The Carlo Felice Theater was inaugurated on April 7, 1828, in the presence of the royals of the Kingdom of Sardinia, namely Carlo Felice and Queen Maria Cristina.
On that occasion, Vincenzo Bellini’s opera ‘Bianca e Fernando’ was performed.The theater’s ambitious project was intended to give the city an elegant artistic venue for melodrama (which was then very fashionable) that could compete with those of other major cities in Italy.
Legend has it that in Turin, the great Genoese musician Paganini had refused to give an encore performance to King Carlo Felice and so, years later, the theater was dedicated to the King in the hope of appeasing his wrath against the city.
Truth or just legend? Unknown.
It was Carlo Barabino who designed the theater in its first version.
During World War II, however, the original Carlo Felice was partially destroyed, so that theater performances had to move to the nearby Cinema Teatro Margherita.
The new theater, built on the area of the old theater and reborn de facto only in 1991, features a 400-square-meter covered square: an idea present in earlier projects, which was recovered.
In 1963 the commission was given to the great architect Carlo Scarpa, but he died in 1978 before even starting to implement the project.
