Teatro Bibiena

Built between 1767 and 1769, the Teatro Bibiena was designed by Antonio Galli Bibiena from Parma on commission from the rector of the Accademia dei Timidi, Count Carlo Ottavio di Colloredo, with the aim of hosting mainly scientific meetings, but also open to performances and concerts .
The theater, no longer tiered like the Renaissance ones, has a bell-shaped plan and is arranged on several tiers of boxes, according to the kind of structure invented in the seventeenth century.
With prodigious vivacity the architect Bibiena fulfilled in just two years the obligation he had contracted with the Timidi in 1767: he designed the theatre, directed the works and, finally, with the skill of a painter as well as an architect, he personally frescoed the interiors of the numerous boxes, also a precious document of the artistic activity of the illustrious master.
The façade was instead built by Giuseppe Piermarini from whom the hall on the first floor of the theater takes its name. Just over a month after the inauguration on 16 January 1770, the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who arrived in Mantua at just fourteen for his first Italian tour, held a memorable concert there together with his father Leopold.