Teatro Capranica

History

The palazzo in which the theatre was situated had been originally constructed in 1451 by Cardinal Domenico Capranica, to serve as both his own residence and the future home of the Almo Collegio Capranica, a college for young clerics which he founded in 1457. One of the few remaining examples of Roman residential architecture of the early renaissance, it has a large side tower and a piano nobile lit by three cross mullion windows as well as three windows in the late Gothic style which suggest that the palace may have incorporated an earlier building on the site. In the late 1670s, another member of the family, Pompeo Capranica, had a private theatre carved out from existing family apartments without changing the exterior of the building. The theatre was inaugurated on 6 January 1679 with Arcangelo Corelli leading the orchestra for the premiere of Bernardo Pasquini's opera Dov'è amore è pietà.

With the accession of Pope Alexander VIII, Pompeo Capranica and his brother Federico received permission to enlarge the theatre and open it to the public. They entrusted the task to Carlo Buratti (a student of Carlo Fontana) who completely rebuilt the theatre in 1694 transforming it into the standard U-shape with rich ornamentation and 6 tiers of 26 boxes each. It re-opened as a public theatre (Rome's second) on 18 January 1695 with a performance of Clearco in Negroponte a three-act opera jointly composed by Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier, Tommaso Gaffi and Carlo Francesco Cesarini. However, the new theatre still lacked a public entrance opening onto the street. Audiences could only enter through the workshop of a carpenter on the ground floor of the palazzo. His lease required him to close his workshop during the opera season and to provide at his own expense a wooden staircase to enable the spectators to climb into the theatre. It was a situation that was not rectified until the 19th century. …

Today's theatre

After the closure of the Cinema Capranica in 2000, the 800-seat theatre with its now minimal stage was re-opened as a conference and performance venue available on a hire basis. Under the proprietorship of the Hotel Nazionale and managed by Montecitorio Eventi S.r.l., it has hosted four small-scale opera productions by the association "Aulico – Opera & Musica" and over the years has been the setting for numerous meetings of Italian political parties. In January 2013, Silvio Berlusconi gave a two-hour speech there in which he introduced the Popolo della Libertà candidates for the 2013 Italian general election. During a meeting of the Partito Democratico at the Capranica that lasted late into the night of 19 April 2013, Pier Luigi Bersani resigned as party leader following his failure to form a coalition government.