A purple theater
It was the King’s theater, commissioned by the shrewd Duke Vittorio Amedeo, to the architect Juvarra, which the “Savoy fox” brought to Turin in 1713 together with the royal crown. However, it was the architect Alfieri who gave the building the typical aspect of Turin architecture, a restrained reluctance, which well reflects the character of the residents, and is replicated in austere facades of sober bricks, behind which the luxury introduced by the princesses triumphed. French married the rulers of the sword vocation of the Savoy family. From 1740 the Royal Theater was a point of reference and international prestige and of the aristocracy of the North, until, on a cold night in February 1936, the red velvets and inlaid and gilded woods were engulfed in flames, which only spared the long and severe red brick line of the facade.
Only in 1965, after the long wait for the post-war reconstruction of the whole country, the architectural carcass, a remnant totally with the present, was entrusted to the visionary architect Carlo Mollino, who of the old theater kept only the brick front that survived the fire, a monument of historical memory connected with the architecture of the square, in which the only prospect that must be noticed is that of the royal palace, following a court protocol also in the architectural styles. Mollino represents the temperatures of the seventies, the wind of change, and, displacing the expectations of the good bourgeoisie, instead of the expected Italian theater, a treasure trove of centuries-old habits of elegance, he created a bold building, totally free from tradition. In the past, in addition to the Alfieri façade, retained the curved line of the Baroque, the style of the Royal House, adopted everywhere, from the structure to the furnishing details. He introduced an aerial system with escalators and concrete, glass and steel, open spaces such as the comfortable and airy foyer, and the incredible shell of the stalls, with a single crown of boxes. The 1592 spectators are accommodated in a unitary space, a large egg, acoustically perfect, without social hierarchies, under a cascade of light reflected by 1900 perspex stems that reverberate the light of 1762 light points. Mollino’s provocation went further, challenging superstition and using the purple color, excluded and forbidden by all theaters, as a medieval memento of the hunger suffered by artists during the Lent period, in which the prelates cloaked in liturgical vestments that evoked the Passion, prohibited performances and any form of entertainment in the 40 days preceding Easter. The theater was inaugurated on April 10, 1973, Mollino died four months later. Architect and whoremonger, eclectic dandy and solitary genius, he was first criticized for his bold, nonconformist, visionary, and modern choice, and later acclaimed by lovers of the international artistic avant-garde as a prophet. The Mollino theater is a perfect machine, where enormous stage machinery, laboratories, and rooms occupy an underground surface that is equal to one and a half times the surface of Piazza Castello on which it stands. It is open to opera and musical productions, dance, and concerts, and to a diverse audience, it welcomes young people and students, breaking down gender and class barriers. Mollino’s theater amazes and disorients, then welcomes and seduces. Sitting in the embrace of the shell under the cascade of light, in front of the purple stage, is an intense, sometimes moving experience. Mollino was right.