The Teatro Bellini in Adrano is named after Vincenzo Bellini, the composer from Catania. In the eighteenth century the leading noble families of the town, then called Adernò, decided to raise a theatre on the ruins of the church of San Vito; in 1779 the viceroy ordered that it be built with the proceeds of the tax on the sale of bread and vegetables. It remained active until 1829, then fell into disuse because it was by then dilapidated. It was rebuilt at the wish of the mayor, Don Pietro Sidoti, who gave the commission to the architect Vincenzo Costa: the new theatre was inaugurated in the summer of 1846.
What to see
The auditorium of 1846 was elliptical in shape, with forty-four boxes on three tiers. Scenery and decoration were by two artists from Catania: Giuseppe Distefano, who adorned the proscenium arch and the box fronts with friezes and arabesques, and Giuseppe Rapisarda, author of the curtain, showing Timoleon and his warriors going to the temple of the god Adranus to thank him for the victory over Hicetas.
The façade remained unfinished even after the restoration of 1882, and was completed in the early twentieth century by the Palermo engineer Gaspare Silvestri Amari. The group of sculptures at the top is by Mario Moschetti of Catania: from left to right Tragedy, Music and Comedy. The niches at the sides were meant to hold statues of Giuseppe Verdi and Bellini, which were never made. Further restorations ended in 1933.
Visiting
Badly damaged in 1943, then used as a cinema and closed for over twenty years, the theatre reopened on 13 December 2004. The programme and the possibility of visits should be checked with the town of Adrano.
Our editors' tip
The theatre appears in a famous film: in Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style it is the hall where Marcello Mastroianni goes to see La dolce vita, in the years when the Bellini served as a cinema.
