The Teatro Valle reopens with a revival of Pirandello’s “Sei personaggi”

On that 9 May 1921, the shouts could be heard even in the street. Luigi Pirandello fled with his daughter Lietta, making his way out through a side door. The theatre was the Valle, where Rossini’s Cenerentola had premiered in 1817 and where, just a few minutes earlier, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore had been staged for the first time. The audience were, in fact, looking for the author, shouting “Madhouse!”. The very next day, within the theatre company, the play had already been renamed “Sei personaggi in cerca d’incasso”: this is recounted in the diary of Dario Niccodemi, who, together with Vera Vergani and Luigi Almirante, had just staged it.

The history of the Valle, inaugurated in 1727, is a story of culture that came to an end in May 2011. Just one year earlier, the government had abolished the Italian Theatre Authority, which had managed it since the post-war period, and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage had kept it open for one final season. On 14 June, theatre workers and activists occupied the theatre to prevent its privatisation. They were supported by Franca Valeri, Toni Servillo, Andrea Camilleri and even Peter Brook. In September 2013, backed by over five thousand members, they established the Fondazione Teatro Valle Bene Comune, which was also supported by the legal scholar Stefano Rodotà. The occupation lasted over three years and ended on 11 August 2014 without an eviction: following an ultimatum from the Councillor for Culture, Giovanna Marinelli, the occupiers handed the keys back to the City Council. This was followed by a partial reopening in 2018 and, from March 2023, the renovation works that are now drawing to a close. Tomorrow evening at 8 pm (with repeat performances until the 18th), the theatre nestled between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon will resume its programme, starting precisely with that ill-fated Pirandello ‘premiere’.

The writer Francesco Piccolo reads from his own text, “La sera della prima. Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore al Teatro Valle”, which recounts the most intense moments of that 9 May and the play’s subsequent success: through its run of performances and the preface written by Pirandello in 1925 for the third edition, “Sei personaggi” won over audiences and transformed twentieth-century theatre.The Valle thus joins the Argentina, India and Torlonia theatres as the fourth venue of the Teatro di Roma, with a programme focused primarily on contemporary drama and the aim of restoring to the people of Rome a venue that has been closed for far too long.