Since 1919, Sociedade de Cultura Artística

Sociedade de Cultura Artística

In 1912, a group of poets, journalists, musicians, lawyers, professors and businessmen founded a society to provide high culture to support São Paulo's economic development, with the promotion of evenings of music and literature....

 nurtured the dream of having its own theatre in São Paulo, Brazil.

This was only made possible in the late 1940s. The construction of the theatre, between the years 1947 and 1950, was a period of enormous enthusiasm. The theatre was designed by leading architecs Rino Levi, Roberto Cerqueira César and Fa Pestalozzi.

The inauguration was 8 and 9 March, 1950, and was headed by two of the most important Brazilian conductors and composers. Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...

 and Camargo Guarnieri

Camargo Guarnieri

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri was a Brazilian composer.-Name:He was registered at birth as Mozart Guarnieri, but when he began a musical career, he decided his first name was too pretentious and subject to puns. Thus he adopted his mother's maiden name Camargo as a middle name, and thenceforth signed...

 led the concerts which also opened that year's season of concerts, conducting the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and presenting their own musical creations. At that time there were already 2500 subscribers to the season and even the large concert hall could not accommodate all subscribers in one night.

The theatre has two superposed concert halls, the first one named Sala Esther Mesquita, with 1156 seats, and the second one named Sala Rubens Sverner, with 339 seats.

The Fire

During the morning of August 17th 2008, a fire, started by unknown causes, burnt the theatre to ashes. Most of its installations were consumed by the fire, that lasted for about 4 hours. Esther Mesquita, the main stage, was totally destroyed. Di Cavalcanti's façade survived the incident. The rebuilding of the theatre started on 20 March 2010 and the venue is scheduled to reopen in 2012. Meanwhile, concerts and plays have been transferred to other venues.