The Society Theater, this was the original name, opened its doors in the 1809 Carnival season.. It was born on the wave of competition between the upper and lower cities: it was to rival the Riccardi Theater (today’s Donizetti Theater) to restore to the upper city the supremacy that the new lower city theater was undermining. It was built thanks to the interest of 54 noblemen from Bergamo, representatives of the City’s most prominent families. About 20 of them also owned a stage at the Riccardi Theater, but a dispute with the impresario prompted them to build one for themselves directly.
On March 3, 1803 a document was drafted by notary Tiraboschi, nothing was left to chance and everything was put on stamped paper. Promoter appears to have been Count Vailetti. The plan called for three tiers of boxes and a gallery; there would also be a ticket office, a coffee room, a members’ meeting room, and one or two Ridotto rooms useful for welcoming the audience during breaks in performances. The fee provided for each member was 5,000 liras, which, multiplied by 54 members, came to 270,000 liras, to be paid in two installments. A few months later, in 1804, work began. The Sociale was not the first theater in Upper Town; it was, however, the only one to be built in masonry.
L’inauguration took place on December 26, 1808 with the opera Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons, specially commissioned from Stefano Pavesi. A few days later it would be the turn of Ginevra di Scozia by Giovanni Simone Mayr. A fine billboard that, of course, fueled the rivalry with the Riccardi Theater.
In memory of that evening there still remains a poster with a prefectorial decree issued for the occasion in which it was ordered that the carriages, whether coming from the boroughs or from the Upper Town, should take a specific route to avoid traffic jams. It was also decided that the portico of the Palazzo della Ragione would remain available to the vehicles for temporary parking until the end of the performance. That evening hundreds of candles highlighted the decorations.
The Teatro Sociale was active, with mixed fortunes, until the 1920s. Its later fortunes were a reflection of the decline of Città Alta as the propelling center of Bergamo’s social and cultural life. The restoration and recovery of the theater to its original purpose now attest to a new centrality of Città Alta, and the now achieved integration of both city entities: the ancient city and the suburbs that have grown up at its foot.