The Teatro Valle is a theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and former opera house

Opera house

An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...

 in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

Commissioned by the Capranica family, the architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Tommaso Morelli designed the theatre which was built in 1726. It was inaugurated with the staging of the tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 Matilde by Simon Falconio Pratoli. After hosting a season of opera seria

Opera seria

Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

in 1730, the Valle was limited through much of the latter half of the 18th century to staging prose dramas as well as a mix of intermezzo

Intermezzo

In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...

s and comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

s, particularly those of Galuppi

Baldassarre Galuppi

Baldassare Galuppi was an Italian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic. He achieved international success, spending periods of his career in London and Saint Petersburg, but his main base remained Venice, where he held a succession of leading appointments.In his early...

, Piccinni

Niccolò Piccinni

Niccolò Piccinni was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure, even to music lovers today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera buffa—of his day...

, Anfossi

Pasquale Anfossi

Bonifacio Domenico Pasquale Anfossi was an Italian opera composer. Born in Taggia, Liguria, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome....

, Sacchini

Antonio Sacchini

Antonio Maria Gasparo Sacchini was an Italian opera composer.Sacchini was born in Florence, but was raised in Naples, where he received his musical education at the San Onofrio conservatory. He wrote his first operas in Naples, thereafter moving to Venice, then London and eventually Paris, where...

, Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello was an Italian composer of the Classical era.-Life:Paisiello was born at Taranto and educated by the Jesuits there. He became known for his beautiful singing voice and in 1754 was sent to the Conservatorio di S. Onofrio at Naples, where he studied under Francesco Durante, and...

, Guglielmi

Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi

Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer.Guglielmi was born in Massa. He received his first musical education from his father, and afterwards studied under Francesco Durante at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples...

, and Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school...

. It was the only theatre in Rome in 1782, and after 1786, which offered both spring and autumn seasons of opera as well a season during Carnival.

Throughout the early 19th century, the Valle was regularly staging opera buffa and opera semiseria as well as prose comedies and, increasingly after 1830, serious melodrama

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

s. A number of operas during this time were premiered at the Valle, including Rossini’s Demetrio e Polibio

Demetrio e Polibio

Demetrio e Polibio is a two-act operatic dramma serio by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Vincenzina Viganò-Mombelli. The opera was orchestrated for strings only....

(1812), Torvaldo e Dorliska

Torvaldo e Dorliska

Torvaldo e Dorliska is an operatic dramma semiserio in two act by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini, based on Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by the revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai, whose work was the source of the Lodoïska libretto set by Luigi Cherubini...

(1815), and La Cenerentola

La Cenerentola

La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...

(1817); Mercadante’s

Saverio Mercadante

Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...

 Il geloso ravveduto (1820); Donizetti’s

Gaetano Donizetti

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

 L'ajo nell'imbarazzo

L'ajo nell'imbarazzo

L'ajo nell'imbarazzo is a melodramma giocoso, or opera, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, after the 1807 play by Giovanni Giraud...

(1824), Olivo e Pasquale

Olivo e Pasquale

Olivo e Pasquale is a melodramma giocoso, a romantic comedy opera, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Jacopo Ferretti wrote the Italian libretto after Simeone Antonio Sografi's play.- Roles :...

(1827), Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo (1833), and Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso (opera)

Torquato Tasso is a melodramma semiseria, or 'semi-serious' opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti and based on the life of the great poet Torquato Tasso. The Italian libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, who used a number of sources for his text, including works by Giovanni Rosini, Goethe,...

(1833); Pacini’s

Giovanni Pacini

Giovanni Pacini was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Pacini was born in Catania, Sicily, the son of the buffo Luigi Pacini, who was to appear in the premieres of many of Giovanni's operas...

 La gioventù di Enrico V (1820); and Luigi Ricci

Luigi Ricci

Luigi Ricci , was an Italian composer, particularly of operas.He was the elder brother of Federico Ricci, with whom he collaborated on several works.- Life :...

’s L’orfana di Ginevra (1829), Il sonnambulo (1829), and Chi dura vince (1834), as well as many lesser known works from local composers.

Beginning from the middle of the 19th century, the Teatro Valle has staged only spoken drama.

The seating in the Teatro Valle initially consisted of five tiers of 27 boxes. It underwent renovation in by Mauro Fontana in 1765 and was restored again in 1791. The theatre was rebuilt in 1821 to the design of Valadier, completed by Salvi and in 1845 a façade designed by Gaspare Servi was added. Today, it contains four tiers of boxes and a gallery.