n the town of Penedo, State of alagoas, in the later 19th century, certain citizens were concerned with the cultural and artistic growth of the inhabitants. Under the leadership of Manuel Carlos Sobrinho, on the 16th of August 1865, they founded the Seventh of September Philharmonic Society.
Even without a meeting-place of its own, the society brought its members together for long and fierce debates about de latest artistic happenings in Brazil and Europe.
After a time, in the understanding that the Philharmonic Society appealed largely to those wishing to improve their taste in music and dance, Manuel Carlos Sobrinho resolved upon creation of a place for performing of the scenic arts.
A theatre, of course.
A foud-raising society was organized. "On September 8th 1878, at 4 in the afternoon, this first stone was laid by the Imperial Sete de Setembro Philharmonic Society, witch was undertaken construction of this Theatre. The sponsors are Their Honours Governor Augusto Victor de Barros, Capt. Manoel Gomes Ribeiro and the merchant José Maria Pereira."
In the same year, on December 16th, the Municipal Chamber approved the plan, by the Italian architect Luiz Lucarini.
The Sete de Setembro Theatre, an offshoot of the sete de Setembro Philharmonic, was opened on September 7th (as was appropriate), 1884, with the play "O Violino do Diabo" ("The Devil´s Violin").
Like all other Brazilian theaters, after the opening the earliest days were the best; companies and spectators were perfectly attuned to the observation of Luiz Shreiner, in 1888: "The most noble and useful of all pastimes is art, and heretheatre takes pride of place. In the theatre, poetry and dialectic, music and painting come together. Theatre, this noble invention, aims not just at entertainment; its intentions are higher, for it wishes to ennoble both art and soul. It teaches the art of living among men, it protects agains vice and enjoins virtue with more vehemence than any Dominican (...) A good theatre is, and ever will be, entertainment in one of its noblest forms; it is one of the best and most influential institutions of State, a true educator. Thus the representatives of the nation need not scruple to take upon their consciences the necessary costs. The police should keep watch only over certain playhouses and low haunts which give themselves the name of theatre; these are nothing more than dens of vice and places of rendez-vous for all sorts of frivolous people".
From the early 20th century on, a vicious circle began to corrode the underlying structure of the Theatre´s so-far successful events.
Dissatisfied with the precarious conditions and the very samall public, the best companies began to look elsewhere. The public, dissatisfied with the precarious conditions and the very small number of best companies, began to seek entertainment elsewhere.
One such possibility, the cinema, was so important that for a time the Sete de Setembro Theatre was full once more. As the Ideal Cinema, however!
In 1982, during the mandate of Raimundo Marinho as Mayor, an exchange was carried out: the Sete de Setembro Theatre for the Athletic Association of the Bank of Brazil. The Theatre passed to the Municipality, thus becoming increasingly vulnerable to destruction.
Falling into ruin, it acquired another function : as a platform for the election of candidates to public office. They all promised to rebuild the Theatre. Naturally, none of them did.
When only the four walls were left, the Theatre was at last restored, or, rather, completely rebuild with State and Federal funds and through the initiative of Alita Lopes Andrade de Alencar, State Secretary for Culture.
Today the oldest theatre in Alagoas has gone back to its original purpose, the encouragement of culture and the arts, and above all the arts of the stage.