Before this theatre there were wooden huts here: the area was the fairground, and theatres were put up at the start of the season and taken down at the end, the planks kept for the following year. At the end of the eighteenth century a rich merchant, Bortolo Riccardi, decided to build one in masonry that would stand all year; the first opera was staged in it in 1784, while the works were still open.
What to see
The hall is in the Italian manner, a horseshoe, with boxes on several tiers and a painted ceiling; the theatre has recently been restored and the hall now looks as it was meant to, with the colours redone and the services hidden. The front looks onto the Sentierone, the avenue of the lower town, and belongs to that urban design.
The name is that of Gaetano Donizetti, who was born in Bergamo in a half-basement room in a steep lane and came back to the city to die; at the end of the nineteenth century the theatre was named after him. Today his work is the centre of the programme, with an autumn festival that stages even the titles nobody performs any more.
Visiting
The theatre is in piazza Cavour, in the lower town, five minutes from the funicular to Città Alta; it is visited on guided tours on set days or by buying a ticket for a performance. An hour for the tour.
Our editors' tip
If you come in autumn, look at the festival programme: they stage operas by Donizetti that have not been heard for a century, often reconstructed from the original scores. It is the only place in the world where certain titles can be heard, and it happens in the town where the composer was born.