The
Dal Verme Theatre takes its name from the ancient Dal Verme family who in the XIX century lived in the buildings facing the present day Via San Giovanni sul Muro and Puccini. At the time these streets where peripheral, and in 1864 a large makeshift wooden stage had been erected by the Ciniselli Circus, which caused continuous protests among the local inhabitants. A few years later, The Dal Verme family, decided to acquire the building, have it demolished and used the area the build a large theatre named after the noble family.
Count Francesco Dal Verme commissioned >Architect Giuseppe Pestagalli to design the theatre, so the architect conceived a copious mid 18th Century building containing approximately 30 thousand places with theatrical architecture features. The customary very wide horse-shoe shape, out of which two stages emerged, was surrounded by a very deep balcony seating up to one thousand four hundred people. The building erected in record time, was inaugurated in 1872 after only a year and a half after construction began.
The inauguration took place on the >14th September 1872 with the performance of "Gli Ugonotti" by Meyerbeer. It was mainly used for classical music but also for prose and popular shows, since then regular seasons were programmed, sometimes considered to be no less impressive than to those of "La Scala".
During the Theatre's golden years, 1884 springs to mind when "le Villy" by the emerging Puccini was performed, and in 1892 when the premier of "Pagliacci" by Ruggero leoncavallo took place.
"La Vedova Allegra" by Franz Lehar was triumphantly baptized in Italy at the Dal Verme on 27th April 1907; there was a roaring applause and many cries for encores not only for the protagonist, the famous Emma Vecla, but also for Caramba, the costumes wizard. There were also many memorable evenings when Marinetti's futuristic theatre plays hit the stage. Regarding prose, Tommaso Salvini's plays made history in 1878 and Ermete Novelli bid farewell to the stage on the 19th February 1915.
The 1943 bombings destroyed all the interiors as well as the magnificent original dome which was stripped bare of all its metallic ornaments during the German occupation. It was later restored in 1946.
In the Fifties the Dal Verme Theatre who had been operating as a cinema for twenty years was again a venue hosting musical performances; it subsequently became a cinema again and occasionally was used for political meetings.
But there was a wish to bring back Teatro Dal Verme to its former glory and for a brief time, in 1964, architects Ernesto Rogers and Marco Zanuso idealized a project where the Theatre would be used as the new venue for the "Piccolo Teatro". This project didn't take off mainly because of financial problems.
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