Scenography workshops

The Teatro Verdi Trieste scenographic laboratories are located in the Noghere Industrial Park on the outskirts of Trieste; they host the spaces necessary for the creation of scenic arrangements: scenography, carpentry, sculpture, metal workshop, props workshop and tailoring. The stage costume warehouse which houses around 10,000 costumes is also located here.

Before this modern arrangement, designed in the early 2000s, Trieste’s scenographic laboratories were located in various locations and following their history is a journey through time.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sets for opera performances at the Teatro Verdi were created by the Rossi family who traditionally ran the theatre independently as a family business. The area dedicated to the laboratory was the attic of the theatre, like all other opera houses of the time. The width, equal to that of the stalls, the brightness, diffused by the shutters on the roof, and the wooden plank floors lent themselves well to this use. The set scenery, generally painted, was made on a special type of paper originating from Bohemia, only later replaced by canvas, which the Rossi family bought from a cotton mill in Gorizia while the “fortresses” at the ends of the backdrops were made economically using old Bed linen and towels.

The last member of the family, Mario, had left the orchestra in which he played the violin, to continue the family business and follow his personal passion. Mario Rossi’s laboratory worked under the supervision of the theatre management until 1981 when new safety and fire prevention regulations forced theatres to remove all types of activities from their attics. The closure of the scenography laboratory inside the theatre was unexpected and almost immediate and led to the end of the activity for all the staff.

In 1985, thanks to the commitment of the theatre management and in agreement with the theatrical trade union representatives, who were very keen on the conservation of the scenographic art and craftsmanship heritage, the Verdi Theatre obtained from the Province of Trieste the concession of Pavilion F and the theatre of the former Psychiatric Hospital of San Giovanni, recently closed at the time following the reform of Franco Basaglia. The scenographic laboratory of the Teatro Verdi was set up here with staff employed by the theatre body and later the carpentry shop also moved to the San Giovanni site – until then located in some rooms in Via Udine far from the theatre.

New scenery construction methods, increasingly based on manufactured elements, the arrival of plastic materials, polyurethane foams which in part replaced the painted canvas alone, made additional large spaces indispensable: so in the 1990s the theatre laboratories operated in three different locations: the former Psychiatric Hospital, the premises of the IRFOP professional school in Valmaura and the Trieste Fair.

A fragmented and costly organisation that pushed the theatre management to look for better and more suitable solutions. In 2001 the Municipal Administration of Trieste and the theatre management conceived the project of a new modern, large, safe and efficient scenographic laboratory located in the Noghere industrial park located in the municipality of Muggia and adjoining the outskirts of Trieste, a new large space able to contain all the theatrical productions, part of the warehouses and specific offices. The new workshop has been active since 2003.

Laboratori Scenografici e Magazzini del Teatro Verdi di Trieste
Via del Canneto n. 16
Località Noghere  Muggia – CAP 34015 – Trieste
Telefono 040 6722718-705