Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Curci

On Corso Vittorio Emanuele, behind a sober nineteenth-century facade, Barletta's Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Curci preserves a gilded hall and painted ceiling. Inaugurated in 1872, it has long been a centre of the city's theatrical and musical life.

Why it matters

Barletta's theatre stands out for the circuitous loyalty in its story. A first theatre rose in 1819 by subscription and collapsed structurally within half a century; the commune rebuilt from scratch and inaugurated the present house in April 1872, choosing shortly afterwards to dedicate it to Giuseppe Curci, the Barletta-born pianist and composer who had died in poverty in 1877 after a European career. The city's gesture — a theatre for a musician it had once neglected — turned the building into a monument of civic amends. The theatre's gilt-and-stucco hall is among the notable historic interiors of the old town.

What to notice

The 1872 theatre added a vestibule, bar, smoking room and ballroom to the spaces of the earlier 1819 house. The auditorium has gilded decoration, a frescoed ceiling, tiers and boxes. Its history includes both opera and prose performances.

Context and history

The theatre's roots go back to 1817, when a society of citizens formed to build a playhouse dedicated to San Ferdinando; it opened on 4 October 1819 with one hundred sixty-eight seats in the stalls and thirty-two boxes. Structural failure came in 1864, when part of the building gave way; unable to fund repairs, the society handed the problem to the commune, which judged restoration too costly and opted for demolition. The new theatre rose on the site and was inaugurated in April 1872, with greater capacity and the representational rooms listed above; in 1877, the year of Giuseppe Curci's death, the commune dedicated the house to the composer, who had been born in Barletta on 15 June 1808, triumphed in Vienna, Paris and across Europe, and ended his days back home in poverty and near-deafness. The theatre has remained Barletta's municipal stage and was restored in the twentieth century.