The Piccolo Teatro di Milano (translation: "Little Theatre of the City of Milan") is a theatre in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. Founded in 1947, it is Italy's first permanent theatre, and a national "teatro stabile", or permanent repertory company, and is considered a theatre of major national and European importance. The theatre has three venues: Teatro Grassi, in Via Rovello, between

Sforza Castle The Castello Sforzesco (Italian for "Sforza's Castle") is a medieval fortification located in Milan, northern Italy. It was built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, on the remnants of a 14th-century fortification. Later reno ...

and the Piazza del Duomo; Teatro Studio, which was originally intended to be the theater's rehearsal hall; and Teatro Strehler, which opened in 1998 with a

seating capacity Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that ...

of 974. Its annual programme consists of approximately thirty performances. In addition, the venue hosts cultural events, from festivals and films, to concerts, conferences, and conventions, as well as supporting the Paolo Grassi Drama School.

History

Piccolo Teatro was founded by theatre impresario

Paolo Grassi Paolo Grassi (30 October 1919 – 14 March 1981) was an Italian theatrical impresario. Grassi was born in Milan, Italy. As a young man, he worked in magazines and discovered a passion for the theater. It led him in 1937 to create a Bertoldissimo ...

and actor and director

Giorgio Strehler Giorgio Strehler (; ; 14 August 1921 – 25 December 1997) was an actor, Italian opera and theatre director. Biography Strehler was born in Barcola, Trieste; His father, Bruno Strehler, was a native of Trieste with family roots in Vienna and die ...

, along with Mario Apollonio, Virgilio Tosi and Nina Vinchi. According to Grassi, the founders were theatrical and political idealists that sought to "put forward theoretical principles and practical standards of conduct radically different from those which up until then had governed activity in Italy". The Milan city council approved the transformation of Cinema Broletto into Piccolo Teatro, to be managed directly by the City of Milan on 26 January 1947. The first performance, described as minimalist, took place four months later, on May 14, 1947, with ''L'albergo dei poveri'' ("Lower Depths") by

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...

. Offering affordable tickets and productions fraught with risk, Piccolo Teatro became renewed for "revitalizing popular interest in the classics of the Italian stage". Its company became well known for its productions of

Carlo Goldoni Carlo is a given name. It is an Italian form of Charles. It can refer to: * Carlo (name) * Monte Carlo * Carlingford, New South Wales, a suburb in north-west Sydney, New South Wales, Australia *A satirical song written by Dafydd Iwan about Prince ...

and

Luigi Pirandello Luigi Pirandello (; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power ...

in particular, and of

Bertold Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

Eugene O' Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

, T. S. Eliot,

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...

Georg Büchner Karl Georg Büchner (17 October 1813 – 19 February 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose, considered part of the Young Germany movement. He was also a revolutionary and the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büch ...

and

Peter Weiss Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German writer, painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays ''Marat/Sade'' and ''The Investigation'' and hi ...

. In the 1960s, the Piccolo Teatro was relocated to

Teatro Lirico (Milan) The Teatro Lirico (known until 1894 as the Teatro alla Canobbiana) is a theatre in Milan, Italy. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it hosted numerous opera performances, including the world premieres of Donizetti's '' L'elisir d'amore'' and G ...

. In 1967, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the theatre put on a production of Goldoni's ''

Il servitore di due padroni ''The Servant of Two Masters'' ( it, Il servitore di due padroni, links=no) is a comedy by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni written in 1746. Goldoni originally wrote the play at the request of actor Antonio Sacco, one of the great Harlequins ...

''. The theatre's archives are currently maintained by the Archivio Multimediale del Piccolo Teatro di Milano (AMPT). On the occasion of the theatre's 60th anniversary in 2007, the President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano granted the "Ente Autonomo Piccolo Teatro di Milano-Teatro d'Europa" patronage for the entire duration of his seven-year presidential term. As of 2012, it is under the direction of Sergio Escobar, along with artistic director

Luca Ronconi Luca Ronconi (8 March 1933 – 21 February 2015) was an Italian actor, theater director, and opera director. Biography Ronconi was born in Sousse, Tunisia. After growing up in Tunisia, where his mother was a school teacher, Ronconi graduated ...

Seasons

In its first decade, performances included: * 1947: ''The Lower Depths'' (Gorky), ''The Nights of Rage'' (Salacrou), ''The prodigious Magician'' (Calderon), ''Arlecchino, the Servant of Two Masters'' (Goldoni), ''The Mountain Giants'' (Pirandello), ''The Storm'' (Ostrovsky) * 1948: ''Crime and Punishment'' (Dostoyevsky), ''Richard II'' (Shakespeare), ''The Seagull'' (Chekov), ''The Skin of Our Teeth'' (Wilder) * 1949: ''The Taming of the Shrew'' (Shakespeare), ''People in Their Time'' (Bontempelli), ''Little Eyolf'' (Ibsen) * 1950: ''The Women of Paris'' (Becque), ''Richard II'' (Shakespeare), ''The Just'' (Camus), ''Alcestis'' (Savinio), ''Summer and Smoke'' (Williams) * 1951: ''A Doll's House'' (Ibsen), ''Fool's Gold'' (Giovaninetti), ''Never Swear by Anything'' (De Musset), ''Disaster at the North Depot'' (Betti), ''The Army Lover'' (Molière), ''The Flying Doctor'' (Goldoni), ''Hoppla, Such is Life'' (Toller) * 1952: ''Macbeth'' (Shakespeare), ''Emma'' (Zardi), ''Walking on Water'' (Vergani), ''Elizabeth of England'' (Bruckner), ''The Government Inspector'' (Gogol) * 1953: ''The Mechanism'' (Sartre), ''The Worst Sacrilege'' (Pirandello), ''Lulu'' (Bertolazzi), ''A Clinical Case'' (Buzzati), ''Julius Caesar'' (Shakespeare), ''Six Days'' (D'Errico) * 1954: ''The Crow'' (Gozzi), ''Triple Bill'' (Pirandello), ''The Mad Woman of Chaillot'' (Giraudoux), ''The Masquerade'' (Moravia), ''The Ideal Wife'' (Praga), ''The Villeggiatura Trilogy'' (Goldoni) * 1955: ''The Cherry Orchard'' (Chekhov),''The House of Bernarda Alba'' (Lorca),''The Measures Taken'' (Brecht),''Three Quarters of the Moon'' (Squarzina), ''Our Milan'' (Bertolazzi) * 1956: ''The Threepenny Opera'' (Brecht), ''From Yours to Mine'' (Verga), ''The Jacobins'' (Zardi), ''Coriolanus'' (Shakespeare)

Literature

Giorgio Guazzotti, ''Teoria e realtà del Piccolo Teatro di Milano'' ("Myth and Reality of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan"), Einaudi, Turin, 1965. (A revised and expanded edition was published in 1986).

References

External links

Piccolo Teatro, Official site
{{Authority control Theatres in Milan 1947 establishments in Italy Theatres completed in 1947 Tourist attractions in Milan