The Teatro Massimo Bellini is Catania's opera house, occupying its own piazza a few blocks east of the cathedral. The facade is late nineteenth-century neoclassical with baroque flourishes, and the auditorium inside is a four-tier red-and-gold horseshoe with a famously good acoustic.
The opera season runs from autumn to spring with a smaller summer programme. Tickets are far cheaper than at Italy's first-rank houses, and the standard is high — Catania is operatically serious. If you can't see a performance, the box office runs daytime tours of the building.