Massimo Bellini Theatre

The Massimo Bellini Theatre is the place where it stages the opera. Its construction was troubled, it was interrupted several times due to lack of funds and it was completed at the end of the nineteenth century with the official inauguration, on May 31th in 1890, during which was staged representation of ‘Norma’ by Vincenzo Bellini, the famous Catania composer which it is dedicated.

The architect Carlo Sada decided to plan and implement the unfinished building on the existing theater, designed by Stefano Ittar in the eighteenth century. The facade is built according to the Venetian style, the internal spaces are full of frescoes and sculptures among them it’s important to see the bronze’s one depicting Vincenzo Bellini, created by Salvo Giordano and placed in the foyer.

The central hall is composed of four tiers of stages and galleries on which dominates the evocative fresco ceiling made by Ernesto Bellandi, representing the “Apotheosis of Bellini”.
The Bellini Theatre has been celebrated by different tenors, like Stefano Gigli, for its exceptional acoustics like that “San Carlo” and the “Fenice” theatre in Naples and Venice.