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“Pavone” Theater
The construction of the theater began in 1718 and concluded in 1723; the promoters of this initiative were a group of Perugian nobles, who felt the necessity of a more suitable and more spacious place to hold theatric representations than the then existing theaters in Perugia.
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This theater was completely built in wood and named Teatro della Nobile Accademia del Casino—Theater of the Noble Academy of the Casino—with its four orders of boxes and a squared floor plan, which soon proved to be unsuitable for the new needs of melodrama and comedy representation. The Academy, therefore, decided to demolish it (1765) and commissioned its reconstruction to the architect Pietro Carattoli. The new floor plan was inspired by the Teatro Argentina of Rome and had a horseshoe-shaped brickwork structure with 82 boxes distributed in four orders, of which the lower one was supported by small columns and provided with a richly decorated balustrade.
The front of the parapet of the boxes was embellished with painted stuccowork cameos by Carlo Spiridone Mariotti. The theater took the name of Teatro Pavone—the Peacock—after the beautiful bird sacred to the Roman goddess Juno, depicted in triumph on the stage curtain painted by Francesco Appiani, an artist from Ancona, in 1772.
The decoration on the ceiling and the substitution of the consumed stage curtain with a work depicting The Rebuilding of Perugia Ordered by the Emperor Augustus are both the work of the Roman painter Gaspare Coccia, and date from 1814. In 1856 there was considerable work of restoration, which involved the ceiling vault and reconstruction of the roof, the introduction of a plastered ceiling—cannicciata—even in the fourth and fifth orders of boxes, and the consequent transformation of the latter into the upper loggia. The new decoration of the entire theater and stage curtain was commissioned to Nicola Benvenuti.
