The night Lisbon's national theatre burned: 2 December 1964

Carlos Queiroz had been home in Amadora for only a few hours. A second-year drama student, he had a small part in Macbeth at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Lisbon's national theatre, and had played it again that evening. His father liked to fall asleep with a little radio by his ear. At about half past four in the morning of Wednesday 2 December 1964, he woke his son with the news: the Nacional was on fire.1 source1 source

Queiroz set off for the city. A wide safety cordon had been set around the Rossio, the great square at the heart of the Baixa, and he had to go round it. From the edge he could see flames pouring from the top-floor dressing room he shared with the other young actors.1 source1 source

The fire had started in the stage area, hours after the last performance, and spread fast. Many fire crews raced to the Rossio and attacked it quickly, but they could not save the building. As actors and staff arrived, some of them reached the main entrance and joined firefighters and passers-by in a human chain that carried out part of the theatre's library and archive.3 sources3 sources

Amélia Rey Colaço, who had run the company in the building since 1929, watched with her actors and many Lisbon people as it burned. That month the RTP programme Cena Aberta showed her, visibly moved, being comforted by the chief stage machinist, Joaquim Alves da Silva. Queiroz kept his last pay packet, a pale blue envelope of coins that had been in the theatre safe. He says it still smells of smoke.3 sources3 sources

The building that burned was 118 years old, but the idea behind it was older. After the liberal revolution of 9 September 1836, the new head of government, Passos Manuel, asked the writer and politician Almeida Garrett to draw up a plan for a national theatre. Romantic Europe wanted national repertoires, and Garrett was also told to create a drama conservatoire, a theatre inspectorate and prizes for new plays.1 source1 source

The site chosen was the ruin of the Palácio dos Estaus on the north side of the Rossio. Built at the order of Prince Pedro, a son of King João I, and finished in 1456, the palace first lodged distinguished visitors and sometimes the court. From 1584 it was the seat of the Inquisition's Lisbon tribunal and its General Council.1 source1 source

The earthquake of 1755 destroyed the palace and it was rebuilt. In 1820 it housed the liberal provisional government. In 1836 a fire wiped it out, and in 1842 the ruins were demolished. A theatre on the spot would close the square and answer the grid of streets laid out after the earthquake a century before.2 sources2 sources

The architect was Fortunato Lodi, from Bologna, who had family ties to the Count of Farrobo, the impresario of the São Carlos opera house. In a time of strong nationalist feeling, critics including the historian Alexandre Herculano objected to a foreigner. Work only began in 1842. The portico, pediment and columns were changed along the way and the high water table under the square caused trouble, but the result stayed close to Lodi's design.1 source1 source

The doors first opened a few months early. On 29 October 1845, by royal order, a gala marked the birthday of the king consort, Fernando, with a cantata, a comedy by Alexandre Dumas and a farce. Gustavo de Matos Sequeira, the theatre's official historian, wrote that the staging flopped but the party went on until two in the morning. The building, much criticised while it went up, won wide praise.2 sources2 sources

The theatre opened officially on 13 April 1846, during the celebrations of Queen Maria II's 27th birthday (she was born on 4 April), and took her name. The first play was O Magriço, ou os Doze de Inglaterra, by Jacinto Heliodoro de Loureiro. Outside it looked like a classical temple, with an Ionic portico, a sculpted pediment and a statue of Gil Vicente, the father of Portuguese theatre, on top. Inside was an Italian-style horseshoe auditorium with tiers of boxes, worked plaster and a painted ceiling.1 source1 source

Garrett's own Frei Luís de Sousa was staged there in 1850, with sets by the Italian designers Rambois and Cinatti and the novelty of gas lighting. After the Republic was proclaimed in 1910 the house was renamed Teatro Nacional Almeida Garrett. It became the D. Maria II again in 1939.2 sources2 sources

