Teatro La Fenice (pronounced [la
feˈniːtʃe], "The Phoenix") is an opera house in
Venice, Italy. It is one of "the most famous and renowned
landmarks in the history of Italian theater" and in the
history of opera as a whole. Especially in the 19th century, La
Fenice became the site of many famous operatic premieres at which the
works of several of the four major bel canto era composers –
Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi – were performed.
Its name reflects its role in
permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes"
despite losing the use of three theaters to fire, the first in 1774
after the city's leading house was destroyed and rebuilt but not
opened until 1792; the second fire came in 1836, but rebuilding was
completed within a year. However, the third fire was the result of
arson. It destroyed the house in 1996 leaving only the exterior
walls, but it was rebuilt and re-opened in November 2004. In order to
celebrate this event the tradition of the Venice New Year's Concert
started.
Historic notes
Seven old theaters were active in
Venice at the end of the eighteenth century, two for the production
of plays and the others for music. The grandest of these was the
Teatro San Benedetto, which stood on the site currently occupied by
the Rossini cinema. Built by the Grimani family in 1755, it was
subsequently assigned to the Nobile Società di Palchettisti (Noble
Association of Box-holders). However, following a judicial ruling in
1787, this association was expelled and forced to give up the opera
house to the noble Venier family, the owners of the land on which it
was built. The association immediately proposed building a larger and
more sumptuous opera house than the one it had lost, which would
become the symbol of their changing fortunes and their capacity for
′rebirth′. It was therefore to be called La Fenice, like
the mythical, immortal bird able to rise out of its own ashes, to
symbolize the association's splendid rebirth after its misfortunes.
Interior of first theater, 1829
The piece of land between Contrada
Santa Maria Zobenigo and Contrada Sant'Angelo was bought for the
purpose in 1790 and the private houses on it were demolished. A
competition was then announced for the design of the opera house, and
the committee of experts selected the work of the architect
Giannantonio Selva from the 29 plans submitted. Work began in 1791
and was completed just 18 months later, in April 1792. La Fenice
immediately made its mark as one of the leading opera houses, noted
in Italy and Europe both for the high artistic quality of its work
and the splendor of its building. But, almost as if the name were the
bearer of bad omens, on the night of 13 December 1836 the opera house
was devastated by a first fire caused by a recently installed
Austrian heater. The newspapers said it took three days and three
nights to put out the fire and that various hotspots were still
smoldering among the debris 18 days later. The flames entirely
destroyed the house, and only the foyer and the Sale Apollinee were
saved. The association decided to proceed with its immediate
reconstruction. It appointed the architect Giambattista Meduna and
his engineer brother Tommaso to carry out the work, while Tranquillo
Orsi was responsible for the decorations. The work began in February
1837 and performances were temporarily staged in the Teatro Apollo
(previously the San Luca, now Goldoni).
Everything was completed in record
time. By the evening of 26 December of the same year, the new opera
house, reborn in the new artistic style of the age, was opened to the
public. The speed of the work, however, led to urgent restoration
works to the framework being required as early as 1854 and, again
under the direction of Giambattista Meduna, the house was redecorated
in a style that remained unchanged until 1996. On 23 July 1935 the
box-holder owners ceded their share in the opera house to the Comune
di Venezia, so it went from private to public ownership, and in
1937-8 part of building was subject to further major restorations and
alterations by engineer Eugenio Miozzi. On the night of 29 January
1996, during a period of closure for restoration works, a second fire
– as the Myth said – this time arson, completely destroyed the
house and most of the Sale Apollinee. Once again La Fenice rose
again, faithfully reconstructed to a plan by the architect Aldo
Rossi, and was reopened on 14 December 2003.
First theater
In 1774, the Teatro San Benedetto,
which had been Venice's leading opera house for more than forty
years, burned to the ground. By 1789, with interest from a number of
wealthy opera lovers who wanted a spectacular new house, "a
carefully defined competition" was organized to find a
suitable architect. It was won by Gianantonio Selva who proposed a
neoclassical style building with 170 identical boxes in tiers in a
traditional horseshoe shaped auditorium, which had been the favoured
style since it was introduced as early as 1642 in Venice. The house
would face on one side a campo, or small plaza, and on the other a
canal, with an entrance which gave direct access backstage and into
the theater.
