Theater St. Charles
Charles of Borbone entrusted the first construction of the theater to the military architect Carasale in 1737 (four decades before the Staircase) which succeeded to build it and to complete it within the day of the recurrence of the onomastico of the king, November four of the same year. In that occasion the work Achille was represented in Sciro of the Metastasio musicata from Domenico Sarro. The theater cost well centomila dukedoms of which ventimila offered by the same king Carlo. Part of the necessary sum was drawn by the demolition of the old theater S. Bartolomeo that St. Charles had preceded and to his place he was wanted to erect a church. I connected to the rapidity of the construction they are handed down episodes that have of the unbelievable one. Seems that the king congratulating the Carasale on the occasion of the inaugural evening for the rapidity of the execution, it expressed the desire to directly reach the theater from the Royal Building. Says fact, in the sense that at the end of the show the sovereign could reenter in his apartments through a run still effected with more amazing rapidity. The theater immediately imposed to the admiration of the Neapolitans and the foreigners, for which it became shortly time an attraction judged without equal. For the grandeur, the magnificence of the architecture, the decorations in gold, the sumptuous decorations in blue, the official color of the Borbones replaced with the red after the unity of Italy, but also for the musical interest of the shows. The Neapolitan School had, in fact, in that years uncontested European glory not only in the field of the funny work (what in St. Charles was not represented), but in that of the serious work with Leo, Purple, Traetta, Piccinni, Wins, Anfossi, During, Iommelli, Cimarosa, Paisiello, Zingarelli. This way that also the foreign composers considered St. Charles as a finishing line of their career: Hasse, established then him to Naples, Haydn, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck. Equally the most famous singers aspired to perform themselves on the stage of the theater in Naples and many they consolidated on it their fame, from Lucrezia Anguiari to Caterina Gabrielli, to the very famous castrated Caffarelli, Farinelli, Gizziello all and three coming from the Conservatories in Naples actually to Gian Baptist Velvets, the last of the category. The night of February 12 1816 blazed a fire that destroyed completely. It was an event that threw the mourning on the whole city and that the newspapers of Europe told with emotion as with wonder and admiration I will dictate news, ten months later, at the end of the same year, that it was already risen. The theater was reconstructed after the 1816 fire by the Niccolini that it endowed, him experienced of acoustics, of two great circular wells covered by grille of the depth of almost seventy meters, with the purpose to improve its acoustics. Camillo Guerra and Gennaro Maldarelli renewed the decorations, Joseph Cammarano still painted the existing ceiling and the curtain, replaced then in 1854 with other of Joseph Mancinelli (The Poetry, still in use). Other embellishments were made during the eight hundred and of the Nine hundred. In 1941, always with the intent to improve its acoustics, a nacelle was built so-called acoustics for the sonority of the room to make even more perfect, that boasts the possibility to contain three thousand spectators. With the temple of the Milanese lyric it divides the supremacy of the Italian most ancient school of dance, founded in 1812. Stendhal so it described it: "The first impression is that to be rained in the building of an oriental emperor. There is not anything in the whole Europe that I don't say you draw near to this theater, but gives the palest idea of it." In the first half the eight hundred the glories of St. Charles are tied up to the name of that that Alexander Dumas defined" the entrepreneurs' prince", Domenico Barbaja. Despite the Neapolitan School with Zingarelli, Pacini, Mercadante, was substantially held to the footstep with the new times, Barbaja it realized as for the San Carlo the moment had come to look beyond the confinements imposed by his tradition and it engaged as composer and artistic manager of the Regal Theaters of Music Gioacchino Rossini. These he remained for eight years, from 1815 to 1822, writing" Elizabeth queen of England", You " Gazette ", " Otello ", " Armida ", " Mosè "," Riccardo and Zoraide", " Ermione "," You woman of the lake", Mohammed II and " Zelmira ". Among the" singers of season" some years of Barbaja remember: Manuel Garcia, daughter Maria Malibran, Giuditta Pasta, Isabella Colbran, Giovan Baptist Rubies, Domenico Donzelli and the two great French rivals Adolphe Nourrit and Gilbert Duprez, the inventor of the I give of breast (the rivalry among the two culminated with the suicide of Nourrit because its success was inferior to that of Duprez). Run away from Naples Rossini together with the Colbran, lover of Barbaja, to its place the entrepreneur engaged another dawning star in the world of the melodrama, Gaetano