Carro di Tespi

Carro di Tespi ( Italian for Thespiskarren ) was the name of two Italian open-air touring theaters in the 1930s.

In 1929, the Italian architect and set designer Antonio Valente created the first fully framed illusion stage with a circular horizon for the first company Carro di Tespi drammatico , it was driven from place to place and set up on large squares with a grandstand . It was inaugurated in 1929 on Monte Pincio in Rome with a performance of the tragedy Oreste by Vittorio Alfieri , and in the following years it performed in Rome and southern Italy. In 1938 Valente constructed a second traveling stage for the drama company. Some famous Italian actors played for the Carro di Tespi. B. Paola Borboni (1937 in Quella by Cesare Giulio Viola and Il pozzo by Corra e Achille).

The first copy was followed in 1930 by a travel stage for opera performances by the Carro di Tespi lirico company . The first opera premiere was a production of Puccini's La Bohème conducted by Pietro Mascagni in 1930 in Torre del Lago (now part of Viareggio ). The opera company soon became very successful and also played on tours in Belgium, Albania, Dalmatia and South America.

The Second World War obviously ended the work of the original companies. But to the present day the term Carro di Tespi is synonymous with travel theater in Italy. One of the companies that were founded after the war after his model was the Teatro Popolare Itinerante of the Italian actor Vittorio Gassman . The company Il Nuovo Carro di Tespi has been in Turin since 2001, producing operas in the style of its predecessor.