“Most prestigious work in the town of Cesenatico is the Theater, whose construction began in 1863 and was completed in 1865 at a cost of L. 80,000. The architect was the municipal engineer Mr. Candido Panzani from Gambettola, and the works were directed by engineer Mr. Enrico Bocchini from Cesena. It is located in the center of the town, occupying an area of 488.99 square meters”(cit. Monografia..1866). It was inaugurated on the evening of July 11, 1865, as attested by the plaque placed at the entrance. Two other plaques commemorate Ermete Zacconi on the evenings of August 8 and 10, 1908, and the restorations of 1926. The facade, made of terracotta, neoclassical in style, consists of a high plinth with continuous banded rustication up to the stringcourse. On this rests a body with decorative pilasters with bases and Ionic capitals, ending with a dentil cornice from which, in the central part, rises the pediment. Besides the central door, there are two windows and two side doors with entrances and emergency exits on the ground floor. On the first floor, three front windows and two side ones illuminate the rooms where the local music school was located. The access hall to the stalls and the first-tier boxes is flanked by two side rooms used for various services. The same subdivision is repeated on the first floor, where the foyer is. In the central hall, with a horseshoe-shaped seating area, there are two rows of fifteen boxes each, including the ‘barcacce,’ and the gallery. The ceiling of the stalls was decorated with a large wooden rosette in the center. In the circular part around the rosette, a large lace veil was painted. Executed with elegant craftsmanship, at its extremity were placed six medallions with busts on a gold background, representing illustrious men from the history of theatre, including Goldoni, Metastasio, Donizetti. Noted are “the ornaments by painters Bellani and Canepa from Lugano, the carvings by Cuccoli from Bologna, the plaster bas-reliefs by the sculptor Vittorio Rambelli from S. Giovanni in Persiceto, the gilding by Leonida Morsiani from Cesena, and the masterfully painted scenes by Pirro Rota from Forlì”(cit. Monografia..1866). The curtain, a work by the Forlì painter Pompeo Randi, depicted Duke Valentino and his retinue in conversation with Leonardo da Vinci, designer of the Cesenatico canal port. Lost after the war, the nineteenth-century velarium, of which documentation was preserved, was revived thanks to the work of some students of the Scenography Course at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Paola Galli, Giulia Galli, and Stefania Lomi) who, guided by Gastone Mariani, faithfully reproduced the setting and characters very similar to the original but with variations suggested by the different functionality of the work in today’s theater. The frames and friezes framing the scene (typically nineteenth-century) were therefore removed to ensure a more flexible and direct integration into today’s stage layout. At the same time, the color tones were lowered compared to those from the documents for the original, favoring greater harmonization with the current room context, partially deprived of nineteenth-century decorations. The conservation conditions of the surfaces, during the first census carried out by the Institute for Cultural Heritage, were truly serious: particularly deteriorated, and in most cases lost, were the ceiling decorations of the hall, the carved and painted wooden columns supporting the first and second tier of boxes, and the parapet decorations. From 1981 to 1992, under the direction of architect Augusto Savini, conservative restoration work was carried out on the building (walls, roof), while internally the floors of the stalls and stage were completely rebuilt. Expansion works at the back and on the side of the building adjacent to the municipal courtyard allowed for the creation of bathrooms, dressing rooms, and storage. The intervention on the decorations consisted of redoing the external decorations of the boxes, except those on the first tier, for which part of the original decoration could be recovered. For the ceiling, once finely painted and now definitively lost, it was not considered appropriate to reconstruct the original decoration, but to treat the surfaces with neutral materials. The visual impact with the hall, currently, is pleasant and makes this small theater a true jewel, although the whole, with its color and decorative highlights, will over time have to regain the light and atmosphere typical of this particular type of environment. The theater, municipally owned, is part of the network of small and medium theaters of Romagna managed by the cooperative “Accademia Perduta – Romagna Teatri” of Ravenna and Forlì regarding all production and theatrical programming activities, while the artistic direction is entrusted to Sandro Pascucci. Currently, the theater is operational and presents prose festivals, dialect theater, children’s theater, and a “school theater” festival for schools of Cesenatico and the surrounding area. (Nadia Ceroni / Lidia Bortolotti)
Information about the Municipal Theater of Cesenatico
Via Mazzini 10-12,
47042 Cesenatico (Forlì-Cesena)
Source: MIBACT
