Almost two centuries separate the theatre’s first curtain from its stage today. What began in the early seventeenth century as a Jesuit college, silenced by the order’s expulsion in 1759, was reborn in 1845 when Lázaro Doglioni turned the building into the opera house he had imagined after the great houses of Italy. Decades of applause followed, then decades of neglect, as cinema and television pulled audiences away and the building slipped toward closure. It took the Companhia de Teatro do Algarve, from 2001 onward, to bring Teatro Lethes back to life, restoring its horseshoe-shaped hall and painted ceiling while fitting it for the demands of modern performance.
Slide through the images below to see how the same walls have carried this story, from a building on the edge of ruin to the stage Faro gathers around today.
You can read the whole story about Theater Lethes here.
