The Donizetti Theatre in Bergamo has a complex history. It began in the 18th century with the Riccardi Theater, named after a merchant who built the city’s first nucleus of permanent theater on the very site where the Donizetti now stands. The theater, designed by Giovanni Francesco Lucchini, was inaugurated on August 24, 1791. But the dream lasted only a few years: in 1797 the Theatre was destroyed by fire. The architect Lucchini was commissioned to rebuild it and it was reopened on 30th June 1800. The naming of Gaetano Donizetti came in 1897, on the centenary of the composer’s birth. Since that year, the Theatre, always attentive to experimentation and innovation, has distinguished itself for the quality and variety of its theatrical offerings, becoming one of the most important theatres on the Italian scene.
