With many of Italy’s 800 opera houses falling into disrepair, a Finnish soprano has launched a crowdfunding campaign to bring the buildings back to life. Alice Philipson reports.
A group of European singers has launched a crowd-funding campaign to save Italy’s dilapidated opera houses, hundreds of which have been left to rot.
Four hundred years after the bel paese hosted the first ever opera in Florence, many of the country’s more than 800 theatres lie unused and neglected, victims of an economic crisis that has stubbornly refused to pass.
Now Italian citizens in the tiny town of Bevagna, Perugia have donated thousands of pounds to relaunch the spectacular Francesco Torti opera theatre, which was originally built as a palazzo in the 1100s and then converted into an opera house in the nineteenth century.
In recent years, the only performers to appear underneath its frescoed ceilings depicting the dancing muses were local schoolchildren... Keep reading on The Telegraph
A group of European singers has launched a crowd-funding campaign to save Italy’s dilapidated opera houses, hundreds of which have been left to rot.
Four hundred years after the bel paese hosted the first ever opera in Florence, many of the country’s more than 800 theatres lie unused and neglected, victims of an economic crisis that has stubbornly refused to pass.
Now Italian citizens in the tiny town of Bevagna, Perugia have donated thousands of pounds to relaunch the spectacular Francesco Torti opera theatre, which was originally built as a palazzo in the 1100s and then converted into an opera house in the nineteenth century.
In recent years, the only performers to appear underneath its frescoed ceilings depicting the dancing muses were local schoolchildren... Keep reading on The Telegraph