In a surprise move, the Stauffer Foundation purchased the Politeama Verdi at this morning’s ongoing auction. Stauffer’s intention is to turn it into a major hub for high-level violin making, with classrooms, exhibition spaces, and a concert hall. This is a high-impact initiative that gives the city back its glorious former theater and turns it into a world reference point for fine lutherie. The purchase price was about €55,000 and was determined a short while ago. Three parties took part in the auction: the entrepreneur who had previously made an offer to purchase, another interested party, and representatives of Stauffer.

Since 2021, the headquarters of the Stauffer Academy has been located at Palazzo Stauffer, formerly Palazzo Stradiotti, a historic building in the center of Cremona, acquired by the Stauffer Foundation in 2015. For a long time, the dream has been to also have a concert hall, which is why in the past attention had focused on the nearby former bocce hall on Via Gadio, a solution later abandoned due to the difficulty of adapting it for this purpose. Now comes the gift to the city: bringing the Politeama Verdi on Via Cesare Battisti back to life.

Its history has seen repeated dramatic abandonment followed by rebirth. On the morning of December 9, 1896, a huge fire devoured the Teatro Ricci, Cremona’s popular theater, built entirely of wood. It was an enormous and impressive blaze. The city could not remain without a popular theater that could compete with the Teatro Concordia, later renamed the Ponchielli. The people of Cremona therefore created a company headed by Ettore Sacchi and immediately rebuilt a new theater on the site of the old Ricci. Thus, in just a few months, the magnificent Politeama Theater was born between Via Cesare Battisti and Via Arisi, twenty meters from Corso Campi. A jewel made of stucco, boxes, and paintings — a treasure chest designed by architect Sfondrini, a specialist in the field who had already built the Storchi Theater in Modena. This was nineteenth-century Cremona, when art, culture, good taste, and entertainment were at home in the city. The debut was with Puccini’s La Bohème, almost a national premiere. It later became a cinema, and then fell into abandonment, before a project that stripped the theater of some of its spaces. Now comes Stauffer’s choice. Welcome back, Politeama Verdi.

Photographs by Francesco Sessa Ventura