Recasting the Opera: Architecture, Power, and Performance in Early 20th-Century Rome

The Teatro dell'Opera di Roma has been a symbol of Italian musical tradition and has staged performances by some of the greatest composers, conductors, and singers in operatic history for over 140 years. However, beneath the grandeur and facade of the opera lies a compelling legacy shaped during one of the most turbulent periods in modern Italian history. When Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) rose from obscurity to power in the 1920s, his regime sought control not only over the government but over the soul of the nation itself. Italy was the hub and birthplace of opera, and the prospects for his vision were colossal. While performances continued and the theater maintained its reputation, the meaning and function of the space shifted very subtly in a dynamic political landscape. Through its architectural redesign in simplified neoclassical fashion, its symbolic repositioning in the urban topography of Fascist Rome, and the strategic programming of operas that glorified nationalism, including works that promoted romanità, the Fascist ideal of reviving ancient Rome, the opera house was recast from a space of performance to a tightly controlled environment for political spectacle and ideological manipulation. By examining the historical archives and studying the opera house firsthand in Rome, this paper analyzes how Mussolini's Fascist regime used the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma's architecture and programming to construct a collective identity and subtly insert ideology into the experiential reality of art.