The Teatro Sociale of Canicattì was built between 1889 and 1908 to a design by the architect Ernesto Basile, on the site of the Carmelite convent, pulled down after the suppression of the religious orders in 1866. It took three attempts: in 1874 the engineer Francesco Tabasso had submitted to the town council a design that was not liked, and in 1883 the one by the engineer Dionisio Sciascia, designer of the theatres of Agrigento and Racalmuto, came to nothing either. Basile's, submitted in 1889, was liked at once.
What to see
Basile drew a building inspired by the most characteristic elements of the Liberty style. On the façade you can make out the panelling in which the windows seem cut out, the corner rustication of the recessed blocks and the piers, with Doric pilaster strips and Corinthian pilasters, which frame the three wrought-iron gates of the entrance and, on the upper floor, the glazed three-light window of the wide balcony. Along the top runs a crenellation, with cippi surmounted by spheres rising from the piers.
The hall is rectangular. The scholar Antonella Mazzamuto, in the book «Teatri di Sicilia», notes that Basile took up this shape again when he designed the Kursaal Biondo in Palermo, today the Teatro Nazionale. The original interiors, boxes included, were destroyed at the end of the Second World War, when the theatre was turned into a cinema.
Visiting
Abandoned at the end of the fifties, the theatre was restored after forty-five years and reopened on 20 December 2009. The programme of shows and the possibility of a visit should be checked with the town council.
Our editors' tip
In 1927 the theatre hosted Luigi Pirandello with his company, which staged «Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore» here. The writer was born in Agrigento, the capital of the province to which Canicattì belongs.
