Teatro Massimo

Rising over Piazza Verdi with a great dome and bronze lions, the Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy and third in Europe after Paris and Vienna. Giovan Battista Basile designed it and his son Ernesto completed it; inaugurated with Verdi's Falstaff in 1897, it reopened in 1997 after more than two decades dark.

Why it matters

Size here is not a boast but a statement of civic ambition: when the theatre opened, its seven thousand seven hundred square metres ranked it third in Europe after the opera houses of Paris and Vienna, and it remains the largest in Italy, as the regional tourism board repeats in its presentation of the destination. The building condensed Palermo's aspirations as a major post-unification city — a competition announced in 1864, a prize design by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile announced in 1868, a first stone laid in 1875 on the anniversary of the 1848 Sicilian revolution.

What to notice

Approach from the square and read the exterior as a procession: the broad steps flanked by the two bronze lion groups — the Tragedy of Benedetto Civiletti on one side, the Lirica of Mario Rutelli on the other — mount towards the portico and the dome, which measures 28.73 metres across. Inside, the auditorium keeps its five-tier arrangement around the parterre, and the foyer staircases show the Liberty-era refinement of Ernesto Basile, who completed the work after his father's death in 1891. The inauguration opera was Verdi's Falstaff, conducted by Leopoldo Mugnone on 16 May 1897 — an opera then new to Palermo, chosen, the foundation's history notes, to mark the theatre's modernity. Do not leave without looking back from the upper foyer towards the dome's springing: the geometry that produced the acoustics and the scale was the younger Basile's finishing act. The theatre's own site lists its current mission plainly: the diffusion of musical art and the knowledge of music, opera theatre and dance.

Context and history

The theatre's chronology is exceptionally well documented on the foundation's official history page. A first competition was announced in 1864 under the mayor Antonio Starabba, marchese di Rudinì; Giovan Battista Filippo Basile won with the first prize announced on 4 September 1868; the first stone was laid on 12 January 1875 in what is now Piazza Giuseppe Verdi. Basile died on 16 June 1891, and the city asked his son Ernesto to complete the work, which he brought to the inauguration of 16 May 1897. In 1935 the theatre became an autonomous body, the Ente Autonomo, and it now operates as the Fondazione Teatro Massimo. The most dramatic chapter followed: the theatre shut in 1974 for restoration works and stayed dark for over two decades until the reopening of 12 May 1997, with the first half of the celebratory concert led by Franco Mannino and the second by Claudio Abbado with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The regional portal rounds out the ranking: after the Paris Opera and Vienna's Staatsoper, this is the third theatre in Europe by size.