Description
The Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy and one of the largest in Europe, third in size after the Paris Opéra and the Vienna State Opera. It stands in Palermo, between the old city and the 19th-century one, with a Greco-Roman temple façade: six Corinthian columns at the top of a flight of steps, crowned by an enormous dome.
Outside, on either side of the steps, two bronze lions stand guard: the Tragedy, by Benedetto Civiletti, and the Lyric, by Mario Rutelli. High up on the pediment a motto is inscribed: "Art renews the peoples and reveals their life."
The auditorium is horseshoe-shaped, with five tiers of boxes and the gallery. The architectural design is by Ernesto Basile, a great interpreter of European Art Nouveau. The ceiling of the stalls is made of large frescoed wooden panels, the "petals," which open upward to let the air circulate, with no need for forced ventilation.
In the Pompeian Room, originally reserved for men only, there is an acoustic trick intended by the architect. A slight asymmetry means that anyone standing at the exact center hears their own voice amplified, while from outside the rotunda you cannot make out anything said inside.
The history of the theater is long. The 1864 competition was won by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile. To make room, the church of the Stimmate and the monastery of San Giuliano were demolished, but work began only in 1875, after troubled events.
When Basile died, the city council asked his son Ernesto to finish the work. On 16 May 1897 the curtain rose on Verdi's Falstaff. It took about a hundred and fifty stonecutters, and the builder Giovanni Rutelli invented a steam crane able to lift eight tons to a height of 22 meters.
The dome, 28.73 meters in diameter, rests on rollers that let it move with temperature changes. Then the theater stayed closed from 1974 to 1997, for long-postponed restoration. In 1990 Francis Ford Coppola shot some scenes of The Godfather Part III here: Michael Corleone goes to see his son make his debut in Cavalleria rusticana.
Don't miss
• The staircase with the bronze lions.
• The horseshoe auditorium.
• The Pompeian Room.
• The dome.
Did you know?
• The theater is 60 meters tall, 55 of them for the stage.
• The building covers over 7,700 square meters.
• In 2002 Claudio Abbado brought the Berlin Philharmonic here for the "Concert for Europe."
Outside, on either side of the steps, two bronze lions stand guard: the Tragedy, by Benedetto Civiletti, and the Lyric, by Mario Rutelli. High up on the pediment a motto is inscribed: "Art renews the peoples and reveals their life."
The auditorium is horseshoe-shaped, with five tiers of boxes and the gallery. The architectural design is by Ernesto Basile, a great interpreter of European Art Nouveau. The ceiling of the stalls is made of large frescoed wooden panels, the "petals," which open upward to let the air circulate, with no need for forced ventilation.
In the Pompeian Room, originally reserved for men only, there is an acoustic trick intended by the architect. A slight asymmetry means that anyone standing at the exact center hears their own voice amplified, while from outside the rotunda you cannot make out anything said inside.
The history of the theater is long. The 1864 competition was won by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile. To make room, the church of the Stimmate and the monastery of San Giuliano were demolished, but work began only in 1875, after troubled events.
When Basile died, the city council asked his son Ernesto to finish the work. On 16 May 1897 the curtain rose on Verdi's Falstaff. It took about a hundred and fifty stonecutters, and the builder Giovanni Rutelli invented a steam crane able to lift eight tons to a height of 22 meters.
The dome, 28.73 meters in diameter, rests on rollers that let it move with temperature changes. Then the theater stayed closed from 1974 to 1997, for long-postponed restoration. In 1990 Francis Ford Coppola shot some scenes of The Godfather Part III here: Michael Corleone goes to see his son make his debut in Cavalleria rusticana.
Don't miss
• The staircase with the bronze lions.
• The horseshoe auditorium.
• The Pompeian Room.
• The dome.
Did you know?
• The theater is 60 meters tall, 55 of them for the stage.
• The building covers over 7,700 square meters.
• In 2002 Claudio Abbado brought the Berlin Philharmonic here for the "Concert for Europe."