Theater of the College of San Carlo: what to see and tips

The Teatro del Collegio di San Carlo is a small eighteenth-century theater in the heart of Modena, inside the college that once belonged to the nobility: it is the only eighteenth-century theater left in the city. Born to let the young boarders perform, today it is an intimate hall, with a balcony running along the walls and a painted ceiling dedicated to the studies.

The college was founded in 1626 by Count Paolo Boschetti, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the theater was part of a gentleman's education: he had to learn to speak and move in public, controlling gestures and words. That is why the students acted, and often wrote the texts themselves.

The first regular activities are documented from the late 1670s. In 1688 a literary academy was performed before the court to celebrate the birth of James Francis Edward Stuart, son of Mary Beatrice of Modena. Until 1732 the boarders performed in the two court theaters, at the Palazzo and in the Ducal one of the Spelta.

The shows were a mix of acting, dances, choruses, cantatas and interludes of arms, almost always with mythological and allegorical subjects full of allusions to the members of the dynasty. Once the great courtyard of the college was turned into a theater with ephemeral structures, for the wedding of Duke Rinaldo d'Este and Charlotte Felicity of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

The hall took shape in 1751, when the college bought the Osteria del Montone and the neighboring Casa Bellicini. The orientation was changed: the old hall became the stalls of the new one, with a deep stage, four elegant proscenium boxes and a balcony on the second tier running around the whole perimeter.

The inauguration coincided with the christening of the hereditary prince Rinaldo, with the tragedy Muzio Scevola.

Carnival followed with a packed program: each dormitory group presented a tragedy and a comedy, including Racine's Mithridate, Corneille's Polyeucte and Molière's L'Étourdi.

The taste for French theater came from an early-eighteenth-century tradition inspired by Antonio Muratori, and in the second half of the century this hall became an important center for making French drama known in Italy.

After the arrival of the French and the Restoration, activity became sporadic. In the nineteenth century plays were staged mostly at carnival, and the chivalric performances turned into real gymnastic displays: modern gymnastics, introduced in 1859 by the rector Luigi Spallanzani, partly turned the theater into a gym.

At the end of the 1920s, because of the condition of the ceiling and the roof, the ceiling was rebuilt and lowered: the attic above the balcony disappeared, and the proscenium boxes were redesigned with more geometric lines.

The painted ceiling dates from the same period, the work of the local Istituto d'Arte, with Mercury protector of the studies and the Liberal Arts inside a scagliola frame. The 1989 restorations gave the hall back its eighteenth-century colors.

The theater hosts lectures and conferences, sometimes chamber music concerts and the event “Viva voce”, in which professional actors read literary texts.

Don't miss
• The eighteenth-century balcony.
• The ceiling with Mercury and the Liberal Arts.
• The proscenium boxes.

Did you know?
• The college bought an inn, the Montone, to enlarge the theater.
• For a while the stage was also a gymnastics gym.