Teatro dell'Opera di Roma: seats, tours, dress code and how to book

Buy the season seats

The theatre sells on operaroma.it, through TicketOne, and at its box office on Piazza Beniamino Gigli, the square in front of the house. Same-day tickets are sold at the venue from one hour before the performance. The Rome opera season runs from autumn to early summer, then the company moves outdoors for the Caracalla festival, which we cover in the summer block.

Book the guided tour

Tours last about one hour and run in Italian and English. Same-day tour places cost $16.73 (€15) for adults and $8.92 (€8) for children under 14. Booking ahead by email costs more, $18.95 (€17) and $11.15 (€10), which is odd but that is the published rule.

There are no tours on public holidays, and production work can change the route, so check the theatre's guided-tour page before you go.

Or skip the theatre entirely

On nights with no performance, or if $139.40 (€125) for a stalls seat is too much, the evenings we sell are five minutes away: La Traviata in a concert staging at St Paul's, the Three Tenors tribute programme, and the arias nights on our opera concerts in Rome page. They are concerts with singers and a small ensemble, not full theatre productions, and they cost from $28.

From Costanzi to Opera

Domenico Costanzi financed the house and the Milanese theatre architect Achille Sfondrini built it in eighteen months. It opened in November 1880 as the Teatro Costanzi with 2,212 seats, and Sfondrini shaped the interior as a horseshoe "resonance chamber", the reason the acoustics are still praised. Rome's city council bought it in 1926, renamed it Teatro Reale dell'Opera and had Marcello Piacentini rebuild it: the entrance moved to the new Piazza Beniamino Gigli and a six-metre chandelier of 27,000 crystal drops went up.

After the monarchy fell the name shortened to Teatro dell'Opera, and Piacentini remodelled it again in 1958, giving the facade, entrance and foyer you see now. Today it seats 1,560, and Teatro Costanzi remains the official name of the main auditorium.

Premieres that shaped opera

Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana premiered here on 17 May 1890 and took Rome by storm, with Mascagni called back forty times. Puccini's Tosca opened here on 14 January 1900. The opera is set in Rome, and you can walk its Act 1 church, Sant'Andrea della Valle, in a morning.

Under Emma Carelli in the 1910s the house staged Italian firsts including Turandot, Parsifal and Boris Godunov, and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes danced here. In 1958 a Norma with Maria Callas ended after Act 1 when she abandoned the performance before the President of Italy, and no understudy had been engaged.

Why it matters to your trip

For ballet in Rome and for grand opera with orchestra, chorus and full staging, this is the house. Our guide to theatres in Rome covers the rest of the city's stages, from the Teatro Argentina, where Rossini's Barber of Seville premiered, to the Auditorium in Flaminio. But for the classic opera-evening-in-an-opera-house experience, this is the address.

Foyer, then the Stalls

You enter from Piazza Beniamino Gigli into the foyer Piacentini rebuilt in 1958. From there the tour moves into the Stalls, the flat-floored heart of the horseshoe. Stalls rows 1-13 are the expensive seats, $139.40 (€125) on a repeat opera night, because you sit level with the orchestra pit and the stage is close enough to read expressions.

The Royal Box and up to the Gallery

The Royal Box is the ceremonial centrepiece of the tiers of boxes. The Gallery above is where the cheap seats live: rows 1-3 at $27.90 (€25) and rows 4-8 at $24.50 (€22) for an opera on a repeat night, with ballet in the top gallery from $22.30 (€20). Sound up there is the point of Sfondrini's resonance-chamber design.

The tour also takes in the theatre museum, and the whole route is step-free except the Royal Box and the Gallery, so tell the theatre if steps are a problem.

Details worth finding

Look up for Annibale Brugnoli's frescoes on the dome, a survivor from the 1880 house, and for the six-metre chandelier of 27,000 crystal drops that Piacentini's 1928 rebuild added. Above the proscenium arch sits a Latin plaque recording the rebuilding under Vittorio Emanuele III and Mussolini, with the Fascist-era date count that reads oddly to modern eyes. In the auditorium, phones stay off and photos are banned during performance.

