Giuseppe Verdi Theatre

During the first fifty years of the nineteenth century the need to endow Salerno with a new theatre was already urgent.
As to the choice of the place where the new theatre was to be built, a lively discussion was fomented and together with the problem of its financing the debate was protracted for about 20 years.
At last on December 15th 1863, following the proposal of the Mayor Matteo Luciani, the Town Council deliberated to build the theatre in the little square of S. Teresa and entrusted the direction of works to the architects Antonio D'Amora and Giuseppe Menichini who based the construction on the measurements and proportions of the theatre S. Carlo in Naples.
On October 1st 1869 the shell was brought to an end and the works of decoration of the theatre began under the direction of Gaetano D'Agostino, a painter of academic forming, a follower of Moelli, a decorator of prestige who was helped by the most important names of the Neapolitan artistic world. From the foyer, the iconographic drawing planned for the theatre is clearly outlined: the images chosen have to make a reference to the destination of the usage of the building as a temple of Music and above all, of good singing.
In the middle of the peristyle, supported by stucco-pillars in imitation marble on which small vaults with neo-pompeian patterns are rested, the sculpture portraying Pergolesi dying (Pergolesi morente) by Giovanni Battista Amendola is situated.
The statue's symbolic function is to introduce the spectator inside the temple of Music.
In the middle of the plafond, over the banisters, Gioacchino Rossini, uncontested master of music's temple, rises to the supreme expression of the Italian and Neapolitan musical genius.
If the ceiling by Di Criscito represents the final seal on the hall of the great season of Italian melodrama, on the other hand, the curtain performs the duty of celebrating the history of the city by the evocation of a glorious past event.
Domenico Morelli, a painter well respected in Italy and France, chose "La cacciata dei Saraceni da Salerno" (Saracens' expulsion from Salerno), which occurred in the summer of 871 and its sketch was transposed to a 122 square-metre curtain.
Moreover, the medallions containing the effigies of Italian composers, poets and painters, placed on the parapets of the boxes, are particularly beautiful.
On March 25th 1901 the town theatre was named after Giuseppe Verdi who died on January 1st of the same year.

Address: Piazza Matteo Luciani
Telephone: +39 089 662141 - +39 089 662142