Teatro Regio di Parma

Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, paid for the theatre that Nicola Bettoli raised from 1821 on the site of the monastery of St Alexander, and it opened on 16 May 1829 — as the Nuovo Teatro Ducale — with the premiere of Bellini's Zaira, which the audience received coldly. That audience has been the making of the house: Parma's public has a name for severity, and singers who satisfy it are held to have satisfied Italy. The theatre stands in Verdi's own country, and he directed Nabucco here in April 1843; the connection has never loosened. Renamed Teatro Reale in 1849 and Teatro Regio after unification, the house seats about 1,400 across four tiers of boxes and a gallery. Its season of some four operas, running from mid-January to April, is completed each October by the Festival Verdi, annual since 2003, which keeps the composer's birthday on the tenth of the month.