Villaret Theatre

Raul Solnado opened the Villaret Theatre on 10 January 1965, in a building on Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo, with O Impostor Geral (The Impostor General), a musical adaptation of Gogol by the Portuguese Company of Comedians; it was designed and decorated by Daciano da Costa, and its name is a tribute to the actor João Villaret.¹ The theatre itself says it was the only one in Portugal built on the initiative of an actor, in a former garage.² A few days before the opening, Solnado showed it to journalists, on a visit that RTP filmed.³

On 26 May 1969 RTP’s Zip-Zip, by Solnado, Carlos Cruz and Fialho Gouveia, premiered here, recorded before a live audience. On the first programme, the actress Laura Soveral recited Almada Negreiros’s poem “Pede-se a uma criança: desenha uma flor!” (A child is asked: draw a flower!), and Almada himself was interviewed, with paintings of his on display at the theatre door.⁴ The programme, on Monday nights, brought to light a generation of singers with guitars in hand, who came to be called “baladeiros” (balladeers).⁷ The last one went on air on 29 December 1969.⁶

It was on this stage that Manuel Freire first sang “Pedra Filosofal” (Philosopher’s Stone) in public, on the poem by António Gedeão; he sang it again on the last programme and, in 1971, came back here to receive the Zip-Zip label’s “bronze disc”, for ten thousand records sold.⁷⁶ The broadcast of Francisco Fanhais’s “Cantilena” required backstage negotiations with the censors, and Maria do Amparo also appeared on the programme.⁷⁸ Ana Maria Teodósio, who sang alongside Carlos Alberto Moniz, saw the censors veto as “obscene” the first song she had chosen, and sang another, “Meninos” (Children).⁸⁷

In 1977 another programme by Solnado and Fialho Gouveia, A Visita da Cornélia (Cornélia’s Visit), was recorded here.¹ After works on the stage, the stalls, the dressing rooms and the toilets, paid for by Força de Produção, which manages it, the theatre reopened on 17 September 2026.⁹