Degollado Theatre

1866

It opened in 1866 with an opera, before the building was finished

The theater was inaugurated on 13 September 1866 with the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. The title role was sung by Ángela Peralta, an opera soprano noted as the "Mexican Nightingale". The building was not yet complete. It has had four more inaugurations since: in 1880, 1910, 1941 and 1964.

Two names

It began as a theater named after a dramatist and was renamed for a governor

In 1855 Antonio Pérez Verdía proposed a theater named Alarcón, after the dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. Governor Santos Degollado signed the decree that December and set the first cornerstone in March 1856. Conflicts between Mexican liberals and conservatives, and a change of government during the Second Mexican Empire, made the work slow. The new name, Degollado, was adopted on 18 December 1866.

Red and gold

Its red and gold hall holds a mural of Dante and a gilded eagle

Before the first inauguration, Gerardo Suárez and Carlos Villaseñor decorated the theater with a mural of the fourth canto of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Felipe Castro painted the murals Time and Hours and The Fame on the proscenium arch. Between 1880 and 1890 the stucco of the hall was completed and a golden color was added to the interior walls. The hall holds 1,015 spectators.

1,015spectators the building can hold

Apollo

Sixteen columns hold up a mosaic of Apollo and the nine muses

Between 1953 and 1959 Roberto Montenegro painted the mosaic of Apollo and the nine muses on the pediment. The portico under it has 16 Corinthian columns. During the later restoration, the architect Ignacio Díaz Morales had a phrase engraved by the mosaic over the main entrance: "May we never hear a hint of discord". A bronze relief by Rafael Zamarripa on the outside shows the founders of Guadalajara.