However, the process was not without
controversy especially in regard to the aesthetics of the building.
Some thirty responses were received and, as Romanelli accounts,
Selva's was designated as the design to be constructed, the actual
award for best design went to his chief rival, Pietro Bianchi.
However, Selva's design and finished opera house appears to have been
of high quality and the one best suited to the limitations of the
physical space it was obliged to inhabit.
Construction began in June 1790, and by
May 1792 the theater was completed. It was named "La Fenice",
in reference to the company's survival, first of the fire, then of
the loss of its former quarters. La Fenice was inaugurated on 16 May
1792, with an opera by Giovanni Paisiello entitled I giuochi
d'Agrigento set to a libretto by Alessandro Pepoli.
But no sooner had the opera house been
rebuilt than a legal dispute broke out between the company managing
it and the owners, the Venier family. The issue was decided in favor
of the Veniers.
At the beginning of the 19th century,
La Fenice acquired a European reputation. Rossini mounted two major
productions there: Tancredi in 1813 and Semiramide in 1823. Two of
Bellini's operas were given their premieres there: I Capuleti e i
Montecchi in March 1830 and Beatrice di Tenda in March 1833.
Donizetti, fresh from his triumphs at La Scala in Milan and at the
Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, returned to Venice in 1836 with his
Belisario, after an absence of seventeen years.
Second theater
In December 1836, disaster struck again
when the theater was destroyed by fire. However, it was quickly
rebuilt with a design provided by the architect-engineer team of the
brothers Tommaso and Giovanni Battista Meduna [it]. The interior
displays a late-Empire luxury of gilt decorations, plushy
extravagance and stucco. La Fenice once again rose from its ashes to
open its doors on the evening of 26 December 1837.
Giuseppe Verdi's association with La
Fenice began in 1844, with the premiere performance of Ernani during
the carnival season. Over the next 13 years, the premieres of Attila,
Rigoletto, La traviata, and Simon Boccanegra took place there.
During the First World War, La Fenice
was closed, but it reopened to become the scene of much activity,
attracting many of the world's greatest singers and conductors. In
1930, the Venice Biennale initiated the First International Festival
of Contemporary Music, which brought such composers as Stravinsky and
Britten, and more recently Berio, Nono, and Bussotti, to write for La
Fenice.
On 29 January 1996, La Fenice was
completely destroyed by fire. Only its acoustics were preserved,
since Lamberto Tronchin, an Italian acoustician, had measured the
acoustics two months earlier.
Arson was immediately suspected. In
March 2001, a court in Venice found two electricians, Enrico Carella
and his cousin Massimiliano Marchetti, guilty of setting the fire.
They appeared to have set the building ablaze because their company
was facing heavy fines over delays in repair work in which they were
engaged. Carella, the company's owner, disappeared after a final
appeal was turned down. He had been sentenced to seven years in
prison. Marchetti surrendered and served a six-year sentence.
Ultimately, Carella was arrested in February 2007 at the
Mexico-Belize border, was extradited to Italy, and was released on
day parole after serving 16 months.
Present theater
After various delays, reconstruction
began in earnest in 2001. In 650 days, a team of 200 plasterers,
artists, woodworkers, and other craftsmen succeeded in recreating the
ambiance of the old theater, at a cost of some €90 million. As
Gillian Price notes, "This time round, thanks to an
enlightened project by late Italian architect Aldo Rossi and the
motto 'how it was, where it was', it has been fitted out with extra
rehearsal areas and state-of-the-art stage equipment, while the
seating capacity has been increased from 840 to 1000."
Detail of the decoration
La Fenice was rebuilt in 19th-century
style on the basis of a design by architect Aldo Rossi who, in order
to obtain details of its design, used still photographs from the
opening scenes of Luchino Visconti's film Senso (1954), which had
been filmed in the house. La Fenice reopened on 14 December 2003 with
an inaugural concert of Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky. The first
staged opera was a production of La traviata, in November 2004.
Critical response to the rebuilt La
Fenice was mixed. The music critic of the paper Il Tempo, Enrico
Cavalotti, was satisfied. He found the colours a bit bright but the
sound good and compact. However, for his colleague Dino Villatico of
the La Repubblica, the acoustics of the new hall lacked resonance,
and the colours were painfully bright. He found it "kitsch, a
fake imitation of the past". He said that "the city
should have had the nerve to build a completely new theater; Venice
betrayed its innovative past by ignoring it".
