As key tools of visual communication and advertising, the historic posters of the Teatro Verdi are being displayed to the public once again for the first time in a century and a half, thus regaining their original purpose thanks to a major restoration.
Through July 31, seventeen large-format posters will be on display in the Foyer and the Ridotto (free admission). Between 1867, the year of its inauguration, and 1887, the then Regio Teatro Nuovo di Pisa used these posters to announce the operas and ballets of the Carnival and Lent seasons.
Curated by archivist Manuel Rossi, the exhibition "Verdi Manifesti. The Restored Posters of the Regio Teatro Nuovo in Pisa (1867–1887)" is presented by the Fondazione Teatro di Pisa in collaboration with the Municipality of Pisa and with the essential support of Farmigea.
Open Monday through Saturday during the Verdi Theater’s regular hours.
Presented in chronological order, the exhibition offers a journey through popular tastes and trends in theatrical art at the end of the 19th century. The result of an initial selection from the many posters preserved in the Verdi Historical Archive, the seventeen now on display also mark the first outcome of the Pisa Theater Foundation’s renewed interest in its own heritage, an element of collective memory.
The restoration of this initial collection of posters is the result of a multi-year program of initiatives promoted by the Foundation to enhance its Historical Archive, which has Farmigea—an international pharmaceutical company rooted in the city’s scientific tradition—as its primary patron. Carried out by Claudius Schettino of the Philobiblion studio in Florence, the project was undertaken with the full support of the Archival and Bibliographic Superintendency of Florence and in collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Pisa.
Through its typographic or illustrated posters—ranging from Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell, which announced the grand opening of the Regio Teatro Nuovo in 1867, to those from 1887, including the one advertising the premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s Villi in Pisa—chosen by Ricordi as a testing ground following its successes in Milan and Venice—amid triumphs and setbacks, Pisa’s premier theater recounts its first twenty years of history. Large in size—some reaching up to 175 centimeters in height—the posters allow us to reconstruct, through their graphics and content, a unique perspective on the historical and social milieu of the city of Pisa in the last quarter of the 19th century and the theater’s position within the artistic scene of the time.
The “return to the exhibition” of Verdi’s early posters will be accompanied, through the end of the exhibition, by a series of seminars and lectures held at the theater and the Sms Municipal Library, as part of the “Pact for Reading/Pisa: A City That Reads” initiative. The ‘first act’ of the collaboration with the Municipal Library was marked by a temporary exhibition in the library’s foyer featuring the restored poster for Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth, accompanied by a public display of the related opera librettos and texts from English literature. The exhibition Verdi Posters. The restoration of the earliest posters from Pisa’s Teatro Nuovo (1867–1887) will be on view until July 31. Admission is free every day, Monday through Saturday, during the theater’s opening hours. Associations, groups, and schools can book a visit by emailing eleonora.mancini@teatrodipisa.it.
