Il design of Medrano of the Teatro San Carlo di Napoli featured a hall 28.6 meters long and 22.5 meters wide, with 184 boxes, including those at the proscenium, arranged in six tiers, plus a royal box capable of hosting ten people, for a total of 1379 seats. Eight months after the start of the work, on November 4, 1737, the theater was already completed.
The interior of the structure can today be reconstructed based on a painting by Michele Foschini and some surveys carried out by European architects visiting the hall.
The numerous testimonies handed down by travelers and visitors agree in celebrating the vastness of the hall and the boxes, even if at the expense of acoustics and the sumptuousness of the decorations. During the eighteenth century, the building underwent several upgrades driven by changing tastes or the need to improve acoustics. Permanent renovations were carried out by Ferdinando Fuga, first in 1767-68 and again in 1777-78.
With the first works, the Tuscan architect renewed the auditorium decoration and inserted large mirrors with torch holders and candles in the boxes, which, exploiting the reflection effect, multiplied the lighting of the hall. The subsequent intervention concerned almost exclusively the proscenium. In 1797 the hall underwent a new decorative restoration under the direction of the theater’s set designer Domenico Chelli.
The brief period of the Parthenopean Republic in 1799 brought no particular modifications to the structure, except for some damage caused by improper use of the hall, renamed Teatro Nazionale and “profane” from equestrian shows. Domenico Barbaja entrusted Antonio Niccolini with a new renovation of the Massimo.
The leader of Neoclassicism in Naples intervened repeatedly on the building. The first phase of the metamorphosis concerned the facade, with the consequent addition of the foyer and the recreation and refreshment areas. The carriage portico supported by pillars was inspired by the model offered by the Scala of Giuseppe Piermarini, however modified by the insertion of the Ionic loggia corresponding to the foyer areas.
With Niccolini the Theater acquired the connotations of the temple, becoming a monument-symbol of the city. The facade, in fact, incorporates elements of classical grammar and a Hellenistic decoration alluding to dramatic poetry and music. Equally interesting is the foyer: a large tetrastyle hall, with a gold vegetal decoration, flanked by smaller rooms intended as gaming halls.
One year after the completion of the forward body works, the Tuscan architect adapted the hall to the new decoration of the vestibule and stairs. Among the innovations carried out are the pairs of half-columns leaning against the pillars already made by Fuga in the proscenium, the chandelier suspended in the darkest area of the hall, and the refurbishment of the velarium supported by rods with caryatids. The reconstruction, completed within nine months, was again by Antonio Niccolini, who broadly reproduced the 1812 hall.
The Tuscan architect, in fact, preserved the horseshoe plan and the configuration of the proscenium, although widened and decorated on the inner surface by the bas-relief depicting Time and the Hours, still existing today. The current foyer, built in the eastern area of the garden of Palazzo Reale, was realized in 1937 based on a design by Michele Platania. Destroyed by a bombing in 1943, it was rebuilt immediately after the war.
The Teatro di San Carlo, alongside the revival of the great melodramatic repertoire and the revival of nineteenth-century masterpieces, has also carried out intense activity in recent years aimed at recovering eighteenth-century Neapolitan school opera buffa.
