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 ...

. 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 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 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, Eugene O' Neill, T. S. Eliot, Henrik Ibsen,

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 worl ...

, Georg Büchner 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 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.

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