Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

On Monday, December 14, 2026 the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome, Via Merulana 244, will host a concert by Mario Biondi. The theater lists it in its calendar under the title THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE, the name of the song that in 2006 turned a singer from Catania known mostly to insiders into an artist who within a few months found himself on British and Japanese radio. An evening of voice and band inside a traditional Italian-style hall, in the heart of the Esquilino district, in mid-December.

Whoever reads this now still has a few weeks ahead. The date is on the calendar, many weeks remain and this changes the sensible way to organize: there is time to decide calmly where to sit, to understand how that hall works, to know what is around and to build the evening instead of just buying a seat and showing up. The district you enter is no ordinary district, and neither is the theater.

Below you'll find everything worth knowing beforehand: what this event is and at what point in Biondi's career it arrives, who the man who sings really is, how the Brancaccio is built and how the acoustics behave in the different sections, how a concert in an Italian-style theater works in general compared with an arena or a club, how to get there, what the theater says about accessibility, and finally what is worth seeing or crossing within 10 minutes on foot, because Via Merulana runs through one of the most layered areas of the city.

A methodological premise, because it helps to read the rest in the right measure. Set list, guests, band lineup, prices and availability of the sections for the evening of December 14, 2026 are not reported here, because they are exactly the information that changes until the last moment and that no reliable source publishes in advance. What follows concerns the artist, the hall, the context and the practical workings: things that remain true even a few weeks later.

What this concert is

It is a single date, in a theater, within a season that at the Brancaccio mixes drama, musicals, dance and live music. The format matters more than it seems. A concert in an Italian-style theater is not the reduced version of a concert in an arena: it is something else, with other rules and another pact between those who sing and those who listen.

In an arena the voice arrives amplified into an enormous volume, the audience moves, the bass works on the body before the ear and the useful dynamic range is compressed into a narrow band, because the reverberation of a sports facility devours everything that falls below a certain threshold. In a theater with stalls and balconies the opposite happens: the overall volume is lower, the silence between one phrase and the next is practically total, and a singer can afford to drop to a whisper knowing the hall will pick it up. For a voice like Biondi's, which works a lot on the low register and on half voice, it is a substantial difference.

The title chosen for the event, THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE, should be read for what it is: the reference to the song that made Biondi known outside Italy. It's not the promise of a set list or a list of what will be performed. It serves to identify the evening in the calendar and to say from which part of his output we are looking: soul sung in English, the formula that in 2006 took him from provincial halls to international playlists.

The date, the time and the time of year

December 14, 2026 falls on a Monday. It's a detail that weighs more than it seems, and it should be said right away because it conditions the rest of the day.

Monday, in Rome, is the dead day of museums and many cultural spaces: many state and civic sites close, and those who arrive in the city in the morning counting on filling the hours before the concert with a visit risk finding closed doors. The basilicas, by contrast, stay open, and this naturally steers the afternoon toward the religious heritage of the area, which within 10 minutes of the theater is of the first rank. Below, in the chapter on the surroundings, you'll find the mental map.

On the start time it's best to be precise about what is verifiable and what is not. The time that circulates for this date is 21:00. The Brancaccio, for music evenings, has however historically also used 20:00, depending on the show. The time that counts is the one printed on the entry ticket and published on the event's official page: it should be read there, and reread in the days immediately before, because half-hour changes on a music evening are more frequent than the public imagines.

The time of year, then, is what it is: mid-December, Rome in Christmas dress, very short days, full dark from 16:45 onward. At 20:30, when the audience arrives on Via Merulana, the street has already been nocturnal for four hours. If the idea is to see something beforehand, it should be planned in the afternoon and not the late afternoon, because the useful light ends sooner than the calendar suggests. It's also the period in which the Roman cold is felt in the evening hours, with high humidity and temperatures that in Piazza Vittorio area drop more than in the compact historic center: the line in front of the entrance, if there is one, is formed outdoors.

Who Mario Biondi is

His name is Mario Ranno, he was born in Catania on January 28, 1971, and the surname everyone knows him by is a paternal inheritance: his father, Giuseppe Ranno, sang under the stage name Stefano Biondi. Taking that name was a gesture of declared continuity, not a marketing trick, and it already says a lot about how this artist places himself with respect to tradition.

He started as a boy, at 12, singing in church choirs and then in Sicilian squares. It's a biographical detail that is usually dismissed in half a line and that instead explains a lot: whoever learns to sing in a nave learns first of all to manage reverb, to leave space between the words, not to fill. These are exactly the qualities that later made his voice recognizable in the studio, where the opposite temptation, filling every bar, is the most widespread.