Artistic notes
Facade
Built in 1792 to a plan by the
Architect Giannantonio Selva, the facade of the building is the only
element to have completely survived the two fires that almost
entirely destroyed the opera house in 1836 and 1996. Unlike the other
theaters in the city, whose entrances are in secluded places like
alleys and small squares, La Fenice is the only historic Venetian
theater facing onto an open space, Campo San Fantin. It is also the
only one to feature a colonnade in neo-classical style in its facade.
This bears the theater's insignia in the centre portraying the
phoenix that rises from the flames, carved in 1837 to design by
Giambattista Meduna. The facade features two statues in niches
representing the muses of tragedy and dance: Melpomene and
Terpsichore. Above them are the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, thought
to be by Domenico Fadiga. The first sculptures that adorned the
entrance to the opera house, in terracotta and carved in Baroque
style, were attributed to either Giuseppe Bernardi or his nephew
Giovanni Ferrari, both of whom taught Canova. They were replaced in
1875 as they were in an advanced state of decay and were in any case
thought incompatible, if restored, with the classical style of the
facade. The two new statues were made in Custoza stone by Augusto
Benvenuti in a new style that better suited the building. All trace
of the original sculptures was lost after the theater management sold
them to Benvenuti in 1876. Two commemorative stelae were placed in
the entrance vestibule after the 1837 reconstruction. The one on the
right, sculpted in that year by Antonio Giaccarelli to an original
design by Giambattista Meduna, is attributed to the architect
Giannantonio Selva. The one on the left, in honour of the playwright
Carlo Goldoni, is by Luigi Zandomeneghi and was moved from the atrium
where it had been dedicated on 26 December 1830. The new sign of the
opera house, in gold and blue, again to a design By Meduna, was also
placed above the entrance in 1837.
Foyer
Escaping entirely unharmed from the
first fire that destroyed the original La Fenice Opera House on the
night of December 1836, the entrance, by Selva, was enlarged in 1937
as part of the upgrading works directed by the engineer Eugenio
Miozzi. On that same occasion some walls that divided the right side
of the foyer into several spaces were demolished to make this side
the mirror image, in shape and decoration, of the left. A
commemorative plaque recording the box-holder owner's transfer of
shares to the Comune di Venezia in 1935 was then placed in the right
wing. It was precisely thanks to this work, which also included
restoration, that the foyer and the Sale Apollinee on the upper floor
managed to partly withstand the collapse of the floor and the wall
against the stairs to the boxes following the fire of 29 January
1996. The opera house entrance is therefore the area in which the
largest number of original elements of the building survive: part of
the decoration and most of the columns, the floor and the access
stairs to the boxes.
House
The fire of 1996 completely destroyed
the five tiers of boxes, the stage and the ceiling, leaving only the
perimeter walls on the original house.
Reconstruction was based on the
architect Aldo Rossi's design, keeping to the motto “As it was,
where it was,” which had been applied to the rebuilding of St
Mark's bell Campanile, exactly the same as the original and taking
ten years, after it collapsed in 1902. The faithful reconstruction of
the house was facilitated by the comprehensive treatise on the
reconstruction that had been drawn up by the Meduna brothers after
the work carried out following the first fire of 1836. Reconstruction
of the decorations in the house, in a Rococo style, was based mainly
on consultation of the considerable photographic archive on the opera
house held in the theater's historic archive. In order to speed up
the work, two procedures were adopted.
Reconstruction of the masonry and
wooden framing of the building was carried out in the opera house
itself by hundreds of workers employed 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, while the decorative components were constructed at the same
time in various external workshops so that these would be ready for
application once the structural work was complete. The same
nineteenth-century materials were used: papier-mache, wood, and
plaster for all ornamentation of the royal box and the entrance, the
22 Nereids that are part of the cornice of the so-called soffittone
(ceiling), and the four putti in the royal box. The guiding principle
was that of recreating the original house, particularly its specific
technical solution based mainly on the use of wood, carefully chosen
and treated to obtain the best acoustic response. The big sound-box
of the wooden house was enclosed in a protective envelope of masonry
and reinforced concrete floors.
