The Teatro Degollado is the leading performing arts venue not only in Jalisco but in all of western Mexico. Across three centuries, major Mexican and international artists have taken its stage, making it a benchmark for the performing arts in the country.
Its history goes back to the second half of the 19th century, when Guadalajara was already one of the most important cities in Mexico. In those years, the city’s educated society began to push for a theater worthy of the people of Jalisco and of the city’s standing.
A theater for 19th-century Guadalajara
The idea soon reached the governing elite, who welcomed it. While Santos Degollado was governor of the state, the decree to build the theater was issued.
The theater project was put out to competition, and the winner was Guadalajara-born architect Jacobo Gálvez. Gálvez not only drew up the plans but also directed the construction, laying the first stone in 1856. Today his remains rest in the Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres.
The opening of the Gran Teatro Alarcón
The theater was originally meant to be named after Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza, the most prominent Mexican playwright of the colonial period. It was later renamed Teatro Degollado in honor of General Santos Degollado, its main promoter.
It opened on September 13, 1866, during Mexico’s Second Empire, with Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor. The lead role was sung by the celebrated soprano Ángela Peralta, known internationally as “the nightingale of the Americas.”
Neoclassical architecture of the Teatro Degollado
Located on Plaza de la Liberación, behind the Guadalajara Cathedral, the building is a fine example of neoclassical style. Its slender columns support a marble pediment carved with reliefs of the Muses, with the god Apollo at the center, the work of Benito Castañeda.
The main hall, similar to La Scala in Milan though smaller, holds important works of art. The best known is the mural on its vaulted ceiling, which depicts Canto IV of Dante’s Divine Comedy, painted by Jalisco artists Jacobo Gálvez, Gerardo Suárez and Carlos Villaseñor.
The Teatro Degollado today
In more than 150 years, the theater has gone through several renovations and multiple reopenings: September 13, 1866; October 30, 1880; September 15, 1910; June 28, 1941; September 8, 1964; and November 25, 2005.
The most recent restoration, in the early 2000s, returned the venue to its original splendor and adapted it to the needs of today’s performing arts. The work included new floors, new seating, an improved lighting system, a new wooden stage floor, a hydraulic platform, upgraded air conditioning and remodeled dressing rooms. The proscenium arch, the colossal eagle, the frames, columns, finials and masks on the proscenium boxes were restored with gold leaf. Just as important was the restoration of the stage curtain, which shows a Greek scene called Athenian Festival, by Italian artist Carlos Fontana.
Today the Teatro Degollado is home to the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra (Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco) and hosts other major events. Among the most important are the gala concerts of the Encuentro Internacional del Mariachi y la Charrería (the international mariachi and charrería festival) and the seasons of the Ballet Folclórico de la Universidad de Guadalajara.
Make the most of your visit to the Degollado by seeing other things to do in Guadalajara. Walk east to reach Plaza Tapatía, at the far end of which you will find Mercado Libertad, better known as Mercado San Juan de Dios. Continue east along Paseo Hospicio to reach the Instituto Cultural Cabañas, a former orphanage that is a landmark of Mexican neoclassical architecture. Right behind the Teatro Degollado stands the Guadalajara Cathedral, whose neo-Gothic towers make it the city’s best-known landmark.
📖 You may also like: La Minerva, the neoclassical landmark of western Guadalajara