Description
The Teatro San Carlo is the great opera house of Naples, next to the Royal Palace, between Via San Carlo and Piazza Trieste e Trento. It opened in 1737 and is the oldest opera house in the world still in operation. Inside, the horseshoe-shaped hall has remained almost as it was in the nineteenth century.
The auditorium has five tiers of boxes arranged in a horseshoe, plus a wide royal box at the center. Today it is red and gold, but at first silver and gold decorations ran over light-blue boxes, the colors of the Bourbons. It was the model for the Italian-style theater.
On the ceiling is a great canvas by the Cammarano family, covering 500 square meters. Above the stage, instead, you notice a clock: Time points to the hours, while the siren of the arts, at lower left, tries to hold them back.
The acoustics are considered almost perfect: the raised ceiling and the canvas form a kind of sound chamber, like a great drum above the stalls. The sound is the same in the stalls, the boxes and the gallery. Next door the MEMUS is the theater's museum, with paintings, costumes, instruments and documents, and it is entered from the gardens of the Royal Palace.
It was built in about eight months to a design by Giovanni Antonio Medrano, at a cost of 75,000 ducats. A door behind the royal box connects it to the Royal Palace, so the king could go to the theater without stepping into the street.
The San Carlo predates La Scala in Milan by 41 years and La Fenice in Venice by 55. In the eighteenth century Handel, Haydn and a fourteen-year-old Mozart passed through here; Mozart stayed in Naples for more than a month.
The ceiling was raised in 1816, and the hall became a sounding board. The royal box originally held ten people. The theater also has a ballet company and an orchestra, and it was the first Italian theater to set up a dance school.
On the night of February 13, 1816, a fire destroyed everything. Antonio Niccolini rebuilt it in just nine months, giving it back to the city almost as it is today. These were the golden years of Rossini and then of Donizetti, who premiered Lucia di Lammermoor here in 1835.
Don't miss
• The auditorium.
• The Cammarano ceiling.
• The clock above the stage.
• The MEMUS.
Did you know?
• The “mystic gulf” for the orchestra was built in 1872 on the suggestion of Giuseppe Verdi.
• Stendhal described the royal box as “pale” red: the other boxes were blue.
The auditorium has five tiers of boxes arranged in a horseshoe, plus a wide royal box at the center. Today it is red and gold, but at first silver and gold decorations ran over light-blue boxes, the colors of the Bourbons. It was the model for the Italian-style theater.
On the ceiling is a great canvas by the Cammarano family, covering 500 square meters. Above the stage, instead, you notice a clock: Time points to the hours, while the siren of the arts, at lower left, tries to hold them back.
The acoustics are considered almost perfect: the raised ceiling and the canvas form a kind of sound chamber, like a great drum above the stalls. The sound is the same in the stalls, the boxes and the gallery. Next door the MEMUS is the theater's museum, with paintings, costumes, instruments and documents, and it is entered from the gardens of the Royal Palace.
It was built in about eight months to a design by Giovanni Antonio Medrano, at a cost of 75,000 ducats. A door behind the royal box connects it to the Royal Palace, so the king could go to the theater without stepping into the street.
The San Carlo predates La Scala in Milan by 41 years and La Fenice in Venice by 55. In the eighteenth century Handel, Haydn and a fourteen-year-old Mozart passed through here; Mozart stayed in Naples for more than a month.
The ceiling was raised in 1816, and the hall became a sounding board. The royal box originally held ten people. The theater also has a ballet company and an orchestra, and it was the first Italian theater to set up a dance school.
On the night of February 13, 1816, a fire destroyed everything. Antonio Niccolini rebuilt it in just nine months, giving it back to the city almost as it is today. These were the golden years of Rossini and then of Donizetti, who premiered Lucia di Lammermoor here in 1835.
Don't miss
• The auditorium.
• The Cammarano ceiling.
• The clock above the stage.
• The MEMUS.
Did you know?
• The “mystic gulf” for the orchestra was built in 1872 on the suggestion of Giuseppe Verdi.
• Stendhal described the royal box as “pale” red: the other boxes were blue.