Research – Ten years of the Verdi Theatre in Pordenone
From the theatre to an ‘agent of development’
Just outside the city, less than ten kilometres from here, bulldozers are dismantling, piece by piece, the buildings that once symbolised Electrolux’s glorious era of production: the ‘aquarium’ – as the glass building in Porcia, once the company’s headquarters, is known – now oversized, has been emptied and sold off. The offices are moving out. Those who have recently crossed the threshold of the old complex that once employed thousands of people report that even the landscape is post-industrial, unrecognisable. With workers either redeployed or awaiting redeployment, and the word ‘redundancy’ as the new mantra. But within the city walls, in the centre of Pordenone, it’s a different story, almost like a black-and-white film. As Christmas 2015 approaches, it is a different Pordenone that stands before the shop windows, struggling to recognise itself in the city of a few years ago; and it is rather striking to think that a decade has already passed since the birth of the ‘new’ Teatro Verdi, in the heart of the city, which is invariably flooded every September with crowds drawn in the name of cultural tourism by that Italian gem, Pordenonelegge. It is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and there are those who are beginning to take stock. Daniele Marini, a sociologist at the University of Padua and founder of Community Media Research, has interviewed twenty-five people over the past two months on behalf of the company (which brings together various public authorities) that owns the theatre. The result – as one might have expected – is an accurate portrait of a society that is now entirely service-based.
