entry
June 2008
The Teatro di Corte
Keen-eyed
observers notice that the grand San Carlo opera house is not
just adjacent to the royal
palace, it is actually built right onto it as a
north wing, if you will, with passage (not open to the
public) between the palace and the area of the San
Carlo behind and below the stage. King Charles III was taking
no chances on having to actually walk outside and
around the corner just to see an opera he probably
wouldn’t like anyway. There is an apocryphal story
(those are the ones we really want to
be true, but probably aren’t) that the inside passage
wasn’t there when the first
opera opened on Nov. 4, 1737, but when the king
complained, Guiseppe Architect* got out his hammer and
by the time the first opera was over that very same
evening, the passageway was ready —or at least there
was a big hole in the wall. In
any event, opera theaters as adjuncts to royal palaces
are not that common. (I’ll go out on a limb and say
that San Carlo is the only one.)
A
true royal palace, however, from the age of the divine
right of kings, had its own smaller "court theater" in
the palace, itself, called a teatro di
corte in Italian. The best-known teatro
di corte in Bourbon Italy was no doubt the one
built by Vanvitelli into the
great palace of Caserta.
It, however, was fashioned on the one within the royal
palace in Naples. This teatro di corte
is among the least-known attractions in the city, one,
because it is overshadowed by the sumptuous San Carlo,
and, two, because you actually have to go into the royal
palace, itself, to find it.
There
was, no doubt, an original teatro di
corte in the first royal palace built on the
site, in the year 1600. The one you see today,
however, is from 1768 and was designed by Ferdinando Fuga, one of the
great names of Italian architecture in the 1700s. It
is also called the Gran Sala or the Sala Regia (royal hall). It was a venue
for many of the Neapolitan comic
operas of the 18th century, although
with the passage of time the main theater of San Carlo
accommodated those works, as well, in addition to the
traditional fare of opera seria.
The teatro di corte was badly damaged in WWII but was restored by 1954. The original design by Fuga was adhered to; the original ceiling frescoes by Antonio Dominici and Crescenzo La Gamba were faithfully restored, as was a precious series of 12 statues by Angelo Viva, depicting characters from Greek mythology.
*Name in art of Angelo Carasale!
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