The only decorative element built at
least partly on site was the ceiling, which reproduces the original
design, giving the optical illusion of a vaulted ceiling. It features
paintings of several female figures, some of whom are carrying
musical instruments, and young maidens representing the Graces,
Music, Dance and Aurora. The chandelier is a reproduction of the
English original in gilt bronze, commissioned by the Meduna brothers
from craftsmen in Liverpool in 1854. The arms of the sconces in the
boxes were also made following the model of a single surviving
example.
The main theme of the house
decorations, dating from 1854, is a reproduction of a forest with
acanthus leaves depicted in the papier-mache decorations,
subsequently enriched with 23-carat gold leaf worked using the quartz
technique and polished with agate. The paintings outside the boxes
have cherubs with musical instruments or in playful mood. The first
tier also includes the profiles of classical poets, while the second
features six allegories representing History, Poetry, Philosophy,
Comedy, Tragedy, and Music.
On the third tier are putti holding
tablets engraved with the titles and authors of 14 of the most
important operas staged in the house.
A significant innovation in the
appearance of the house was made by a radical change of color inside
the individual boxes. The original shade of beige has now been
replaced by a blue-green pastel color.
The current access to the stalls was
designed by the engineer Miozzi in 1937 and decorated at the sides
with two plaster caryatids. The house originally had two small
entrances in the section now occupied by the first on the right of
the current access, which until the second half of the 1930s was
taken up by three boxes in the first tier.
The orchestra pit now has a movable
platform. When the pit is not required, the platform can be raised to
the level of the stalls, allowing some rows of additional seats to be
added to the front, increasing capacity by 104 to 1,126. The movable
platform, which consists of two elements, can also be completely or
partially raised to the level of the stage in order to enlarge it.
The curtain was reproduced on the basis
of an examination of historic documentation, in dark-green, deep nap,
fire-resistant synthetic velvet decorated with 1,100 flowers in gilt
leather.
The new stage is accompanied by a
second lateral stage onto which the stage equipment now moves
sideways for construction and handling of the scenery.
Royal box
The place of honor in the house has a
tormented existence, relating not only to the history of the opera
house but also to the political and historic events of the city of
Venice.
The royal box was not part of
Giannantonio Selva's original plan for La Fenice; at the time of its
construction the house contained only boxes of the same size. Venice
had lost its independence in May 1797 to the First French Empire,
which then handed the city over to the Austro-Hungarian empire for
eight years following the Treaty of Campoformio in 1797, and in 1805
Venice once again came under French rule. The first imperial loggia
was built only provisionally in 1807 to accommodate the emperor,
Napoleon, who was expected in the opera house on Tuesday 1 December
1807 for a performance of the cantata Il Giudizio di Giove by Lauro
Corniani Algarotti. Its construction required the demolition of three
central boxes in both the second and third tiers.
In 1808 the architect Giannantonio
Selva built the definitive model with the assistance of Giuseppe
Borsato on the decorations. This was destroyed by the fire that
struck La Fenice in December 1836, and was rebuilt along with the
rest of the house by the Meduna brothers in 1837, with the assistance
of Giuseppe Borsato, who increased the splendor of the decorations.
Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Venice once again found
itself under Habsburg rule. At the end of March 1848, following
insurrectionary uprising and the Republic of Venice's consequent
declaration of independence from Austria, the loggia was taken down
so that the original tiers of boxes could be reinstated in the
so-called “Republican” house. The six boxes that had been
in the center of the house until the beginning of the nineteenth
century were therefore rebuilt. However, the Imperial Austrian Royal
Government then returned, and on 22 August 1849 ordered
reconstruction of the loggia in its original form. The decorations
were entrusted once again to Giuseppe Borsato who, now over 70,
remade them to a richer design than before. This was his last work;
his box was presented in January 1850 in the presence of his widow
Maria Bonadei Borsato. The imperial loggia finally became the royal
box in 1866 with the Veneto entrance into the Kingdom of Italy.
The symbol of the Italian royal family
can still be seen inside the box, reproduced on the side walls. There
was a third Savoy shield on the crown of the external cornice, but
this was removed after the republican victory in the referendum of 2
June 1946 and replaced with the lion of St Mark, the symbol of
Venice. There are some ivory-painted wooden putti in the corners of
the walls on four gilt, wooden candelabra. On the papier
mache-decorated wooden ceiling there is a reproduction of the
painting Apotheosis of the Sciences and the Arts, originally by the
painter Leonardo Gavagnin. The royal box also offers its guests the
use of a private room, which has its own private entrance.
