Teatro della Pergola
Why is it significant?
On narrow Via della Pergola, the façade is modest, almost shy, and you could walk past without noticing. But behind it is one of the oldest theatres in Italy still working, a horseshoe of gilded boxes rising tier upon tier around the stage.
Key Facts
| Place | Teatro della Pergola |
|---|---|
| Address | Via della Pergola 12, 50121 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77310, 11.26150 |
| Part of Walk | Florence, Capital of Italy: Boulevards, Exiles and the English Cemetery |
| Generated | Generated |
On narrow Via della Pergola, the façade is modest, almost shy, and you could walk past without noticing. But behind it is one of the oldest theatres in Italy still working, a horseshoe of gilded boxes rising tier upon tier around the stage.
It opened in 1656, built in wood for a society of Florentine noblemen, and it is often described as the first theatre with superimposed rows of boxes, the model of the Italian opera house copied all over Europe. In the boxes, Florentine society did what it did best: it watched the stage, and it watched itself.
On the fourteenth of March 1847 a young Giuseppe Verdi premiered his Macbeth here, his first Shakespeare opera, and he was relentless in rehearsal. The first Lady Macbeth later recalled that one duet was rehearsed more than a hundred times, because Verdi wanted it dark and dramatic rather than simply beautiful. And for a few years in the 1830s, among the stage machinists working behind the scenes, was Antonio Meucci, who later emigrated to Havana and New York and is remembered in Italy as an inventor of the telephone.
During the capital years, these boxes filled with ministers, deputies, diplomats and the foreign colony you have met along the way: English writers, Russian princes, American sculptors. Deals were made here between acts, alliances sealed, gossip spread faster than any newspaper. Then, in 1871, the ministries left for Rome, and Florence went back to being itself.
It is tempting to call those six years a failure: debts, a bankrupt city, a court that left. But walk back over what you have seen. The boulevards, the squares, the cemetery, the Russian church, the synagogue, the homes of the new middle class... the Florence beyond the Renaissance postcard was shaped in those years, by Italians and by foreigners who chose to stay. And this theatre, which saw it all from its boxes, is still raising its curtain tonight.