The Drawing of an Opera Theatre for Boito’s Competition (1939)

In 1938/39, the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera published the competition Camillo Boito entitled Project for a theatre to be used for performances of lyrical art. A group of students, G. Belloni, A. Fiocchi, A. Magnaghi-Delfino, M. Terzaghi, from the Regio Politecnico di Milano attended to the contest and won the first prize. The design of the theatre, which was meant to arise on a free area in a public garden, with a seating capacity of 3000, plus 200 on the stages, had as its motto Tremila 3000. All seats, as often happens in Italian theatres, had to be in conditions of visibility as uniform as possible. Bibliographic sources are limited to a single article published on Costruzioni Casabella signed by Giuseppe Pagano. The documentary and iconographic sources were found in the Historical Archive of the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera and at the CASVA (Centre for Advanced Studies on Visual Arts) in Milan. This work analyses the drawings for the identification of the basic module and the rational schemes used by the creators for the definition of the project presented in the competition. The research shows a rational use of the square module, learned during the years of apprenticeship at Terragni’s Como studio, which will be the common denominator in most of the projects that will be carried out by the Magnaghi-Terzaghi studio, in particular in the Casa dei Nidi (House of the Nests) (1939) and in the BICA building (1955).