Kaschmann, conducted by Faccio; L’Africaine in 1880 with Teodorini and Battistini, Carmen and Mignon in 1888, again with Borghi Mamo, Massenet’s Roi de Lahore in 1898 with Ferrani, Cardinali and Sammarco, conducted by Toscanini, but also Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust in 1904 with Russ and De Luca. There were only three Wagner operas but in two distinct series for each one: Lohengrin in 1890 (with Cardinali) and in 1920 (with Pertile, Spani and Formichi, conducted by Guarnieri), Tristan in 1902 (with Pinto), and in 1926 (with Llacer, Minghini Cattaneo, Bassi, Rossi Morelli and Baccaloni, conducted by Failoni) and The Valkyrie in 1910 and 1938 (with Caniglia and Minghini Cattaneo). Though there was a total absence of Mozart’s works – far from common even in the major theatres – there are nonetheless unexpected pieces were staged such as Rossini’s out-of-date Cenerentola dating to 1921 with Supervia and, on the podium, Serafin; the 1925 Boris with Pinza and Oltrabella, conducted by Guarnieri, and even Strauss’ Salome in 1911, with the waning Bellincioni, conducted by Ferrari. In the performances of the classic repertoire too the names of the greatest singers of the day stand out: over and above those already mentioned, Melis, De Hidalgo, Muzio, Pampanini, Pacetti, Dal Monte, Capsir, Cigna, Pagliughi, Favero, Tassinari, Carosio, Albanese, Stignani, Gigli, Schipa, Malipiero, Masini, Tagliavini, Eugenio Giraldoni, Danise, Stracciari, Stabile, Franci, Basiola, Pasero and Tajo...).

During the 40’s and 50’s there was still intense activity involving the best theatre an review companies (Randone, Gassman, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Compagnia dei Giovani, etc.) while the musical side was divided into mostly local chamber music concerts (but there were also Benedetti Michelangeli, Cortot, Milstein, Segovia, the Quartetto Italiano and I Musici) and an operatic repertoire by now crystallised and stale. Yet it was still enlivened by outstanding voices (including among others Olivero, Tebaldi, Simionato, Corelli, Di Stefano, Valletti, Bergonzi, Raimondi, Tagliabue, Bechi, Gobbi, Taddei, Panerai, Bastianini – as a young bass – Siepi, Rossi Lemeni and Tozzi, not forgetting of course Callas in the 1954 Forza del destino with Del Monaco, Protti, Modesti and Capecchi, conducted by Franco Ghione).

Though the theatre underwent some limited restoration works and technical updating – such as in 1929 when the orchestra pit was created, the gallery obtained in the fourth order of boxes and the dressing rooms renovated – the unavoidable need to consolidate the structures led to the theatre being closed down in summer 1959 and remaining so for a long period. Meanwhile the stalls and the stage were completely rebuilt, the upholstery renewed and the lighting system replaced, including the installation of a new chandelier. On 11th February 1967 the restored theatre, inaugurated with a concert by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Ljubljana, could then resume its activities which now featured an intense series of plays – also open to contemporary experiences – and a considerable increase in concerts and ballets. Links with the Bologna Municipal Theatre and entry into the ATER circuit also favoured a notable renewal of the opera seasons which, however, were moved to the Rocca Brancaleone arena at the end of the 70’s. The theatre underwent further restoration in the 80’s and 90’s when the flooring of the stalls was redone, air-conditioning installed, the upholstery renewed and the exits brought into line with the regulations in force. With the creation of Ravenna Festival and the closure of the Rocca Brancaleone in the 90’s the Alighieri theatre took on an increasingly central role in the town’s cultural programming with concert, opera, ballet and drama seasons from autumn to spring, and in summer it is the official headquarters of the Festival’s main operatic events (among others Lodoiska, Norma, Così fan tutte, Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci conducted by Riccardo Muti, Poliuto conducted by Gavazzeni and Boris Godunov conducted by Gergiev).