Opened in 1724 (as the Teatro Nuovo sopra Toledo), the Teatro Nuovo was the chief venue in Naples for the performance of comic opera, at first mainly in Neapolitan dialect. Privately owned by Giacinto de Laurentis and Angelo Carasale and designed by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, the Teatro Nuovo was built specifically for staging opera and was one of the first auditoriums to be built in a horseshoe shape. The original theatre was destroyed by fire in 1861 and a new theatre built on the site in 1864. A surviving plan of the original Teatro Nuovo shows that it could accommodate audiences up to 1000.
Cosimo Morelli after Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, plan of the Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1724