Teatro Verdi

Terni’s Teatro Verdi is the city’s nineteenth-century theatre, designed by papal architect Luigi Poletti and opened in 1849. It was among Italy’s first theatres with electric light and was rebuilt after wartime bombing.

Why it matters

Terni built its opera house as it was becoming a modern city. Opened in 1849 as the Nuovo Teatro on the foundations of the old Palazzo dei Priori, it was designed by Luigi Poletti, architect to the papal court; his 1840 project beat a rival proposal by Luigi Santini of Perugia. In 1888 it stood among the first theatres to adopt electric lighting, supplied by the Società della Valnerina, an early badge of the industrial ambitions that would make Terni a steel town. Renamed for Giuseppe Verdi in 1908, seven years after the composer’s death, it reflects both the papal and industrial city.

What to notice

The facade is the only element to survive the wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction. Poletti’s interior no longer survives: the theatre was bombed during the Second World War and totally reconstructed after it, erasing the original stuccoes and paintings and keeping only the facade.The theatre’s identity was civic from the start: it rose on the site of the city's medieval government seat, later the public bakery, so the edifice has always been public property in spirit.

Context and history

The first stone was laid in 1840 in the presence of Poletti himself, papal architect of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces, and the theatre rose in eight years, opening in August 1849 with the melodrama Saffo. In 1892 and 1893 the structure received its first improvements, and in 1908 a renovation enlarged the stage and renewed the electrical system, taking the name Teatro Giuseppe Verdi with a second inauguration mounted on Otello. The Second World War broke that continuity: bombing destroyed the house and the post-war reconstruction turned it into a cinema-like venue under private operators, a post-war change in use. In 2010, the theatre was declared unfit for use after part of the entrance porch’s counter-ceiling collapsed.