The Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele on Piazza Verdi in Palermo is the largest opera house in Italy. Following an international competition in 1864, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile designed the building, drawing on the Greek temples of Selinunte and Agrigento; after his death in 1891 his son Ernesto Basile continued the work. Construction began in 1874, stopped from 1882 to 1890, and the house opened on 16 May 1897 with Verdi's Falstaff. At the time it was the third-largest opera house in Europe after the Palais Garnier in Paris and the Court Opera in Vienna. The horseshoe auditorium with seven tiers of boxes now seats 1,381. Closed in 1974 for work required by new safety regulations, it did not reopen until 1997, after 23 years. The final scenes of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III were filmed here.
The Teatro Massimo in Palermo, with over 1,300 seats, is the largest opera house in Italy and third-largest in Europe — the famous final scene of Coppola's The Godfather Part III was filmed on the steps of this house.
At a glance
- Type
- Opera house
- Location
- Palermo, Italy
More venues in Italy
- Arena di Verona · Opera house, Verona
- Artisti in Piazza · Multi-genre theatre, Pennabilli
- Gran Teatro all'Aperto Giacomo Puccini · Opera house, Torre del Lago
- Piccolo Teatro di Milano · Theatre, Milan
- Sferisterio di Macerata · Opera house, Macerata
- Teatro Alighieri · Opera house, Ravenna
- Teatro alla Scala · Opera house, Milan
- Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli · Opera house, Cremona
- Teatro Carlo Felice · Opera house, Genua
- Teatro Coccia · Opera house, Novara