Theatre of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino / Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Music has always had a fundamental role in the artistic life of Florence, where, at the end of the sixteenth century, the very first operas were performed, following the theory and practice of the Camerata dei Bardi. Today the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the centre of musical life in Florence, is based at Teatro Comunale, and produces the Maggio Musicale Festival - together with Bayreuth and Salzburg, the oldest, important European music festival - as well as its annual concert, opera and ballet seasons. The Teatro Comunale originated in the Florentine Politeama, which was designed in 1862 by Telemaco Bonaiuti, an open arena over which the present structure was built. It seats 2003 people and is made up of a large stalls section, and two wide semi-circular galleries giving the impression of an amphitheatre. Near the main auditorium is the Piccolo Teatro, a small, modern theatre seating approximately 600 spectators. Partially destroyed twice, in the bombing of 1944 and in the flood of 1966, the Comunale was quickly rebuilt, symbolising the determination of the citizens to re-emerge and demonstrating its loyalty to the city (also witnessed at the concert in Piazza della Signoria after the bomb attack at the Uffizi in 1993). At the Comunale all the great conductors - Vittorio Gui, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Zubin Mehta, von Karajan and Muti - and singers, as the 'divine' Maria Callas - have alternated, while composers such as Pietro Mascagni and Richard Strauss, Paul Hindemith and Bela Bartòk, Igor Stravinsky and Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio have interpreted their own music. With them there have been a line of exceptional producers and scenographers: Max Reinhardt and Gustav Gründgens, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli, Luca Ronconi and Bob Wilson, Giorgio De Chirico and Oscar Kokoschka. The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino was founded in 1933 by Vittorio Gui; it is the oldest Italian music festival and, on an international level, one of the most important. Although it started on a triennial basis, by 1937 it had already become an annual event and one of the most popular music pilgrimages. Since it began the Maggio Festival has attracted world attention for the basic cultural choices which it envisages and has always maintained: in the first place the problems related to the visual element in opera, for which the greatest theatrical and film producers of our times have been called upon, as well as a considerable number of famous painters and sculptors as costume and set designers; a choice which has seen Florence to be in the avant garde in respect to other theatres and which has been decisive in the development of modern operatic dramaturgy. Secondly there has been constant curiosity for the music of the twentieth century, from the first avant garde compositions to more recent experiences, through the active participation of the composers themselves. This has been accompanied by the rediscovery of works and composers of the past: phenomena like the Rossini Renaissance, not to mention the revaluation of Donizetti and the early Verdi, all started in Florence. Neither can we forget the research into certain periods in the history of music, thanks to the 'theme' festivals, for example the Rossini Maggio in '52, and those of '64, '94 and '95, dedicated respectively to Expressionism, the early twentieth century and early Romanticism. Finally, there has been the constant presence of great interpreters: conductors, soloists and singers, indispensable for the realisation of such ambitious projects and who, thanks to the new productions and innovative sets, have allowed genuine re-readings of the scores of the traditional operas. If the festival takes up the months of May and June, the activity of the theatre goes on all year round, with its opera season, its concerts and ballets, and the summer concerts in the magnificent and suggestive framework of the Boboli Gardens: a constant and varied offer of musical occasions for an international, exacting and qualified audience.