Descrizione

Edited by Maria Concetta Di Natale.
Authors: Paola Barbera, Ivana Bruno, Giovanni Fatta, Massimiliano Marafon Pecoraro, Floriana Tessitore.

“A plan that will place Palermo at the same level as the best European cities”: this mission assigned to a group of architects in 1860 opens the history of the city after the Unification of Italy.
At the core of this plan was the project for a huge opera house, symbol of the new times.
This book covers the whole history of the Massimo theatre: from the international contest begun in 1864 to the complex and long construction site which characterized the city from 1875 to 1891, from the decoration of the halls which involved the contribution of a well known group of artists, to the opening and the sequence of opera seasons.
A work by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile (1825-1891), completed by his son Ernesto (1857-1932), the opera house holds in its architecture, arts and music the history of the whole town: its beauty, falls, desire for rebirth.