When you can get in

The box office on Piazza Beniamino Gigli keeps published hours of Monday to Saturday 10:00-18:00 and Sunday 09:00-13:30. Same-day performance tickets are sold at the venue from one hour before curtain. Tour times and performance dates for the Rome opera season are on operaroma.it, and the official sources gives no fixed daily opening hours for the building itself, so check the website for the night you want.

Dress code

Evening dress is requested on opening nights and premieres only. Other nights there is no written rule, but the practical norm is smart clothes in the stalls and boxes and smart casual in the gallery, our observation rather than a theatre rule. We unpack this fully on the Rome opera dress code page.

At the church concerts nearby the listings ask for smart casual.

The latecomer rule

Once the performance starts, nobody is shown to the stalls or to numbered gallery and balcony seats. Latecomers wait in the foyer and enter at the next break. Photos and recording are banned, phones may not be used in the auditorium, and umbrellas, hats, bags and cameras must go to the cloakroom.

Plan the coat and the camera bag before you leave the hotel, and see our page on where to stay in Rome for the opera if you want a hotel in walking distance.

Metro, train, on foot

Repubblica on metro line A is about 5 minutes away on foot, our estimate, and Termini station about 10. From Repubblica, the square of Piazza della Repubblica leads straight down towards the house. St Paul's Within the Walls, the evening concert venue, is on Via Nazionale about 5 minutes from the theatre (our estimate), so you can combine a matinee tour with an evening concert without a taxi.

The company's second indoor venue, the smaller Teatro Nazionale, is at Via del Viminale 51, a few minutes away.

Three routings to compare

Pick by where you sleep and how much evening you have left.

Before an outdoor summer night

If your evening is at the Baths of Caracalla or the Circus Maximus instead, the walk from this theatre does not apply. Circo Massimo on metro line B serves both outdoor venues, and same-day seats there are sold from 90 minutes before the start. Read our Caracalla opera guide for the full logistics.

Tour only

The guided tour runs about one hour and covers the Foyer, Stalls, Royal Box, Gallery and theatre museum. Add time for the box office if buying on the day, since tours do not run on public holidays and can change for production work. A sensible plan is the tour in the late afternoon, then dinner, then a concert elsewhere: our pick for that second half is the Three Tenors evening at St Paul's, 1.5 hours and easy to reach on foot.

Full performance night

An opera evening with interval runs about three hours door to door by our estimate. Because latecomers are held in the foyer until a break, arrive early enough for the cloakroom queue. Same-day tickets, if any remain, go on sale at the venue one hour before, so the gamble of buying on the day costs you an early arrival.

Combining with the neighbourhood

Give the afternoon to the streets around the house. The Trevi Fountain is a short walk west, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore a few minutes south, and the Monti rione behind the theatre holds the trattorias where people eat before curtain. If you would rather add music than monuments, the church and palace concerts on our classical pages start an hour or two after the theatre tour ends.

The list

Details below.

• The auditorium was built as a "resonance chamber": Sfondrini's horseshoe shape is the acoustics device, which is why the sound is praised from the cheap Gallery seats as much as the Stalls (Wikipedia: Teatro dell'Opera di Roma).
• Cavalleria rusticana nearly missed the premiere: Mascagni had hidden his draft in a drawer and his wife submitted it on the final day of the competition that put it on this stage (Wikipedia: Cavalleria rusticana).
• The chandelier is made of 27,000 crystal drops and measures six metres across, added in the 1928 rebuilding (Wikipedia: Teatro dell'Opera di Roma).
• The first Three Tenors concert with Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti was sung by this company at the Baths of Caracalla on 7 July 1990, the night before the World Cup final (operaroma.it Caracalla pages).
• The plague above the proscenium records the rebuilding under Mussolini with a Fascist-era date count that makes the years read back to front (Wikipedia: Teatro dell'Opera di Roma).