Teatro Nuovo (Naples)

The first theatre was originally owned by Giacinto de Laurentis and Angelo Carasale who had it built on a small garden near the church of Santa Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario.

The Teatro Nuovo was inaugurated on 15 October 1724 with the premiere of Antonio Orefice's comic opera Lo Simmele set to a libretto in Neapolitan dialect by Bernardo Saddumene and dedicated to Michael Friedrich von Althann, the Viceroy of Naples.

The theatre was initially run by the impresario Gennaro Donatiello who contracted with Carasale and de Laurentis to pay 650 ducats per year for the right to stage performances there.

Over the 137 years of its existence, the Teatro Nuovo presented hundreds of world premieres, including fifteen operas by Cimarosa, eleven by Piccinni, and seven by Donizetti.

Amongst them were Nicola D'Arienzo's comic opera La fiera (with a libretto by Salvatore Di Giacomo) which premiered in 1887 and Mario Morelli's L'amico Francesco staged on 15 March 1895.

L'amico Francesco was never performed again but it starred the young Enrico Caruso in the title role and marked his professional debut as an opera singer.

[12][13] In 1888 when the actor Gennaro Pantalena and his company took up residence, the Teatro Nuovo took its first steps towards a more modern version of Neapolitan dialect theatre and presented both comedy and realist drama.

In the post-war years he built up a roster of actors that included the young Eduardo De Filippo, his sister Titina and brother Peppino; Totò; and for a short time, Romilda Villani (the mother of Sophia Loren).

On the night of 12 February 1935, shortly after the curtain fell on the revue Mille luci, the Teatro Nuovo caught fire and once again burnt to the ground.

In the early 1980s, the actors Igina Di Napoli and her husband Angelo Montella conceived the idea of resurrecting the Teatro Nuovo by converting the disused warehouse into a new performing space.