The state owned the building but seldom ran it for long. At first a society of actors managed it under a government inspector, and from 1847 the state paid an annual subsidy and laid down rules, censorship and guidelines for the repertoire. When debts piled up the government took over, and after some fifteen years of direct rule it let the house by tender to private companies.2 sources2 sources

Two companies stand out. The actors Eduardo Brazão and the brothers João and Augusto Rosa held the theatre for most of the 1880s and 1890s and brought Shakespeare and Molière to its stage. The longest concession went to the company of Amélia Rey Colaço and her husband, the actor Felisberto Robles Monteiro, who had married in 1920 and founded the Companhia Rey Colaço-Robles Monteiro the next year. It held the D. Maria II from 1929 until the fire.2 sources2 sources

Even so, the concession was renewed again and again. The company championed Portuguese classics, above all Gil Vicente, whose plays had been left to drama students, and gave a stage to living authors such as Alfredo Cortez, Bernardo Santareno and Luiz Francisco Rebello.2 sources2 sources

For the autumn of 1964 the company brought in an English director, Michael Benthall, to stage Shakespeare's Macbeth in a translation by the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira. Michael Annals designed the sets and costumes, and the designer Lucien Donnat made them. João Guedes played Macbeth and Mariana Rey Monteiro Lady Macbeth, with Varela Silva as Macduff, Lurdes Norberto as Lady Macduff, Raul de Carvalho as Duncan and Paiva Raposo as Banquo. The record of the production at the Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança credits 40 actors.2 sources2 sources

Everyone in the company knew the play's reputation. In theatres, many people will not say “Macbeth” aloud and call it “the Scottish play” instead. Carlos Queiroz, who played Banquo's son Fleance and later spent 35 years working in England, remembers that “the subject was talked about a lot from the moment we started rehearsals”. A rumour went round that an actor had been badly hurt in the final battle when Benthall staged the same production in Japan.1 source1 source

Rehearsals lasted a month and a half. The run had begun little more than a week before the fire. On the night of 1 December the company played as usual and went home; the fire broke out in the early hours of the 2nd.2 sources2 sources

By morning the national theatre was a shell. Cristina Faria, who reconstructed the night from the newspapers of the time, wrote that the fire spared little more than the outer walls. The auditorium that burned was white with gilded ornament, with three tiers of boxes and two galleries. Among the losses were the auditorium chandelier, a painted drop curtain by the Italian architect and stage designer Cinatti, and the ceiling of the main hall, painted by Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro in 1894.2 sources2 sources

The company lost its whole wardrobe, decades of costumes that were described at the time as “the most valuable wardrobe in the Peninsula and in Europe”, and its sets went too. The company restaged its work elsewhere, but the RTP documentary on Amélia Rey Colaço says the loss left it considerably weakened.4 sources4 sources

The archive mattered most to historians. Its books and papers, carried out that night, include rarities that scholars still use to write the history of Portuguese theatre. The portrait of the queen is on show in the theatre today, and the entrance hall that survived holds marble busts of two nineteenth-century stars, José Carlos dos Santos and Francisco Taborda.1 source1 source

The company did not stop. Within weeks it restaged Macbeth at the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon. The President of the Republic, Admiral Américo Tomás, came to a performance with the education minister, Inocêncio Galvão Teles. The programme carried a photograph of the burning theatre and the words “Mas o Nacional continua”, “But the Nacional goes on”. The veteran actress Palmira Bastos spoke from the stage, and the audience stood to applaud.2 sources2 sources

Still officially the company of the national theatre, it played in other Lisbon halls with help from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the government. In 1965 it sublet the Teatro Avenida, a theatre of 1888 on the Avenida da Liberdade that had lived on comedy, drama and revue and had grown shabby.3 sources3 sources

Amélia Rey Colaço paid to make it fit for an official company. She spent about 1,000 contos (a million escudos) on the auditorium and the stage's electrical equipment, which swallowed almost all the insurance money from the fire, itself less than the value lost. She also brought chandeliers, tapestries, velvet curtains and armchairs from her own home, and the designer Lucien Donnat redecorated the hall.1 source1 source

