Amintore Galli Theatre

Background Since the 17th century, there had been calls to construct a public theatre in Rimini. In 1681, with four tiers of twenty-one wooden boxes. It was closed in 1839. Another theatre, the Teatro Arcadico, is known to have existed in Rimini in the mid-18th century. In 1816, the small Teatro Buonarroti was opened; it was closed in 1843 by order of Rimini's municipal government for its precarious structure, and replaced by a temporary wooden stage in Rimini's municipal hall. The municipal government considered building a new theatre on Piazza del Corso (present-day Piazza Malatesta) or Piazza del Fonte (present-day Piazza Cavour), on a site used for public ovens since the end of the 16th century. While the papal aristoccracy and conservative professions supported the Corso, the nobility and bourgeoisie linked with Napoleonic Italy preferred the Fonte. which had been delivered just five days earlier. Verdi distrusted the New Municipal Theatre's impresarios, brothers Ercole and Luciano Marzi, after they had modified Simon Boccanegra's production in a theatre in Reggio Emilia without his consent. The Marzi brothers supplemented the season with other entertainment, including football games, horse races, and three tombola games with a prize of 500 scudi. In 1898, a smaller theatre was built in the ballroom of the upper floor by raising two orders of galleries and placing between the levels of the stairs. The earthquakes also destroyed Poletti's original studies for the project, though six photographs by Luigi Perilli from circa 1900 and five watercolour drawings remain extant. The theatre reopened in 1923 with a performance of Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini. Wartime destruction and renaming On the morning of 28 December 1943, the theatre was hit by Allied aerial bombardment. (1845–1916)|left On 6 May 1947, following the deposition of the Italian monarchy, a resolution of Rimini's municipal government unanimously renamed the theatre after Amintore Galli. Galli was a music journalist, composer, and musicologist, whose birth place is disputed between , now a of Novafeltria, or Talamello, in the valley of the Marecchia. As artistic director of several publications for Edoardo Sonzogno's musical publishing house, the , Galli had published many popular operatic works available at affordable prices, and was notably a judge in Sonzogno's 1888 competition that was won by Pietro Mascagni's ''Cavalleria rusticana. it was a popular socialist anthem that was banned under Fascist Italy, making Galli's name particularly suitable to replace a former monarch. For many residents of the city, governed by successive left-wing administrations, the historic theatre represented archaic aristocratic and bourgeois values, and therefore was to be reconstructed to a modernist design, if at all. Theatrical performances in Rimini moved to the Teatro Novelli in Marina Centro. Architect , who restored Lugo's Teatro Rossini, offered his services to restore the theatre for free. but were interrupted by the bankruptcy of the contractor company in July 2014, and resumed in November 2014 with , a company from Carpi. On 4 August 2019, Sergio Mattarella, President of Italy, attended a performance of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the theatre. The theatre was included in The New York Times' list of 100 "World's Greatest Places". ==Architecture==

Luigi Poletti, the theatre's architect, envisaged the theatre as a Greco-Roman temple of music, whose monumental exterior architecture would distinguish it from contemporary European stage theatre as an opera hall in the Italian tradition. The theatre is considered one of his masterpieces, marking the transition from the purist neoclassical school of his training. Its architecture was copied in other theatres in Romagna and the Marche: Poletti adopted his Riminese design for Fano's Teatro della Fortuna. The façade's arches and piers were designed to recall the Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini's cathedral. Poletti's name is inscribed in bronze letters on the façade: (With the money of citizens, by the genius of Luigi Poletti, in the year 1857). In its interior, the theatre is a rectangle with three parts. The first part includes a large portico, the atrium, and the stairs leading to the boxes. Departing from neoclassicist purism, the atrium was designed to be large, with expansive, circular stairs, designed by Pietro Tenerani, providing an element of Enlightenment inspiration. The central part of the theatre was the audience seating in the music hall. There are three tiers of twenty-three boxes, in horseshoe-shaped stalls surrounded by an ambulatory. A gallery sits on top of the stalls. The first tier of boxes is double the others in height, repeating the morphological motif of the façade. The second and third tiers are framed by twenty Corinthian columns, which support the entablature and the gallery's balustrade. The proscenium includes two boxes on each side. The room progressively widens from top to bottom to preserve acoustics. The stage is characterised by two systems of stairs, an ambulatory, dressing rooms for performers, and an apse-shaped rear wall. As part of the 2010 restorations, the municipal government eliminated two staircases, and rebuilt much of the theatre using reinforced concrete covered with stucco or plaster. The apse was eliminated, and pillars were inserted to gain seats in the stalls. The theatre was raised by a few metres, and the dressing rooms were resited underground. == Art ==

The theatre hall contains scagliola and stuccos by Giuliano Corsini from Urbino, gilded by Pasquale Fiorentini from Imola. Its commission was stipulated in a contract with the Municipality of Rimini dated 2 November 1855, for a fee of 600 scudi. Poletti had previously considered commissioning Coghetti to paint Flaminius wearing the consular insignia in Rimini's forum, but chose the Caesarian subject given its more popular recognition. The curtain is a tempera on canvas, in 19 stitched strips, altogether measuring by . Poletti commissioned the painting to follow the account of the poet Lucan, in which Caesar crosses the Rubicon by night with a warning from the goddess Roma, rather than the more popular account by historian Suetonius, in which Caesar crosses the Rubicon by day across a small bridge. This was because another theatre in Rimini already had a stage curtain inspired by Suetonius' account, painted by Marco Capizucchi. In Coghetti's painting, a defiant Caesar rides on horseback. From the sky, Roma illuminates his cavalry, whose faces are frightened, in contrast to Caesar's confidence. The stage curtain arrived just five days before its scheduled unveiling on 11 July 1857. Coghetti had completed it by late June 1857. Poletti personally attended to its packaging and shipping to Rimini, while , Coghetti's assistant, arrived in Rimini from Rome to unfurl the curtain and inspect any damage. During performances, the canvas would rise vertically to reveal the stage. In the early 20th century, it was considered one of Italy's best curtain stages. Following the introduction of a horizontal velvet curtain in 1923, Coghetti's curtain was gradually withdrawn from performances. In 1938, it was restored by Enrico Pazini. During the Second World War, the theatre's caretaker, Aldo Martinini, rescued it from the rubble of the theatre's destruction and transported it to San Marino for safety, alongside three grand pianos and five designer violins and violas. It was returned for storage to Rimini's , and unrolled in April 1995, when it was found to be in good condition. Coghetti's curtain was moved to various warehouses of Rimini's municipal government, and restored by Laura Ugolini in 2017 in collaboration with the Superintendency of Ravenna and Florence's Opificio delle Pietre Dure. In May 2021, the restoration was reported to cost 320,000 euros. In 2014, Coghetti's studies for the curtain were recognised at an antiques market, and purchased and donated to a Riminese museum in 2016. In 2017, it was revealed that another study had been identified in a Roman auction in 2009, alongside a letter from Poletti clarifying the choice of artistic subject. ==Multimedia Archaeological Museum==

Following the 2009 restoration, ==References==