Giannantonio Selva designed the opera house, inaugurated on May 16, 1792. Its horseshoe-shaped auditorium had 170 identical boxes in tiers, and the facade has a neoclassical colonnade. A fire on December 13, 1836, destroyed it, and the brothers Giambattista and Tommaso Meduna rebuilt it, reopening it on December 26, 1837, with a late-Empire interior.
A second fire on January 29, 1996, which the article describes as arson, destroyed the five tiers of boxes. The facade is the only element to have completely survived both fires. Aldo Rossi's design was used for the reconstruction, and the house reopened on December 14, 2003, with decorations in a Rococo style.
The imperial loggia became the royal box in 1866 and was not part of Selva's original plan. The infobox lists a seating capacity of 1,126. A quoted 2004 source says capacity increased from 840 to 1,000, which conflicts with that figure.
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