Teatro Goldoni

The Goldoni Theater or “Goldoni”, as it called informally here, was built on a project of the architect Giuseppe Cappellini (Livorno, 1812 - Firenze, 1876). It was inaugurated as “Imperiale e Regio Teatro Leopoldo” in honor of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, on 24 July 1847 with the opera “Robert le diable” by Giacomo Meyerbeer.
In 1860, with the unification of Italy, it was renamed “Regio Teatro Goldoni” after the celebrated Venetian playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni. A Venetian honored in Tuscany needs an explanation: during his many wanderings and adventures in Italy, Goldoni was living in Livorno when, happily for us all, determined to pursue the playwriting as a profession. Years after, he set his “Trilogia della villeggiatura” (Holiday Trilogy) in Livorno, describing a family who crave and then spend a vacation to Montenero, only to return home completely exhausted.
In more recent times the theater fall into disrepair from the ravages of time and the neglect of the owners, so the municipality exercised its right of eminent domain in 1990, after the building was condemned few years before. The theater, after a long restoration, was inagurated (for a second time) on 24 January 2004 with “Cavalleria rusticana” by the Livorno-born Pietro Mascagni at the presence of the President of the Italian Republic, the Livorno-born Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

(architectural model from http://www.goldoniteatro.it/)

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