Can Italy's opera houses be saved by crowd-funding?

A group of European singers has launched a crowd-funding campaign to save Italy’s dilapidated opera houses, hundreds of which have been left to rot.

Four hundred years after the bel paese hosted the first ever opera in Florence, many of the country’s more than 800 theatres lie unused and neglected, victims of an economic crisis that has stubbornly refused to pass.

Now Italian citizens in the tiny town of Bevagna, Perugia have donated thousands of pounds to relaunch the spectacular Francesco Torti opera theatre, which was originally built as a palazzo in the 1100s and then converted into an opera house in the nineteenth century.

In recent years, the only performers to appear underneath its frescoed ceilings depicting the dancing muses were local schoolchildren.

^{Finnish soprano Susanna Ohtonen}

But Susanna Ohtonen, a Finnish soprano who has lived and worked in Italy for 25 years, has launched an initiative, nicknamed the "Adopt a Theatre" campaign, to bring the country's opera houses "back to life".

“Nobody has any more money to keep these theatres up,” said Ms Ohtonen, who is working on the project with the music association Opera Extravaganza, a group made up of European opera professionals. “Or sometimes they are in good condition, but they are not being used as they should. There’s no money any more to put on operas.

“What we’re doing is bringing these theatres back to life. Not just the music, but the whole city, as opera and music is part of Italy's cultural heritage.”

Some theatres are being sold off to private buyers, such as the important nineteenth-century Teatro Comunale in Florence, which was bought last year for €23 million. Other opera houses, such as the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy’s fourth largest theatre, have been forced to cut entire seasons from their schedules, cancelling dozens of performances.

Last year the Federculture Association, which represents Italy’s cultural associations, warned of “disturbing” cuts to funding after a report revealed that spending on Italy’s cultural heritage dropped from €165 million in 2008 to €75 million in 2013.

It is thought the country’s opera houses have accumulated debts of €300 million. An economic crisis that has blighted the country for more than five years has only exacerbated the problem.

Luigi de Filippi, an Italian violinist and conductor working on the fund-raising campaign, said a shortage of money had contributed to a lack of new ideas in Italian opera.

"Italy has such a rich cultural heritage," he said. "Opera, theatre and culture in general should be a national industry. But various governments have not invested properly in culture and have not properly protected opera houses such as the Francesco Torti.

"And as a result, people are no longer interested."

The crowd-funding campaign in Bevagna, launched in May, has raised €8,000 (£5,675) and the money will be spent on launching three new operas in the Torti theatre. Live streaming of performances will also take place as the town aims to attract a new generation of opera lovers.

Ms Ohtonen is keen to export the initiative to other small towns and villages across Italy. "We had a lot of donations from local people who wanted to see their theatre come alive again," she said.