The Donizetti Theatre (1896-2016)

The Fondazione Teatro Donizetti has enabled Università degli Studi di Bergamo and Politecnico di Milano to document, with new research, the relationship between the City of Bergamo and its most emblematic public building. This journey was undertaken concurrently with the restoration and recovery works on the Theatre named after the Bergamo composer Gaetano Donizetti. The specific intention of this book is to witness how the history of this architectural complex, both majestic and fragile, has been shaped by the enduring presence of a construction site that, in many aspects, seems endless. The book analyzes the events that have accompanied the evolution of the city’s society and culture, documenting the continuous interplay between the theatre and urban scenes. Over the past two centuries, the Donizetti Theatre’s passage through recurring moments of crisis serves as a formidable lesson, which is worth returning to after the tragedies of the pandemic and the celebrations for Bergamo/Brescia, the Italian capital of culture in 2023. Articulated like a theatrical work, the second act of the monograph is dedicated to the events included in 120 years of history between 1896, when the project for the new monumental façade was carried out, and 2016, when the most recent restoration campaign began. The contribution highlights the events of a complex construction site in which the contributions, realized or only designed, of important protagonists of architectural culture alternate: from the Romans Pietro Via and Marcello Piacentini to the Lombards Francesco Domenighini, Alziro Bergonzo, Stefano Zanchi, Pino and Attilio Pizzigoni, Luciano Galmozzi, Eugenio Mandelli, Giorgio Dall'Acqua. Above all, Pino Pizzigoni stands out, who, with Galmozzi and Mandelli, sets up an experimental version of the refurbishment of the theatrical space, in which constructive, symbolic and linguistic aspects merge in an objectively masterful synthesis.