The Theatres of Palermo

Theatre is culture. It is freedom, it is conscience, it is emancipation. So what does a closed, abandoned, neglected or burnt theatre represent?

The photographs were taken in the 1990s.

At the centre is the Teatro Massimo – one of the three largest theatres in Europe together with the Paris Opéra and the Vienna Staatsoper – closed for restoration for 23 years, from 1974 to 1997. Ferreri photographed it both during its long closure – the hall without stalls, the empty boxes, Lentini's frescoes, the yellowed ticket price lists – and after its reopening.

Around it, a census of Palermo's other theatre spaces: the Biondo, the Politeama, the Garibaldi at the time completely abandoned and used as a dump and now recovered, the Bellini still closed today, the Finocchiaro used for university lectures, the Santa Cecilia then a warehouse and now recovered, the Teatro al Massimo.

The photos of the theatres are the mirror of a city that had shelved any hope of civic and cultural growth. The closure of the Massimo for twenty-three years was its bitter testimony.

But even today, theatre places vainly claim an attention that a "cathodized" society and a distracted city are unable to give them.