From the late 1980s he began working alongside leading artists, and in that period he chose English as his main language of singing. This too is a choice that deserves an extra line. In Italy, in the 1990s, singing soul in English meant voluntarily excluding yourself from the main channels: no general-interest radio, no festivals, no television. It meant playing in clubs, jazz festivals, specialized series, with a competent and numerically small audience. Biondi made that choice and stayed with it for nearly 20 years before it produced anything visible from the outside.

The turning point is 2006. The song This Is What You Are, born in a project initially conceived for the Japanese market, reached the hands of the British DJ Norman Jay, who put it on the BBC. From there the track circulated on European radio, returned to Italy by rebound and opened the way to the album Handful of Soul, released the same year. It's a rare trajectory: an Italian artist who becomes known at home after being noticed elsewhere, and for a record sung entirely in another language.

From there the discography proceeds steadily. I Love You More in 2007, a double live album. If in 2009. Yes You Live in 2010. Mario Christmas in 2012, then taken up again and expanded with A Very Special Mario Christmas in 2014. Sun in 2013. Beyond in 2015. Best of Soul in 2016. Dare in 2021, released on January 29, close to his 50th birthday.

The chapter of collaborations is long and crosses worlds that almost never speak to each other. In 2007 with Amalia Gré and with Ornella Vanoni. In 2008 with the Neri per Caso. In 2009 with Karima. In 2010 with Incognito, the historic British acid jazz band, and with Pino Daniele. In 2011 with Anna Tatangelo and with Renato Zero. In 2012 with the Pooh. In 2017 with Marcella Bella. In 2020 the collective song Il nostro tempo, recorded with Annalisa Minetti, Gaetano Curreri, Dodi Battaglia and Petra Magoni for a charity project.

His relationship with Sanremo comes in phases. A guest in 2007, in a duet with Amalia Gré. A guest again in 2009, in a duet with Karima, on an evening in which the orchestra was conducted by Burt Bacharach. In competition only once, in 2018, with the song Rivederti, which finished in 19th place. It's a fact worth keeping in mind when evaluating the career: his popularity doesn't go through the festival and doesn't depend on the festival, which in Italy is a rather uncomfortable position to build and then to maintain.

Among his awards is the Premio Lunezia in the performer section, received in 2014 in Marina di Carrara.

In recent years he has also worked on Italian song. In 2024 he brought to Italian theaters the project Crooning Undercover, built around reinterpretations of the great songwriting tradition: a repertoire that, according to the presentation published by Teatro Brancaccio on the occasion of that tour, included pieces by Francesco De Gregori, Claudio Baglioni, Patty Pravo and Riccardo Cocciante. That project concerns a past tour and in no way anticipates what will be performed in December 2026, but it says something useful about the direction in which his research has moved in recent years: after nearly 20 years of soul in English, a return to the language and repertoire of home, approached with the tools of the crooner.

A curiosity about Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

The curiosity concerns the way his voice reached the Italian public, and it should be told in full because it is almost the reverse of how it usually works.

The normal path of an Italian singer who wants to become known abroad goes through domestic success: first the home audience, then the festival, then television, then, perhaps, a few dates across the border. In Biondi's case the opposite happened. A song recorded with a very distant market in mind, Japan, ended up in the hands of a London DJ, who put it on air on a British public radio station. From London the track spread to European radio. And only at that point, by rebound, did the name arrive in Italy with enough force to make news.

It means that for years, in Italy, there was a singer who filled clubs and jazz festivals without the general public knowing of his existence, and who then became suddenly familiar to everyone thanks to British radio rotation. Those who had followed him earlier suddenly found themselves surrounded. Those who discovered him in 2006 thought, in perfect good faith, that they were facing a newcomer. He was instead a professional with about 18 years of work behind him.

There is a second layer, less told. The choice of English, which for almost two decades was his commercial limit in Italy, turned out in the end to be the key to everything. A soul record in Italian, in 2006, would never have ended up on a London radio station. The constraint that had kept him at the margins is exactly what took him out. It's not a moral, it's a productive coincidence, but it explains why in that repertoire the language isn't an accessory: it is the very condition in which that voice found its place.

Last detail, the lightest and at the same time the most revealing. The song that gives its title to the Roman evening of December 14, 2026 is the same one that 20 years earlier made the difference. It doesn't often happen that an artist, after a full career and a wide catalog, still chooses to identify with the debut piece. Usually that title becomes cumbersome and one tends to hide it. Here it is put on the cover.

Soul sung in English by a Catanese, and why it worked

It's worth pausing a moment on the sound, because the way it is described around tends to oversimplify. Calling Biondi a crooner is correct but partial, and risks suggesting the wrong image: the stand microphone, the tuxedo, the big orchestra behind and a repertoire of American standards.

Biondi comes to that technique by another road. His training is soul and rhythm and blues, not the Broadway standard. His naturally deep timbre gives him a low zone few Italian singers have, and the phrasing derives from the black American school, where the note is reached with a movement, not struck head-on. The result is a recognizable middle way: the crooner's softness applied to soul material, with a rhythm section that keeps the groove instead of merely accompanying.