Donizetti, that he had remained to St. Charles since 1822 to 1838 composing for the theater 16 works among which: Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereux, " Poliuto " and the immortal one" Lucy of Lammermoor". A few years before Barbaja had given also trust to another young musician, a Sicilian student of the Conservatory St. Pietro to Majella, representing him his first work" Bianca and Gerlando". it called Vincent Bellini. Also Joseph Verdi composed for the theater: " Alzira ", Luisa Miller and" A dance in mask"; in 1872 it assumed the artistic direction of the whole season introducing among the other works the " Aida " for the first time with a memorable success. With to end of the eight hundred and of the great season of the romantic melodrama, St. Charles remained among the protagonists of the new orientations musical Italians and Europeans. Giacomo Puccini and the young " school ", from Mascagni to the four Neapolitans (of birth or of studies) Leoncavallo, Jordan, Cilea and Alfano, found St. ready Charles to welcome their works, while the meritorious action of a great musician and manager of orchestra, Joseph Martucci, been worth to introduce the music wagneriana in the customs of the theater. Worth of St. Charles, in the first years of the Nine hundred, it was also that to contribute in conclusive way to the prominence of the figure of the manager of orchestra in the lyric show: Leopoldo Mugnone, Neapolitan, great rival but dear friend, of Arthur Toscanini, it directed alone stupendous seasons as Eduardo Vitale, Ettore Panizza, Eduardo Mascheroni, which in 1908, it personally accompanied on the podium Richard Strauss, surrendering him the wand for to direct the first Italian of his " Salomé ". And then Cleofonte Campanini, Vittorio Gui, Gino Marinuzzi and Pietro Mascagni, stable manager from 1915 to 1922. From 1915 another great figure of entrepreneur is signalled, that of August Laganà, that drove the theater up to the constitution in Autonomous Corporate body in 1927, having introduced since 1920 the custom, lasted ten years to inaugurate the season with a work wagneriana,; sensitive also to the new ferments of the Italian work, with the first absolute of the" Francesca from Rimini" of Zandonai and of Fedra of Ildebrando Pizzetti both on texts of Gabriele of announcement. Also in these years the greatest singers exhibited, we remember only Tito Schipa, Benjamin Gigli and Toti from the Mountain. Substantially saved, if also damaged in some structures, from the war events, St. Charles was requisition by the military authorities inglesi in October of 1943. The shows took back the December 26 of that year and destined to the allied troops; the civilians could enter only you from the gallery and in gallery. The occupation lasted up to 1946. restored the Autonomous corporate body in 48 with the genial superintendence of Pasquale Of Costanzo, coadiuvato from the manager artistic Francis Siciliani, before, and Guido Pannain, later, St. Charles quickly took back his position of prominence among the European musical institutions. You introduce on the podium managers of great prestige as Gui, Serafin, Santini, Gavazzeni, Böhm, Fricsay, Scherchen, Cluytens, Knappertsbusch, Mitropoulos. Memorable her before the Wozzeck of Alban Berg, the executions in first Italian of " Arianna " and Bluebeard of Dukas," From the today to the tomorrow" of Schönberg, Carmina Burana and You moon of Orff, etc. The theater St. Charles has been the first Italian theater to approach in tourné and abroad after the war, to the Covent Garden in London in 1946. In 1951 he has participated in the festival of Strasburgo, passing therefore to the Opéra in Paris for the celebrations verdiane. Returned in Paris in 1956, for the Festival of the Nations, he has participated in the Festival of Edimburgo in 1963. With a trip of 5180 miles, St. Charles has completed the longest tour ever faced from a lyric theater, to artists' suit, technicians and stage material, bringing in Brazil in 1969. In 1974 has given representations to Budapest, in 1981 to Dortmund in Germany, in the July 1982 to Baku in Azerbigian. In November of the same year the Body of Dance is exhibited to Tunisi with the show Danzando Stravinsky. In May 1983 St. Charles has participated in the Festival of Wiesbaden with two productions you somnambulant and" he forces her some destiny", with the Flaminio of Giovan Baptist Pergolesi to the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. of Charleston and to the Festival of Versailles. In May 1985 the theater is again to Wiesbaden with " Rigoletto " and the " Flaminio ", show, this last, that has been represented to the Festival of Dresda in June of the same year. In 1987 St. Charles is in New York where, in the monumental church of Saint John The Divine, he puts in scene the " Maid " " owner " and the Stabat Mater of Pergolesi - De Simone. Shortly after it is in France with the " Flaminio ", in the May of the 1995 anchor to Wiesbaden with Tosca of Puccini and in 1998, with his symphonic orchestra, to the Festival of Erl in Austria.
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