The Teatro Carani is Sassuolo's theatre, built in 1930 to a design by the Modenese engineer Zeno Carani and funded by the Sassuolo cousins Eugenio and Mario Carani. Building started in February and on 25 December of the same year the theatre opened to the public with a film screening; the inauguration proper followed shortly after with Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The town's theatrical tradition is recorded from the late seventeenth century, with a small theatre on the piazza dell'Orologio that was demolished in 1905.
What to see
The Carani has kept its original appearance, in late Art Nouveau taste, which shows in the façade along viale XX Settembre, the furnishings of the foyer and the large entrance doors with bevelled glass. The auditorium is plain and linear, horseshoe-shaped, with two tiers of galleries; in the middle of the ceiling are an opening dome and a Murano chandelier installed in 1974.
For decades the theatre alternated cinema, opera, drama, ballet, operetta, variety and dialect theatre, and more than four hundred art exhibitions were held in the foyer. Since 1981, because of the high costs, operas have no longer been staged here: the last was La bohème.
Visiting
The theatre has three entrances: from via Mazzini, from piazza Garibaldi through the Carani arcade and from viale XX Settembre. After the restoration its capacity went from the original 1600 seats to 628. Programme and tickets are on the official website.
Our editors' tip
The Carani stayed closed for almost ten years: it was declared unfit for use in October 2014, after a false ceiling collapsed during a performance, and reopened on 2 March 2024 thanks to the Fondazione Teatro Carani, set up in 2020 to buy it, restore it and donate it to the town.
