The building was born in the second decade of the nineteenth century from the union of a warehouse and a noble house, with the name of Real Teatro Ferdinandeo. In 1817, two years after the start of the works, there were two stages and a very small audience. Between 1852 and 1857, other interventions will give the Theater an appearance very similar to that of today: the audience expanded, with a space reserved for the orchestra; a third tier of boxes and a gallery were built. The facade of the building was made in neoclassical style, with the two floors surmounted by a balustrade which had, in the center, a sculptural panel decorated with musical instruments. Above the panel, supported by two male figures, a clock with an eagle on top, a symbol of the County of Modica.
The theater was reopened in 1857 with the staging of Giuseppe Verdi's "Traviata"; after the unification of Italy, it was named after Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1870, the building became municipal property. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the theater not only hosted opera and prose shows, but also charity evenings, singing competitions and performances with school students as protagonists; in the thirties, the provincial fencing championships for young fascists were held there. In 1943, the theater was adapted into a cinema hall.
At the end of the Second World War, new renovations were needed: the building was unsafe in several places, floors and decorations were deteriorated and worn. When the works were completed, the theater showed an enlarged stage, a greater number of seats in the stalls and a grandstand instead of the third tier of boxes, beyond which the projection room was located.
In 1984, the theater was closed. Many, however, began to ask for the modification of the masonry works and a restoration capable of recovering part of the original decorations. The engineer Giorgio Sarta, with the architects Enzo and Giorgio Rizza, developed a project that intended to restore the building to the glories of the nearby past. The decorator Giorgio Modica intervened on the decorative apparatus of the stalls and the entrance hall, while the painter Piero Guccione, together with other exponents of "Il Gruppo di Scicli", made a large oil painting on the vaulted ceiling: the staircase of the Cathedral of San Giorgio, one of the most important places in the city, strongly foreshortened from below and animated by characters belonging to the world of art and opera.
After further restoration and safety work, the theater was definitively reopened to the public in 2000.
Garibaldi Theater Foundation
Address: C.so Umberto I, 207, 97015
Phone: 0932 946991
Site:
http://www.fondazioneteatrogaribaldi.it/Location inserted by
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