Starting next year, the Court Theater of the Royal Palace of Naples will host performances and concerts

The Court Theater of the Royal Palace of Naples will be able to host performances and concerts starting next year, thanks to major plant upgrades that were necessary to ensure its safety.

After the work carried out on the fire-fighting system of the entire monumental complex and a lengthy bureaucratic process, the Court Theater, built in 1768 by architect Ferdinando Fuga on the occasion of the wedding of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon to Maria Carolina of Habsburg, will in fact return to being available not only for events and conventions but also for concerts and performances.

“The Royal Palace continues to return spaces to expand the offerings to the public,” said architect Paola Ricciardi, director delegated by Director General Museums Massimo Osanna while awaiting the appointment of the new director. “A sign of continuity that underscores the care for the Neapolitan palace that is regaining, thanks to restoration and maintenance work, the centrality and magnificence it has had during its four centuries of history.”

“It took three years of work, especially plant engineering,” said Royal Palace architect Almerinda Padricelli, “to return the theater to the function for which it was designed. Until now it had been possible to use it in a timely manner, employing extraordinary security measures; from December it will be possible to finally raise the curtain and offer a seasonal calendar of concerts and performances.”

Carried out by the company La Ross srl, the work has committed an expenditure chapter of the Strategic Plan “Great Cultural Heritage Projects,” funded by the Ministry of Culture, of nearly 300 thousand euros, in which are included the renovation works of the dressing rooms that can accommodate up to forty artists thanks to the new spaces and the implementation of efficient water, lighting and air conditioning systems.

Nine dressing rooms have been built, five of which have en suite bathrooms and four with shared bathrooms, as well as a rehearsal room (Mimi Room) with eight makeup stations and services. The project designed by architect Vittorino Parente features a color variety that defines the rooms with a common octanium color scheme for doors and transition areas. “We chose a modern chromaticity,” explains the designer, “but also enriched the rooms with high-resolution blow-ups of the decorations of the Queen’s apartments that bring back to the classic thanks to the reproductions of details from the Label Apartment of the Royal Palace.”

Domenico Fontana’s 1600 design did not include a room for theatrical activities. At the time, the space where the theater is now located was the “Gran Sala” or Sala Regia, and it was used by the Spanish viceroys as a ballroom in which shows were also performed, but always in the form of temporary stagings, using mobile apparatus. It was transformed into a real theater thanks to the architect Fuga, who created an environment of great elegance and formal balance, an example of 18th-century Neapolitan architecture.

The Court Theater of the Royal Palace has a capacity of 400 seats in the stalls. Along the walls runs a continuous balcony that was once intended to receive the most distinguished guests, bordered all around by a wooden balustrade. In the center, facing the stage, opens the small royal box, with a mock curtain, made of papier-mâché surmounted by the crown. Neoclassical architectural elements punctuate the walls with niches housing twelve papier-mâché statues depicting Apollo and the nine Muses, the patron deities of the arts; Minerva, the goddess of wisdom; and Mercury, the messenger of the gods. The use of papier-mâché, a material seemingly inappropriate for royal pomp, corresponds to a set design suitable for a theatrical setting, but also functional acoustically.

During World War II bombing damaged mainly the roofing, destroying the 18th-century decoration on the vault; in 1944, when the Palace became the headquarters of the British Army’s Welfare Club, the theater was converted into a cinema, and after the war the ceiling was repainted imitating the original style, where, in the central scene, the Marriage of Amphitrite and Poseidon is depicted, a subject that reproposes that painted by the painter Antonio Dominici in 1768.

Starting next year, the Court Theater of the Royal Palace of Naples will host performances and concerts

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