Portugal's National Theatre Reopens on the Rossio This Weekend With Free Tickets and the Play That Was On Stage When It Burned
Three years closed, 15.1 million euros of recovery-plan money, and a Macbeth that deliberately echoes the night of 2 December 1964. Entry is free until Sunday.
The Teatro Nacional D. Maria II opens its doors on the Rossio today, three years after closing them. The building has housed Portugal's national theatre since 1846, and the reopening programme runs free of charge until Sunday, with tickets to be collected rather than bought.
The centrepiece is a premiere of Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by the theatre's artistic director, Pedro Penim, with a cast that includes Bárbara Branco, Hugo van der Ding and José Raposo. The choice of play is deliberate. Macbeth was the tragedy on stage on 2 December 1964, the night a fire destroyed most of the theatre.
Fifteen million euros and three years away
The theatre closed in 2023 for requalification work funded through the Recovery and Resilience Plan. According to its board, the refurbishment represented an investment of 15.1 million euros and delivered substantial improvements to safety, accessibility, comfort and the functioning of the building.
The company did not stop working while the scaffolding was up. A programme called Odisseia Nacional took performances and other activities to more than 100 municipalities across the country, an unusually broad reach for an institution normally defined by a single address in central Lisbon. "The moment has finally arrived to open the doors here in the Rossio building," Penim told the news agency Lusa in a recent interview, describing the reopening as an absolutely defining moment in the institution's history and a programme thoroughly marked by the years spent away.
Beyond Macbeth, today brings a videomapping show on the facade and sets from the DJs Beatbombers, Marfox and Zengxrl. Saturday offers guided visits to the theatre and the launch of the Macbeth book. Sunday closes the weekend with Coro do Recomeço, a performance staged across several parts of the building.
A complaint on the eve
The reopening did not arrive without friction. In the days before it, the theatre's workers' committee warned of physical and psychological exhaustion among the team and of improvised working conditions, citing missing furniture, lifts and goods hoists getting stuck, faults in the fire detection system and an absence of air conditioning.
The board responded in a statement that the reopening to the public will take place with the technical and safety conditions required by law, and that the workers' complaint referred to Prólogo, a programme held in June and July while the building was still in a phase of entering service, with systems and equipment being tested and adjusted. The situations identified, it said, were immediately flagged, followed by the teams responsible for the works, the inspection and the maintenance, and resolved.
For anyone living in or visiting Lisbon, the practical detail is the free weekend: entry to the reopening events is at no cost, subject to collecting a ticket, and the building itself is open to be walked through on Saturday.