Sale Apollinee
The Sale Apollinee, so named because
dedicated to the Greek god Apollo, father of the Muses and patron of
the Arts, including music, consists of five rooms whose current
layout dates from 1937. These rooms are now used during the intervals
by the audience occupying the first three tiers of boxes and the
stalls. The five rooms of the Sale Apollinee were originally used
even when there was no show in the opera house; its bar would be open
during the day and there was a billiard table in one of the rooms.
On the top of the main door is a symbol
of the sun, a tribute to the King of France Louis XIV. The Apollon
room was thought of as a ballet room; ballet came to prominence in
part because of Louis XIV's interest in it. He performed a series of
dances in Ballet Royal de la Nuit, in the final piece as Apollo in a
costume with a kilt of golden rays—and thus became known as the Sun
King. La Fenice was built in tribute to the god Apollo.
Unlike the house, which was completely
destroyed by the enormous fire of 1996, about a fifth of these rooms
survived. The surviving fragments can be easily recognized, as the
precise intention of the reconstruction work was that it highlight
the difference between the historic sections and the recent
additions. The original parts of the ceiling cornices and remaining
ornamental stuccoes on the walls are darker in color, in testimony of
the last fire. The same difference can be seen in the marble frames
of some of the doors, repaired with new marble of a different color,
and in the new flooring, which merges with the typical Venetian
terrazzo that remained in the room dedicated to the famous singer
Maria Malibran.
Thanks to these completions, the Sale
Apollinee has been rebuilt on the basis of the originals, though a
wider range of choice was conceded than in the house, shown by the
new upholstery and furnishings in these rooms.
Sala Dante
The main bar is in the Sala Dante,
named after the frescoes that once decorated its walls.
This room was inaugurated in 1865 on
the occasion of the sixth centenary of the birth of Dante Alighieri.
To celebrate the event, the painter Giacomo Casa created a large
composition within the decorative ceiling frame, showing Italy in the
act of crowning the great poet and six tempera fresco paintings on
the walls, with the same number of scenes from the Divine Comedy. Two
of these were then replaced in 1867 with others in tempera by Antonio
Ermolao Paoletti.
In September 1976 the walls and ceiling
of this room, renamed the Sala Guidi, were decorated with works by
the Venetian painter Virgilio Guidi, which covered the scenes from
Dante. The fire of 1996, however, destroyed these canvases, bringing
back to light some fragments of the original decoration by Casa,
which have now been completed with a sinopia to assist their reading.
Sala Grande
The Sala Grande or ballroom is the main
room of the five Sale Apollinee, lit by three windows in the middle
of the entrance facade
The Sala Grande or ballroom is he main
room of the five Sale Apollinee, lit by the three windows in the
middle of the entrance facade.
Used over the years for different
purposes, the Sala Grande was an elegant venue for balls, chamber
music concerts, conferences or book launches, and (before La Fenice
was provided with special rooms for them) rehearsals. It was also
used by the governing board in 1935. Almost completely destroyed on
the night of 29 January 1996, the Sala Grande has been faithfully
reconstructed to the original model.
The floor, which is above the foyer,
collapsed after the fire and only the corners were saved. The current
floor has been faithfully rebuilt to the original model and its
characteristic floral patterns reproduced, requiring the use of
various types of wood: maple, olive, and cherry. The color of the
walls is also the same as the original. A gallery runs around the
circumference of the upper part of the room, with access from the
three doors on the top floor.
New rooms
"As it was, where it was",
the motto for reconstruction of La Fenice, called for the opera house
to be rebuilt as it was before the 1996 fire. This principle,
however, was seen applying only to the rooms of particular historic
and artistic importance. The opportunity was therefore taken to
redesign the parts of the building that did not come into this
category, resulting in the creation of three new rooms.
In fiction
Donna Leon's debut novel, Death at La
Fenice (1992), the first in her Commissario (Detective) Guido
Brunetti detective series, centers on a mystery surrounding the
sensational death by cyanide poisoning of a famous orchestra
conductor, in the midst of a production of La traviata at La Fenice.
In several scenes the opera house is described in meticulous detail,
as it was at the time of writing, previous to the third fire.
