Profile
Teatro Comunale di Bologna (TCBO) is the major opera house in the city of Bologna and in all Emilia-Romagna. Its history began after a massive fire destroyed, in 1745, the predecessor, Teatro Malvezzi. The city Senate called for new projects in order to provide a new space for opera in the city – in fact, this theatre is probably the first of its kind to be built by the city (not, for example, by a king or any other specific patron) for its people. The reason of this 'urgency' was the historical importance of Bologna and its musical culture, renown worldwide and magnetically attractive for many great protagonists of the history of music, such as Farinelli and Mozart and, later on, Rossini, Wagner and others.
Antonio Galli da Bibiena, heir of an illustrious family of artist and architects, was the creator whose project was finally chosen: less than ten years he took to give to the city its new opera house. In order to avoid the danger of fire, he built the theatre in rock and concrete; nevertheless, to obtain the perfect acoustic that TCBO still preserve, he put a wooden parterre and a wooden cover in the great hall, as to naturally amplify the sound of the orchestra. The shape is a particularity as well, being not the traditional U-shape of "teatro all'italiana", but the bell-shape that guarantees the perfect spread of the sound to every spectator.
Preserving the original 18thcentury great hall, the theatre has undergone some major restorations from the time of its foundation until today, the most iconic being the addition, around 1818-1820, of a very rare machine used to lift the parterre up to the stage level – apparently, only other two exemplars of this technology still exist in Italy.
TCBO is pleased to welcome visitors form all over the worlds and to offer its locations for public and private events.
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