Teatre Principal de Palma

Palma’s Teatre Principal opened in 1857 as the Teatro de la Princesa, in a building designed by Antoni Sureda i Villalonga with interior decoration by Fèlix Cagé. Fire destroyed it the following year, and the rebuilt theatre reopened in 1860. It adopted its present name in 1868. Opera and drama shaped its nineteenth-century seasons, although the building also passed through a period of cinema use. Public management was restored in 1975, and responsibility transferred to the Consell de Mallorca in 1980. Successive renovations adapted the historic theatre to modern production requirements. Built on the site of the old Casa de les Comèdies, demolished in 1854, and opened in 1857, the house was designed by the Mallorcan architect Antoni Sureda i Villalonga on the model of Barcelona's Liceu — a horseshoe of boxes for some 1,300, at first without an orchestra pit, which only twentieth-century rebuilding supplied. It stands on the carrer de la Riera, belongs to the Consell de Mallorca and remains the island's main stage.