Sala Cecília Meireles, Concert hall in Centro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Sala Cecília Meireles is a 670-seat concert hall in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro, installed in a 19th-century eclectic building that formerly housed the Grande Hotel da Lapa and the Cine Colonial. Its main auditorium is used for chamber music and recitals, and a 2014 renovation added the 150-seat Auditório Guiomar Novaes and the Espaço Ayres de Andrade reception area.
The building went up in 1896 as the Armazém do Romão grocery store, later becoming the Hotel Freitas and then the Grande Hotel da Lapa, which hosted landowners and politicians of the Old Republic and appears in Artur de Azevedo's 1897 operetta A capital federal. It was remodelled as the Cine Colonial cinema in 1939, closed in 1961, and was expropriated by governor Carlos Lacerda before opening as a concert hall on 1 December 1965, during Rio's fourth centenary. Governor Marcello Alencar's renovation, completed in 2014, added acoustic treatment and the Auditório Guiomar Novaes.
The hall is named after Cecília Meireles, a poet, journalist and painter who died in November 1964, about a year before the opening; the choice was made by governor Carlos Lacerda, her former colleague at the Correio da Manhã. Critics Andrade Muricy and Renzo Massarani had campaigned for the name of Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia. The 1965 inauguration was part of Rio's fourth centenary celebrations.
The hall sits in Lapa, in the Centro of Rio de Janeiro, and the nearest metro access is via the Lapa/Carioca area of the old centre. The main auditorium holds 670 people, while the smaller Auditório Guiomar Novaes takes 150, so check which room a given concert uses. The Espaço Ayres de Andrade serves as the reception and cocktail area.
The name was a personal choice by governor Carlos Lacerda, who ignored critics' campaign to honour composer Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia. He chose Cecília Meireles, a friend from their time together at the Correio da Manhã in 1929; she had died in November 1964, a year before the hall opened.
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