The Turning Point

Nearly a year ago (in Music & Vision, 18 January 2011, 'Unmistakably Italian') we focused on the Catania Opera House 'Massimo Bellini'. The late Dame Joan Sutherland and her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, loved Catania's 'Massimo Bellini' Theatre in eastern Sicily, not only for its elegant façade and its smart auditorium, but also for its perfect acoustics; they considered it such an excellent hall that many of their recordings were produced there (especially a gorgeous edition of Bellini's I Puritani). In the late 1880s, its architect, Carlo Sada (later in charge of designing Buenos Aires' Colón) developed an acoustic miracle where in all series of seats the audience feels literally embraced by the music. It has nearly twelve hundred seats; thus just the right size not to disperse the voices and not to ask the singers for an excessive effort...