Teatro Filarmonico

This guide to the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona opens with the Allied bombing of February 1945 that gutted the opera house Francesco Galli Bibiena had built beginning in 1716, decades after it had already survived a 1749 fire. It follows the Philharmonic Academy's insistence on rebuilding the theatre exactly as it stood, the 1947 design competition, and architect Vittorio Filippini's plan, which won only in 1956 before reconstruction dragged on for another decade. Listen for how a building rebuilt board by board came to choose its reopening night.