In the hall this produces a very specific effect. The strong passages arrive, but they are not the center. The center is the moments when the accompaniment thins out and the almost spoken voice remains, where you hear the breath. These are the moments that in a large system get lost and that in a theater hold up beautifully. It's also the reason why, at an evening like this, the audience's background noise weighs more than elsewhere: in an arena nobody notices a conversation in the fourth row, in an Italian-style hall even the singer hears it.

Something nobody tells you about Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

The thing almost nobody says concerns the hall, not the artist, and concerns an asymmetry that at the Brancaccio is particularly sharp: the best section for seeing and the best section for hearing don't coincide.

The Brancaccio has a wide stalls area and two tiers of balconies. The grid of sections the theater uses for music evenings distinguishes the poltronissima and the poltrona in the stalls, then the first balcony and the second balcony, the latter divided into two bands. The commercial logic is linear: the closer to the stage, the more the seat costs. The acoustic logic is quite another thing.

In the very first rows you see everything, but the sound arrives unbalanced and direct from the side speakers. The point at which a theater system is tuned is the center of the stalls, roughly between the 8th and the 15th row, on the central axis. That is where the sound engineer sets up the mixing desk, and it's where you hear exactly what has been decided to let you hear. Those who choose that band pay less than the first rows and get a better result.

The first balcony deserves a separate discussion. It's the most underrated section by the Italian public, which tends to consider the gallery a fallback choice. In an Italian-style hall the frontal first balcony often offers the cleanest listening of all: you are slightly above the sources, the sound arrives without being absorbed by the heads of the rows in front, and the perspective on the stage is complete. For a concert built on low dynamics it is, in many halls, the smartest position in relation to what you spend. It should be remembered, however, that the balconies can only be reached by stairs.

Teatro Brancaccio as a space

The Teatro Brancaccio is at Via Merulana 244, in the Esquilino district, along the straight street that connects Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni in Laterano. It is part of the Palazzo Brancaccio complex, the last noble palace built in Rome, designed by Luca Carimini for the Brancaccio family at the far end of the Oppian Hill.

The hall was inaugurated on January 16, 1916 under the name Teatro Morgana, built by the engineer Carlo Sacconi. The name didn't last: it soon became Politeama Brancaccio, a formula indicating a hall able to host different genres, from opera to variety, from ballet to drama. That mixed vocation has never been lost and is still today the hallmark of the programming.

The successive artistic directions tell well how the vocation of the space changed. Gigi Proietti from 2001 to 2007. Maurizio Costanzo from 2007 to 2010. Stage Entertainment from 2010 to 2012, an international company specialized in musicals, which in that two-year period steered the hall decisively toward imported large-scale musical theater. Alessandro Longobardi from 2012 onward, with a line that holds together musicals, drama, dance, contemporary circus, children's theater and a substantial concert section.

On the exact capacity a note of transparency is in order. The precise number of seats isn't explicitly published on the theater's official site, and the figures circulating elsewhere vary considerably, also because the configuration of the hall changes depending on the staging. What is certain is the placement: the Brancaccio ranks among the Roman theaters of greatest capacity, in a size range comparable to that of the city's great historic halls, and well above a club or a neighborhood auditorium.

For a general profile of the space, regardless of the show on the program, the reference remains Teatro Brancaccio.

The advice I give you for visiting Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

There is only one piece of advice and it concerns time: arrive on Via Merulana at least an hour before the start time, and make sure that hour isn't lost time but part of the evening.

I explain why in concrete terms, because put like this it sounds like the usual generic recommendation and instead has very specific reasons.

First reason: the entrance check at a theater with a full hall takes real time. With several hundred people entering almost all within the same half hour, with ticket verification and escort to the seat by the hall staff, a queue always forms. In mid-December that queue forms in the street, in the cold, on a sidewalk that isn't very wide. Those who arrive with an hour of margin enter when nobody is there yet and sit down calmly.

Second reason: the seat must be understood before the lights go down. Finding the right section, the right staircase, the right row in a historic hall with separate entrances is not immediate for someone who has never been. Doing it with the hall still lit and half empty is trivial. Doing it five minutes before the start, with everyone seated and the staff busy elsewhere, is another matter.

Third reason, and for me the main one: that hour is the best moment to be in the Esquilino. Via Merulana in December, after sunset, with the shop windows lit and the traffic thinning, is one of the most underrated evening walks in Rome. From the theater, climbing north, in seven or eight minutes you reach Santa Maria Maggiore, which in the evening, lit from the square, has a presence that by day, with the buses and the groups, is completely lost. Going down in the opposite direction, in 12 or 13 minutes you arrive in front of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, at the end of the straight stretch. They are two ends of one of the most deliberately designed streets in the city.

