Teatro Rossini

Lugo di Romagna (Italy)

The curtain made of FOT - Otello velvet with NDA - Decorative appliqué and endowed with a Traveller curtain and a Swag curtain, is so described by the great scenographer of Modena Koki Fregni (1930-1994), who planned stage technique works renewed during the restauration.«The top and the curtain, surely manufactured in the period among the two wars, showed such a poverty of materials and executions that it would have been absurd to propose them again.It was done then a careful analysis and new materials were introduced, for safety reasons too.The painted ornament were replaced with the embroidered ornament. The heraldry of the town was done with an embroidered relief ...»

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«... and binges and decoration were applied with moderation, also not to overwhelm the sobriety that luckily belongs to the hall.We decided to use a silent engine with variable speed to allow a swag or imperial opening, as it is the tradition in Italian opera theatre (how many have repented because of having abandoned this wonderful opening). Simultaneously and with the same means, it is possible also a traveller opening, much more suited to prose performances.» The Swag curtain is endowed with a varying speed automatism system ...

... while the Traveller curtain is realized with a Laser track system.The curtain is opened on the Stage masking made of black COS - Oscurante molton.Pier Luigi Cervellati, professor at the Faculty of Architecture of Venice, at the end of the works declared the principles of inspiration of the guidelines of what, more than a restoration, for the fidelity that was given to the pre-existing situation at the moment of the restoration ...

... can be described a conservative maintenance operation, despite the building was in particularly degraded conditions.«... the best compliment that we hope will be that that will say: ''The theatre does not seem even restored.This is the same theatre of immemorial times, the theatre we had in our memory''.Or even: ''It is the theatre that we imagined it had been, even if we never saw it''.»

The layout of the hall, in the shape of a bell, is designed by the ticinese architect Francesco Ambrogio Petrocchi ( 1706-1778), who, in 1759, built the external walls, the roof, and ended, perhaps, the front.Petrocchi was in dispute for the project of the interior of the theatre with the Bolognese architect Scandellari, and the dispute had to be so hard to suggest to the administrators of Lugo to entrust the completion of the theatre no to the very important ''architetto imperiale di Carlo VI imperadore'' Antonio Galli Bibiena, among the greatest Italian set designers and architects of the '700 (then he will devote to the works of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna, started in 1763, and to those of Teatro Scientifico of Mantua, started in 1767).

This horseshoe-shaped layout is instead that of the restructuring carried out in 1819 by Mantua's architect Leandro Marconi (1763-1837), which in addition to changing the curve of the boxes added the gallery and changed the structure of the proscenium, giving to the Teatro Rossini the appearance restored from the restoration of 1986.But the proportions of the theatre remain those of the original structure designed by Petrocchi, intact today, that shows a metric modular plan - which coincids with the elevation – where to the cavea and to the stage are reserved the identical perfect proportions.

The comparison between the cross-section of Petrocchi and the restoration project of the 1986 confirms how the structural system of 1759 has come to our day essentially unchanged.The biggest difference concerns the flattening of the vault of the hall, introduced by Marconi in 1819, in order to enter a gallery above the fourth order of the boxes. Opened officially in 1761, the theatre was dedicated in 1859 to Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) to celebrate the bond that joined the genius of Pesaro to the city of Romagna in which he lived, still a boy, from 1802 to 1804.

This is the only track remained to document the original appearance of the boxes as the Bibiena had designed them, which has kept the bell curve as it was designed by Petrocchi. It is the detail of a table commissioned at Albrizzi Institute of Venice in December 1764.Cervellati says about the opera by Bibiena in Lugo:«...he intervened about many things, but mostly worked in the realization of the scenographies, the proscenium, the decorations of the boxes. His intervention must have been decisive about the conclusive result of the big hall and must have been his work on the surfaces, as a decorator and set designer, but about the structure and the setting of the hall and of the boxes ...»

The Teatro Rossini is a theatre ''all'italiana'' with a horseshoe-shaped hall with four tiers of boxes and a gallery, 500 seats.
It's one of the oldest Italian theatres preserved today.

1759

Construction of facilities
Francesco A. Petrocchi - project

1760

Realization of the interiors
Antonio Galli da Bibbiena - project

1819

Renovation of the interiors
Leandro Marconi - project

1855

Replacement of decorations with stucco
Benedetto Crescentini - decorations

1986

Restauration
Pierluigi Cervellati - architectural project and works' direction
Koki Fregni - project of the stagecraft

Materials used in this production

2MS - S engine

Engines for tracksystems

COS - Oscurante

Duvetyne and blackout fabrics

Fixed blocks for flyloft

Rigging systems

Flyloft system

Rigging systems

FOT - Otello

Velvets

NAG - Agremano

Trimmings

NBT - Bordo traforato

Trimmings

NDA - Decorative appliqués for fabrics

Trimmings

NFR - Fringes

Trimmings

Stage maskings

Acoustic curtains

Swag curtains

Typology of curtain

Traveller curtains

Typology of curtain

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