Music, opera, jazz and drama in the new season at the Teatro della Cometa

In Piazza d’Aracoeli, next to the family palace, Mimì Pecci Blunt wanted “a little theatre inspired by the ancient court theatres”, as she wrote in a letter. A great-granddaughter of Leo XIII, between the two world wars she had hosted a salon on Rue de Babylone in Paris, frequented by Cocteau and Valéry. In Rome, she organised the ‘Concerti di Primavera’ (Spring Concerts) with Goffredo Petrassi, Vittorio Rieti and Mario Labroca, dedicated to classical and contemporary music: from those evenings, and from the lectures held in her home’s drawing room, the idea of a permanent venue was born. She entrusted the project to Tomaso Buzzi, who designed chandeliers in the shape of a comet – the Pecci family emblem – and arranged them along the audience’s route. The theatre was inaugurated in 1958 and Antonio Muñoz described it as “a jewel of art on the slopes of the Capitoline Hill”. Under the direction of Diego Fabbri, plays by Beckett and Ionesco were staged there, directed by figures such as Giorgio Strehler, and music by Stravinsky was performed.

In the late 1960s, a fire destroyed the theatre; Mimì’s daughter, Viviana, reopened it in the 1980s and, following another long hiatus, it was Maria Grazia Chiuri – who purchased the theatre with her family – who restored it and brought it back into operation. The Teatro della Cometa reopened just over a year ago, and the new programme retains more than one link to its past. The musical programme, curated by Massimo Spada, brings together the classical repertoire and contemporary compositions, just as the Concerti di Primavera used to do: it begins on Sunday 4th at 5.00 pm with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, reworked by Max Richter – a reinterpretation that Richter himself has described as a ‘conversation’ with Vivaldi rather than a new performance. Later on, the soprano Rosa Feola will perform (16 May), with a programme ranging from Mozart to Puccini.

As for the opera, the programme features two one-act operas by Marcello Panni: Hanjo and the farce Lo stratagemma dell’avvocato Manigoldi (7 February), loosely based on a text by Bruno Corra. The aim is to uphold the tradition of small-scale opera productions. Not just ‘classical’ but also jazz, with Danilo Rea (16 January) performing a major improvisation that unfolds in real time before the audience. The drama programme features a play by Deborah Levy (23 October), one of the most influential voices in contemporary British literature, whose play 50 Minutes tackles highly topical issues. What does it mean to live in a world that seems to be going up in flames? Where does one begin when anxieties multiply? And what can we do with all these feelings? At La Cometa, then, art does its job: it raises questions.