A piece of advice within the advice, for those with a car: leave it at home. Via Merulana area in the evening is complicated, free spaces are rare and the search for parking can cost more time than the whole trip. Metro line A has a stop a few minutes away and runs until late, and this solves the problem at its root, for the return as well.

How concerts in a theater work

For those who mostly frequent clubs and arenas, a concert in a theater has different rules that are worth knowing in advance, because they determine if the evening works.

Everyone seated, everyone numbered. There is no standing room. The number printed on the ticket corresponds to a precise seat and you stay in it for the entire duration. Standing up in the middle of the show, in an Italian-style hall, blocks the view of those behind, and the audience generally avoids it spontaneously until the finale.

The start is punctual. In theaters the stated time is respected with a small margin, much more than in clubs, where a half-hour delay is considered normal. Those who calculate their arrival on the habits of clubs risk missing the opening of the show.

There may or may not be an intermission. It depends on the structure of the evening and isn't always declared in advance. If there is one, it lasts between 15 and 20 minutes and the audience goes out to the foyers. If there isn't, the show runs without pauses. It's best not to take either hypothesis for granted, especially for those who need to plan around transport for the return.

Photos and recording. At music evenings the policy varies from production to production, and the rule is communicated in the hall by staff or announced before the start. The prudent criterion, always valid: no flash, ever. No prolonged filming. No lit screen pointed toward the stage while those behind try to watch.

The encore. In theater concerts the finale is almost always in two parts, with a return after the applause. Those who get up at the first dimming of the lights to avoid the crush regularly miss the most intimate part of the evening, which is often the one in which the singer remains with only one or two instruments.

Another well-known fact, and yet rarely mentioned

The fact is this: Via Merulana is not an ancient street. It seems the natural backbone of the Esquilino, and instead it is a deliberate urban planning operation, born to connect two papal basilicas in a straight line.

Anyone walking from Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni in Laterano has the feeling of following something that has always been there. In reality that straight stretch is the product of a precise idea of the city: making the pilgrimage between the great basilicas legible and walkable, giving the faithful a single route instead of a labyrinth of alleys. Rome, for centuries, worked this way, and this street is one of the clearest examples of that way of thinking about urban space: first the destination is decided, then the path to reach it is cut.

The consequence is that everything you see along Via Merulana is more recent than the street itself, or came to face it later. The Palazzo Brancaccio that houses the theater dates from the late 19th century, and is the last noble palace that an aristocratic Roman family had built from scratch: after it the city built ministries, banks, hotels and bourgeois apartment buildings, but no more residences for show. The Palazzo Merulana, farther along toward Piazza Vittorio, is a 20th-century building converted into a museum. The surrounding building fabric is in very large part post-unification, the product of the building fever that transformed the Esquilino from a zone of villas and vineyards into a residential district within a few decades.

Why is this fact cited so little despite being known? Because it contrasts with the mental image people have of Rome, where everything that looks old is automatically considered ancient. The Esquilino is one of the most profoundly redesigned districts of the modern city, and the theater you enter on December 14, 2026 belongs exactly to that season: a building from the 1910s, on a street laid out in the 16th century, inside a rebuilt district, resting on one of the oldest hills of Rome. Four overlapping eras in 200 meters.

Tickets and access, in general

Only the mechanisms are reported here, not prices or availability for the date of December 14, 2026: they are information the theater publishes on the event's official page and which changes over time.

The theater's box office. Teatro Brancaccio has a physical box office at Via Merulana 244. The published hours are Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00. On Sunday the box office opens to the public during show hours, if there is a show. On Monday it is closed. This last line deserves attention for this very date: December 14, 2026 is a Monday, so those counting on stopping by the box office in the afternoon of the same day should check beforehand, because on a show day opening during performance hours is the practice, but the ordinary Monday regime is closure.

Direct contact. The theater gives the address botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it as the box office contact. It is the useful channel for questions no web page resolves: reserved seats, accessibility, special situations.

The official page. Prices by section, the exact start time, any reductions and entry rules can be read on the official site of Teatro Brancaccio. It is the only source worth consulting for the data that changes.

On the price structure. Without citing figures, the criterion at the Brancaccio's music evenings is the band by section: poltronissima, poltrona, first balcony, second balcony in its two bands. The difference between the most expensive and the cheapest section, at this theater's music evenings, is typically more than double. It's a gap that makes the reflection on the section much more than a matter of detail.

On presale. For music evenings sales generally go through an authorized network, as well as the box office. The safest way not to go wrong is to always start from the event's page on the theater's site and follow the channel the theater itself indicates, instead of searching for the show's name on a search engine and trusting the first result. The difference, in terms of guarantees on the ticket purchased, is substantial.

