Christchurch theatre enters golden era with holiday gilding project
Wednesday, 24 December 2025
Every Christmas, Christchurch’s Isaac Theatre Royal goes ‘dark’ - as theatre terminology has it - but this year’s annual deep clean and spruce-up is a particularly glittering affair. VICTORIA MEAKIN reports.
Christchurch’s heritage theatre will look a lot more golden after its traditional Christmas shut-down - thanks to its restoration kitty and an expert art restorer who cut her stripes in the aftermath of Italy’s devastating 1980 earthquake.
Auckland-based Carolina Izzo has brought a small team of restorers south for the Isaac Theatre Royal project, which will see even more of the auditorium’s intricate plasterwork decorated in gold.
The gilding will cost the venue about $100,000 - paid for from its heritage levy, a protected pot of money accumulated by adding a small percentage to ticket prices.
The fund holds money for ongoing heritage maintenance, plus a ‘just in case’ provision, to weather any future natural or other disasters.
Another $150,000 is being spent on routine cleaning and maintenance, which this year involves all stage drapes, rigging and fly equipment being completely removed, together with a full repair and repaint of the 312m² stage, a replacement foyer carpet and work to grind back and repaint the western passageway flooring - one of the two main audience exit routes out of the venue.
To allow for the extra work, the theatre shut down a week earlier than normal, with teams “pushing really hard”, chief executive Greg Ward said, to get everything done in time for its first World Buskers Festival show, Cirque Bon Bon, opening on January 22.
Using more reasonably priced Dutch gold leaf for the gilding work, Izzo’s team - from her Studio Izzo company - are concentrating on reinstating original 1908 gilding on plasterwork above the two royal boxes, together with the ‘festone’ - the garland or decoration along the top side of the stage’s proscenium arch.
They briefly returned last year to add some gold to lower levels, but this summer’s project marks the team’s first significant project at the venue since the earthquake rebuild, when they restored the ornate dome and other heritage elements.
Izzo’s investigations during her post-2011 work discovered gold leaf had covered much of the plaster in Edwardian times, but was painted over during later remodelling.
Returning to the Theatre Royal “feels like home” for Izzo, who graduated from The Institute for Art and Restoration - Palazzo Spinelli in Florence - before the catastrophic Irpinia earthquake in southern Italy in 1980 dictated the early years of her career restoring historic structures in the region.
With a death toll of just under 2500, the 6.9 magnitude quake destroyed entire towns with the damage spread over 26,000km².
Izzo went on to spend four years living and working at the Certosa di Padula - the largest monastery in Italy and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Gilding was a common practice in theatres from the 1700s onwards, partly to help reflect and enhance candlelight.
It was particularly popular in America’s late Victorian ‘Gilded Age’ - the term coined as a metaphor by writer Mark Twain - the thin layers of gold representing the veneer of splendour that covered social decay and inequality.
Izzo’s team is using the less expensive Dutch gold leaf for the project, which is applied following dust removal, sanding and separate layers of undercoat, varnish and adhesive.
They also plan to return next Christmas to gild more areas, including the balcony frontages, but hope to finish this season’s work by January 14.
“It’s a long process and but it's a very satisfying job, because at the end of the day you see something that has been missing for a long time,” Izzo said.