The Avenida reopened on 6 February 1965, two months after the fire. The Diário de Lisboa wrote that the star of the night was the house itself, turned into a small Parisian-style theatre in the heart of Lisbon. Away from the Rossio the company could stage more contemporary writers, such as Max Frisch, Harold Pinter, Lorca and Pirandello, though it still faced censorship and money troubles. It did not give up the classics: a 1965 Auto da Alma by Gil Vicente had sets designed by the modernist artist Almada Negreiros.2 sources2 sources

The company never went home. Early in 1974 Amélia Rey Colaço took it to the São Luís, where her own career had begun, and then closed it. It kept the title of Companhia do Teatro Nacional until it was dissolved, a month after the revolution of 25 April 1974 by one account; the RTP documentary dates its formal end to 1988. Either way, when the D. Maria II reopened in 1978 the company had stopped working. Amélia Rey Colaço backed the creation of the Museu do Teatro, which opened in Lisbon in 1982, and played her last great role in 1985, at the age of 87.3 sources3 sources

The decision to rebuild was taken on the day of the fire, with one condition: the new theatre had to respect the form and image of the old. The project went to the architect Guilherme Rebello de Andrade, whose team made several studies to reconcile the original architecture with the technical and comfort standards of a modern theatre.1 source1 source

Outside, the building stayed strictly neoclassical. Inside, everything was rebuilt and reorganised. The main hall kept its Italian layout, but its size and capacity were adjusted for comfort and sightlines. The Salão Nobre was resized, and a small experimental space, the Sala Estúdio, was built above it. A basement was dug for technical areas and the base of a revolving stage.1 source1 source

The theatre reopened on 11 May 1978, four years after the fall of the dictatorship and 13 and a half years after the fire. The opening programme paired two founders of Portuguese drama and of the house itself: Gil Vicente's Auto da Geração Humana and Garrett's O Alfageme de Santarém. Plays the censors had banned soon reached its stage, among them Felizmente há luar! and Santareno's O Judeu.1 source1 source

Brecht's Mother Courage, which Amélia Rey Colaço had fought to stage, finally reached the stage in 1986 as a co-production between the national theatre and the Novo Grupo/Teatro Aberto, directed by João Lourenço with her pupil Eunice Muñoz in the title role. Since 2004 the theatre has been run as a state-owned company, and in 2012 its building was reclassified as a national monument.2 sources2 sources

For six decades the house left Macbeth alone. It hosted other companies' versions, but its director Pedro Penim says the play was never again produced by the theatre itself. He calls the fire a trauma in its history and says the blame for it always hung over the text.1 source1 source

The memory stayed alive inside the building. In 2016 the artists Miguel Fragata and Inês Barahona built a guided tour of the theatre around the curse, A Visita Escocesa, “The Scottish Visit”, which ended with the fire alarm going off. Penim says the idea of reopening with Macbeth came to him from an exhibition on the theatre's last hundred years, curated by Tiago Bartolomeu Costa, with a whole section on the fire and the 1964 production.2 sources2 sources

In January 2023, by the account of its president and its artistic director (the theatre's own history says 2022), the D. Maria II closed again, this time for works funded by Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan, an investment of close to €10 million. They renewed the sound and ventilation of the Sala Garrett, the main auditorium, gave it a stage that turns and can be raised, and reopened windows that the 1978 rebuilding had blocked with extra floors.4 sources4 sources

Workers also uncovered the letters “M.D.P.”, for the Movimento Democrático Português, a political movement, painted in white on a wall of the second balcony; the theatre chose to keep them. While the building was shut, the company toured more than 100 municipalities.2 sources2 sources

On 18 September 2026, 180 years after the theatre first opened, Penim reopened it with his own translation of Macbeth, with José Raposo and Bárbara Branco in the leading roles, for a run until 31 October. He had wanted to use Bandeira's 1964 translation, but the holders of the poet's rights never replied, though the theatre kept asking for nine months.3 sources3 sources