Accessibility

On this point Teatro Brancaccio publishes precise information, and it's right to report it as it is worded, because it is rare to find a theater that writes its own limits so clearly.

Dedicated seats. The theater makes available four seats in the stalls for people with motor disabilities who use a wheelchair, plus two additional seats for people with walking difficulties.

Access to the stalls. A dedicated ramp is available to reach the stalls. Hall staff indicate the route that complies with regulations.

Restrooms. The wheelchair-accessible restroom is on the ground floor and can be reached from the stalls foyer.

Declared limitations. The elevators do not reach the gallery: wheelchairs cannot access the balcony sections. It's the most important piece of information in the whole chapter, because it means that for those who move in a wheelchair the choice of section is forced, and must therefore be set at booking and not on the day.

Visual and hearing disabilities. The theater reserves seats in the stalls upon booking, until availability runs out.

Service dogs. Access with service dogs is permitted upon request sent to the box office, attaching the disability certificate that specifies the service the animal performs.

How to book. The procedure indicated involves sending the completed booking form, with a copy of the disability certificate or the Disability Card, to the address botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it.

Two practical observations the theater doesn't write but which follow directly from what is published. The first: four wheelchair spaces for a hall of large capacity are few, so the booking should be made as soon as sales open and not in the final weeks. The second: the request goes through email and attachments, so it isn't instant, and a response time must be allowed for. Those who need those spaces for December 14, 2026 must act well ahead of those buying an ordinary seat.

The right photo to take at Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

The right photo, for an evening like this, isn't taken inside the hall. I say it with conviction, and the reason isn't only about etiquette.

Inside a theater, with stage lights and without flash, a smartphone almost always produces the same image: a dark silhouette against a colored blotch, the face overexposed by the spotlights and everything else black. It's a photo that returns nothing and meanwhile lights up the face of the person taking it in a dark hall, disturbing the three rows behind. Add that at an evening built on low dynamics the simulated shutter noise and the screen light are perceptible, and the calculation is quickly done. If you really want a souvenir from inside, a single shot at the moment of the final applause, with the hall lit and the house lights on, is worth more than 20 attempts during the show.

The photo that remains is another, and it is taken before going in.

The facade from the other sidewalk. The best view of the Brancaccio is obtained by crossing Via Merulana and standing on the opposite sidewalk, slightly to the side of the entrance axis. From there the whole facade fits with the lit sign, and the street in the foreground with the lights of moving cars gives depth. In December, at 20:00, the scene is completely nocturnal: it's best to rest the phone on a pole or a parked car and let the exposure lengthen, instead of raising the sensitivity and getting a grainy photo.

The blue hour on Via Merulana. In mid-December the useful window is very narrow, roughly between 17:00 and 17:30, when the sky still keeps a deep blue tint and the artificial lights are already on. It's the moment when urban photos work best, because the sky isn't yet a black blotch and doesn't overexpose. Those who arrive in the area early can use that half hour for the straight stretch of Via Merulana, with the perspective running off toward San Giovanni.

The apse of Santa Maria Maggiore. Seven or eight minutes on foot from the theater, climbing. The rear of the basilica, the one facing Piazza dell'Esquilino with the obelisk, lit in the evening is one of the most photogenic and least photographed subjects in the city, because everyone concentrates on the main facade. Vertical, obelisk included, with the apse as backdrop.

Some important events that happened here in history

The Brancaccio is a little over a century old and in that century has gone through every possible phase of an Italian theater. The passages that really count are four.

January 16, 1916, the inauguration. The hall opened under the name Teatro Morgana, inside the Palazzo Brancaccio complex, built by the engineer Carlo Sacconi. The historical moment isn't secondary: Italy had been at war for less than a year, and inaugurating a large theater at that juncture is a choice that says a lot about the vitality of the district in which it was born, the post-unification Esquilino, then the newest and fastest-growing part of the city.

1937, the arrival of cinema. From that year the space also worked as a movie theater. It's the story of almost all the great Roman theaters in the 20th century: cinema pays the bills, live performance retreats. Decades of mixed use and progressive wear followed, until a decline that brought the hall to the brink of irrelevance.

1978, the reopening. After a restoration, the theater returned to full activity on the initiative of Gabriele Lavia and Gigi Proietti. It's the moment when the Brancaccio rejoined the circuit that counts. That those two names reopened it, one tied to classical theater and the other to a direct relationship with the Roman public, is almost a program: the large hall that gives up neither quality nor popularity.

The two years 2010 to 2012, international musicals. The management entrusted to Stage Entertainment brought to the Brancaccio musical productions of international scale, with the technical demands they entail. It's the phase that gave the hall its reputation as a space equipped for large musical shows, a reputation that remains afterward, under the direction of Alessandro Longobardi, in place since 2012.

