Naples ’44

Place · Landmark

San Carlo opera house

San Carlo opera house
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

Background

The Real Teatro di San Carlo, as originally named by the Bourbon monarchy but today known simply as the Teatro (di) San Carlo, is a historic opera house in Naples, Italy, connected to the Royal Palace and adjacent to the Piazza del Plebiscito. It is the oldest continuously active venue for opera in the world, having opened in 1737, decades before either Milan’s La Scala or Venice’s La Fenice.

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In Naples ’44

The opera house where Naples’s social life is really conducted; in the book it becomes an emblem of the black market, its reopening-night audience of upper-class women all wearing coats cut from stolen Allied blankets.

Appears in 3 diary entries.

  1. November 5 1943
    New contacts Losurdo and Mosca reveal the same pattern as Lattarullo: impoverished nobility clinging to grand, half-empty palazzi.
  2. February 5 1944
    Thieves brazenly strip the wheels from vehicles at the supposedly secure Field Security Headquarters, showcasing local audacity and ingenuity.
  3. April 18 1944
    The black market's scale is staggering — a large share of Neapolitan income derives from stolen Allied goods, tolerated by officials at high levels.

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