The Teatro Fraschini is an

opera house An opera house is a theater building used for performances of opera. Like many theaters, it usually includes a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, backstage facilities for costumes and building sets, as well as offices for the institut ...

Pavia Pavia ( , ; ; ; ; ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, in Northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino (river), Ticino near its confluence with the Po (river), Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was a major polit ...

, Italy. It was inaugurated in 1773 and is considered one of the most important historic theatres in

Lombardy The Lombardy Region (; ) is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in northern Italy and has a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of Italy's population. Lombardy is ...

. The theatre is renowned for its horseshoe-shaped auditorium and rich

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

interior.

History

The Theater of the Four Noble Knights – the original name of Fraschini – was designed to counter the whims of the noble Giacomo Omodei, an aristocrat from Pavia and owner of one of the most popular theaters in the city around the middle of the 18th century. In fact, it seems that Giacomo Omodei forced the public, and the other aristocrats, to wait for the start of the shows until his arrival. In 1772 four noble Pavesi lords joined to form the Society of Knights: Count Francesco Gambarana Beccaria, Marquis Pio Bellisomi, Marquis Luigi Bellingeri Provera and Count Giuseppe Giorgi of Vistarino. They shared the administration and direction of the theater and had entrusted the project for its realization to Antonio Galli da Bibbiena, representative of an ancient and prestigious family of scenographers-architects. The works for the construction of the Theater of the Four Noble Knights began in 1771 and the theater inaugurated its first season in 1773, in the presence of Archduke Ferdinand Karl of

Austria-Este The House of Habsburg-Este (), also known as the House of Austria-Este () and holder of the title of Archduke of Austria-Este (; ), is a cadet branch (but not sovereign branch) of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, which originally also descended fr ...

. The theater was inaugurated on May 24, 1773, with the opera ''Il Demetrio'', composed by the Czech composer

Josef Mysliveček Josef Mysliveček (9 March 1737 – 4 February 1781) was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant com ...

on verses by

Pietro Metastasio Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (3 January 1698 – 12 April 1782), better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio (), was an Italian poet and Libretto, librettist, considered the most important writer of ''opera seria'' libretti. Early ...

. In 1869, the Municipality of Pavia acquired the ownership of the theater, which was soon to be renamed Teatro Fraschini, in honor of the Pavese tenor Gaetano Fraschini.

Architecture

The Fraschini is an Italian theater; the great hall of the theater is almost in the shape of a horseshoe and seats 409, according to the prevailing taste in the 18th century; it is the artistic example of the perspective research of the

. The floor plan of the hall is bell-shaped with a sound box (optimal solution for acoustics) obtained from an impracticable gallery under the stalls. Above a Tuscan-type

bossage Bossage is uncut stone that is laid in place in a building, projecting outward from the building, to later be carved into decorative moldings, capitals, arms, etc. Bossages are also rustic work, consisting of stones which seem to advance beyond ...

d arcade, there are three tiers of boxes (with Doric, Ionic Corinthian composite and

Attic An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. It is also known as a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because they fill the space between the ceiling of a building's t ...

capitals) and in addition two upper tiers (the fourth order is a tribune and the fifth is “loggione” and two galleries). The large ceiling fresco was remade in 1909 by

Osvaldo Bignami Osvaldo Bignami (1856 in Lodi – 1936 in Civate (Lecco)) was an Italian painter. Biography Osvaldo Bignami was apprenticed to a decorative artist in Milan, where he moved when he was in his twenties, and later enrolled at the Brera Academy. Fro ...

. The two large statues on either side of the proscenium, the work of Michele Forabosco, represent respectively ''Music'' and ''Poetry''. On the second level there is an oven still clearly visible and preserved (the theatrical life of the nobles crossed the limit of attending the shows, and extended to entertainment with dinners and board games in the boxes of the property and in the sitting rooms of the backstage). Each stage has a dressing room and most of them retain stuccos and frescoes from the 18th century, different from each other according to the personal taste of the original owners. In fact, since the foundation, the boxes were sold to private individuals who were required to furnish with tapestries, furniture, frescoes, stuccos, doors and curtains, as long as they did not break the overall appearance and architecture of the hall. The façade, which opens onto Strada Nuova, has a porticoed atrium open into three porticoes and two upper floors marked horizontally by Doric, Ionic and Corinthian cornices, between which windows with a tympanum hat open. Although already a few decades after its inauguration it was considered grand, but far from the neoclassical style, now dominant, the theater has remained miraculously intact in the original structure.

References

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Bibliography

* ''I Galli Bibiena: una dinastia di architetti e scenografi: atti del convegno, Bibbiena, 26-27 maggio 1995'', a cura di Deanna Lenzi, Wanda Bergamini, Bibbiena, Accademia Galli Bibbiena, 1997. * Giovanni Zaffignani, ''Un teatro per la città: riflessioni sulle origini, gestione privata e comunale del Fraschini – Il fondo teatrale e musicale presso l’Archivio Storico di Pavia'', in “Bollettino della Società Pavese di Storia Patria”, XCV (1996). * Luisa Erba, ''Il neoclassicismo a Pavia dal 1770 al 1792'', in Banca Regionale Europea (a cura di), ''Storia di Pavia''. ''L'età spagnola e austriaca'', IV (tomo II), Milano, Industrie Grafiche P. M., 1995. Opera houses in Italy Music venues in Italy Theatres in Lombardy Theatres completed in 1773