Above this theatrical history runs another, that of the place. The theater rests on the Oppian Hill, an offshoot of the Esquilino, that is on a sector of Rome that below street level preserves layers from the imperial age. A few hundred meters away is the Domus Aurea, and within 10 minutes on foot you meet San Pietro in Vincoli and the Basilica of Santa Prassede. A century of theatrical history resting on 2,000 years of urban history.

Who has passed through Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

The list of those who have stepped onto that stage is one of the reasons it is worth arriving early and looking around before the lights go down.

On the side of drama and Italian popular theater, the Brancaccio has hosted Ettore Petrolini, Totò, Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani. Four names that tell a whole era: Roman variety, avanspettacolo, the passage from the stage to the cinema that in Rome was smoother than elsewhere. Petrolini and Magnani, in particular, belong to that line of theater born in halls like this and which then shaped postwar Italian cinema.

On the opera side appears Giuseppe Di Stefano, one of the most celebrated Italian tenors of the 20th century, and this confirms the politeama vocation mentioned: a hall that in the same decade could host an internationally ranked tenor and a variety show.

The musical chapter is the most surprising. At the Brancaccio performed Louis Armstrong, Fabrizio De André, Adriano Celentano and, in 1968, Jimi Hendrix.

It's worth stopping a second on this last name, because it's the kind of information that seems like an urban legend and is instead documented. In 1968 Jimi Hendrix was at the absolute peak of his international fame, and his Italian tour touched few cities. That one of those dates was held in an Italian-style theater on Via Merulana, in a district then considered peripheral to the center of Roman entertainment, says a lot about how the concert circuit worked before arenas and stadiums existed. There was no alternative: the big theaters were the only spaces with adequate capacity, stage and electrical system. For a handful of years, between the late Sixties and the early Seventies, Italian theaters hosted international rock before rock built its own venues.

Lining up Armstrong, Hendrix, De André, Celentano, Petrolini, Totò, Magnani and Di Stefano gives the sense of the hall you enter on December 14, 2026. It's not a specialized place: it's a place that for a century has hosted everything that needed a large hall and good acoustics. A soul concert, in that list, is perfectly at home.

In the present, the Brancaccio's music season continues to interweave genres. In the same span of months the theater's program welcomes events very different from one another, from author pop to Italian song: among others, those who have passed or will pass through this hall include Roberto Vecchioni, Arisa, Mr. Rain and Michele Bravi. It's the same logic as the politeama of 1916, applied a hundred years later.

How to get there

The address is Via Merulana 244, Esquilino district. The area is well served by public transport and poorly served by parking: the practical conclusion is only one.

Metro, line A. It's the natural route. The reference stop is Vittorio Emanuele, from which you reach the theater in a few minutes on foot along a flat route. Alternatively, the Manzoni stop serves well those arriving from the San Giovanni side. From Termini station, which is on the same line A, it is a single stop.

Metro, line C. Line C serves the eastern side of the city and interchanges with line A at San Giovanni. For those arriving from the southeast districts it's a convenient solution, with a change at San Giovanni and then one stop of line A to Manzoni, or with a few minutes of bus along Via Merulana.

Train and Termini station. Termini is about 15 minutes on foot from the theater, with a simple route that passes in front of Santa Maria Maggiore and then turns onto Via Merulana. It's the route I recommend to those arriving the same day from out of town with light luggage: it's short, lit and crosses the most beautiful part of the district.

Bus. The axis of Via Merulana and Piazza Vittorio is served by several city lines, including those connecting Termini to San Giovanni. Lines and routes are changed with some frequency, so it's best to check on the day on the Roman public transport app instead of trusting a number read months earlier.

On foot. From the Colosseum it's about 15 minutes climbing the Oppian Hill. From Santa Maria Maggiore seven or eight minutes downhill along Via Merulana. From St. John Lateran about a dozen minutes on a slight uphill. For those staying between Monti, Esquilino and Termini, walking remains the best choice.

Car. Not recommended. The area is subject to traffic restrictions, surface spaces in the evening are rare and irregular parking in that zone is regularly fined. Those who arrive by car anyway should reckon with a paid garage and a stretch on foot, and allow extra time.

The return. It's the part always forgotten. A show that starts at 21:00 presumably ends between 23:00 and 23:30, and the Roman metro on a weekday closes late in the evening: the last useful run should be checked before leaving home, because discovering at midnight that the turnstile is closed is an avoidable end to the evening. Alternatively there remain the night surface lines, with longer waits.

What is around: Via Merulana, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Esquilino

The theater is in one of the densest points of Rome, and those who arrive a couple of hours early have serious choices ahead, not fallbacks.

Via Merulana. It's the straight stretch connecting the two basilicas, and it should be walked at least once in full, because it's an exercise in urban perspective built on purpose. Walking north you have Santa Maria Maggiore as the vanishing point. Walking south you have San Giovanni. In between flows a fabric of post-unification palaces, historic shops, monumental doorways and neighborhood shop windows. In December, with the lights on, the walk gains a lot.

