Imola celebrates 50 years of the Ebe Stignani municipal theater – News

On 18 April 1974, the curtain reopened, after a first tranche of post-war restoration, on the Ebe Stignani Theater in Imola, built in 1812 by the architect Giuseppe Magistretti inside the previous Franciscan church and closed in 1931 because it did not meet the public safety of the time. It was the beginning of one of the happiest seasons of Italian theatre, which year after year led the Stignani to be one of the points of reference for prose at a national level.

Exactly fifty years later, the initiatives to celebrate the anniversary were presented: a digital archive where you can search among the almost 500 shows performed and the 1,500 artists who have graced our stage, 16 free guided tours of the theatre, aerial shots and virtual mapping of the interiors , the opening of registrations for the international opera competition Stignani Competition and, finally, the preview of the program of the 50th prose season 2024-25, with eight shows and artists such as Angela Finocchiaro, Neri Marcorè, Lunetta Savino, Ambra Angiolini, Andrea Pennacchi, Gabriele Lavia. The ninth show, non-subscription, will feature Virginia Raffaele.

By inserting and examining the data from the digital archive, some curiosities emerged, such as the difference in the spelling between the surname of Gassman father and Gassmann son: not a typo but Vittorio’s desire to remove an “enne” to simplify, a letter later recovered by Alessandro who preferred to return to the original surname of his ancestors. The ‘gotha’ of the theater performed in Imola, such as Romolo Valli, Paolo Poli, Paolo Stoppa, Salvo Randone, Giulia Lazzarini, Giorgio Gaber, Toni Servillo, Gabriele Lavia, Valeria Moriconi, Mariangela Melato, Stefano Accorsi, just to name a few . “We are one of the few cities – underlines the mayor Marco Panieri – which has a municipal theater named after a woman, a mezzo-soprano singer of the twentieth century who, thanks to her art, already managed to give credit to her role and to the whole of Romagna”.

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