Santa Maria Maggiore. Seven or eight minutes on foot is Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the four papal basilicas, with the early Christian mosaics of the nave and the gilded coffered ceiling. Entry to the church is free, as in the other papal basilicas. Those with enough time can also consider the basilica's museum route, which however has its own hours and access arrangements and should be checked beforehand. On a Monday afternoon, when many museums are closed, it's one of the few great visits available.

Palazzo Merulana. A few minutes toward Piazza Vittorio is Palazzo Merulana, a museum devoted to the Scuola Romana and 20th-century Italian art, housed in a converted rationalist building. It's a collection of reasonable size, which can be visited well in an hour and a half, and is the right choice for those who want something substantial but not demanding before an evening at the theater. Hours and opening days should be checked in advance, because the museum isn't open every day.

Palazzo Brancaccio. It's the building of which the theater is part. The page on Palazzo Brancaccio clarifies a point on which many printed guides have fallen behind: for decades it housed the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale, which is no longer here, having merged into the collections of the Museo delle Civiltà at EUR. Anyone who turns up counting on visiting that museum on Via Merulana makes a wasted trip.

Piazza Vittorio and the market. Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II is the large arcaded quadrilateral that forms the heart of the post-unification Esquilino, with its gardens and the ancient remains inside, among them the celebrated Porta Alchemica, one of the most enigmatic presences in the city. Not far off is the Nuovo Mercato Esquilino, which inherited the square's historic market: it is the most international market in Rome, where Roman shopping coexists with stalls of products from half the world. It operates in the morning and the early hours of the afternoon, so it's an option for the day and not the evening.

The less-trodden churches. They are the real treasure of the area, and almost always free to enter. The Basilica of Santa Prassede, a short walk from Santa Maria Maggiore, holds in the chapel of San Zeno one of the most extraordinary mosaic cycles in Rome, a space entirely covered in gold that organized groups almost always skip. A little farther, on the Monti side, is the Basilica of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti, with a crypt and a layering that goes back to the origins of Christian Rome.

If the music evening becomes a weekend. Those who build a stay around this date will find other opportunities in the city in the same week and the following ones: to stay with live music in an intimate setting, the city's historic clubs are the Alexanderplatz Jazz Club, Gregory's Jazz Club and the Elegance Cafè Jazz Club, while the Casa del Jazz, inside its park on the Aventine, remains the institutional home of the genre in the city. Also in December 2026, in other Roman halls, are scheduled Sergio Cammariere, on December 11, and Noemi, on December 22.

Quick questions

When is the concert?
Monday, December 14, 2026.

Where?
At Teatro Brancaccio, Via Merulana 244, Rome, Esquilino district.

What title is it announced under?
The theater lists it in its calendar as THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE, from the name of the song that in 2006 made Mario Biondi known internationally.

What time does it start?
The time that circulates is 21:00, but the Brancaccio also uses 20:00 for music evenings. The valid time is the one published on the event's official page and printed on the entry ticket: check it there.

Who is Mario Biondi?
A singer born in Catania on January 28, 1971, whose legal name is Mario Ranno. The stage name derives from his father's pseudonym, Giuseppe Ranno, who sang as Stefano Biondi.

Why is he called a crooner?
For the deep timbre and the way of singing close to the microphone, soft and resting on the breath, typical of the crooning tradition. His training, however, comes from soul and rhythm and blues more than from the American standard.

What is his best-known song?
This Is What You Are, from 2006, on the album Handful of Soul from the same year.

Has he taken part in Sanremo?
Yes. A guest in 2007 and 2009, in competition only once in 2018 with Rivederti, which finished 19th.

What is his most recent album among those documented?
Dare, released on January 29, 2021.

Is the set list known?
No, and none is guessed here. Set lists aren't released in advance and change from date to date.

Is it known who will play with him?
The lineup for this date hasn't been communicated. Ensembles change from tour to tour.

How much do tickets cost?
The prices by section can be read on the event's official page on the theater's site. The bands used by the Brancaccio for music evenings are poltronissima, poltrona, first balcony and second balcony in two bands.

Where is the box office?
At Via Merulana 244, open Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00. On Sunday it opens during show hours, if there is a show. On Monday it is closed.

What is the box office contact?
The address given by the theater is botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it.

Is the theater wheelchair accessible?
Yes, in the stalls. The theater declares four dedicated seats for wheelchair users, plus two seats for walking difficulties, a dedicated ramp for the stalls and an accessible restroom on the ground floor. The elevators do not reach the gallery, so the balcony sections are not accessible by wheelchair.

How do you book accessible seats?
By sending the box office the completed booking form with a copy of the disability certificate or the Disability Card. It's best to do so as soon as sales open, because the dedicated seats are few.

Can you enter with a service dog?
Yes, upon request sent to the box office, attaching the disability certificate that specifies the service the animal performs.

Can you take photographs during the concert?
It depends on the production's rules, which are communicated in the hall. In any case no flash and no prolonged filming. The best photos, at an evening like this, are taken before going in.

Is there an intermission?
It depends on the structure of the evening and isn't always declared in advance.

How do you get there by public transport?
Metro A, stops Vittorio Emanuele or Manzoni, both a few minutes on foot. From Termini it's about 15 minutes on foot passing in front of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Is it worth coming by car?
No. The area has restrictions, surface spaces are rare and irregular parking is fined.

How far is it from the Colosseum?
About a quarter of an hour on foot across the Oppian Hill.

When was the theater inaugurated?
On January 16, 1916, under the name Teatro Morgana, inside the Palazzo Brancaccio complex.

Who runs it?
The direction has been entrusted to Alessandro Longobardi since 2012. Previously Gigi Proietti, Maurizio Costanzo and the company Stage Entertainment succeeded one another.

What can you do nearby on a Monday afternoon?
The basilicas stay open when many museums close: Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Prassede, San Pietro in Vincoli and San Giovanni in Laterano are all within a quarter of an hour on foot.

Before leaving home

Summary of the essentials. Mario Biondi concert at Teatro Brancaccio, Via Merulana 244, Rome, Monday, December 14, 2026, announced in the calendar under the title THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE. Italian-style hall with stalls and two tiers of balconies, sections poltronissima, poltrona, first balcony and second balcony in two bands, all seats seated and numbered. Box office at Via Merulana 244, Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00, closed Monday, contact botteghino@teatrobrancaccio.it. Accessibility: four seats in the stalls for wheelchairs plus two for walking difficulties, dedicated ramp, accessible restroom on the ground floor, balconies not reachable by wheelchair, booking by email with documentation. Arrival by metro A at Vittorio Emanuele or Manzoni, or 15 minutes on foot from Termini. Car not recommended.

Three things count more than the others. The first: the start time should be checked on the event's official page, because for this date the 21:00 indication circulates while the theater also uses 20:00 for music evenings, and a half hour's difference changes the whole organization of the day. The second: the section should be chosen by thinking about what really matters, because in an Italian-style hall the front stalls are the best place to see but not to hear, and the frontal first balcony remains the smartest choice in relation to what you spend. The third: arriving an hour early, on a December Monday, means having time to walk Via Merulana to Santa Maria Maggiore and back with the basilica lit behind you, which is a much better way to begin the evening than standing in line in the cold.

For prices, exact time, availability of the sections and access rules, the source to consult remains the official site of Teatro Brancaccio, which publishes the page devoted to each event on the program.

Frequently asked questions about Mario Biondi in Concert in Rome, Teatro Brancaccio, December 14, 2026

When is Mario Biondi's concert at the Brancaccio?

Mario Biondi's concert at Teatro Brancaccio takes place on Monday, December 14, 2026, under the calendar title THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE, from the name of the song that in 2006 made him known internationally.

Where is Teatro Brancaccio?

Teatro Brancaccio is at Via Merulana 244, in the Esquilino district, along the straight street that connects Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni in Laterano, inside the Palazzo Brancaccio complex.

What time does Mario Biondi's concert start?

The time that circulates for the concert is 21:00, but Teatro Brancaccio also uses 20:00 for some music evenings, so the exact time should be checked on the entry ticket.

How do you get to Teatro Brancaccio?

Teatro Brancaccio is well served by the metro, line A, stop Vittorio Emanuele, from which you reach it in a few minutes on foot along a flat route. Alternatively the Manzoni stop serves those arriving from the San Giovanni side.

Are the seats at Teatro Brancaccio numbered?

Yes, at Teatro Brancaccio all seats are seated and numbered, divided between poltronissima and poltrona in the stalls, first balcony and second balcony in two bands: there is no standing section.

Is Teatro Brancaccio accessible to people with disabilities?

Yes, the theater makes available four seats in the stalls for people with motor disabilities who use a wheelchair, plus two additional seats for people with walking difficulties.

Where do you buy tickets for Mario Biondi at the Brancaccio?

Teatro Brancaccio has a physical box office at Via Merulana 244, open Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00 to 19:00, while on Sunday it opens at different times tied to the show. Prices and availability for the evening of December 14, 2026 should be checked on the theater's official page.

Who is Mario Biondi?

Mario Biondi, the protagonist of the concert at Teatro Brancaccio, has the legal name Mario Ranno, was born in Catania on January 28, 1971, and took his stage name in inheritance from his father Giuseppe Ranno, who sang under the pseudonym Stefano Biondi.

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