Rising from the Ashes - The 25th Anniversary of the Teatro La Fenice Fire in Venice

Teatro La Fenice New Year's Day 2021 - Photo: Ufficio Stampa

(Venice, Italy) Twenty-five years ago today, the world watched in horror and disbelief as Venice's beloved opera house, Teatro La Fenice, burned to the ground. But true to its name, La Fenice -- The Phoenix -- rose from its ashes. During the pandemic, La Fenice has delighted the planet once again with its innovative livestreams, enriching our spirits and uniting the community as we applaud with silent emojis while confined inside our homes due to the global pandemic.

 

Venice has long had a strong theatrical presence on the world stage. The first public opera ever performed was in Venice in 1636, allowing spectators to witness the startling new phenomenon previously known only in royal courts. When ticket holders experienced the sheer power of the sung narrative — the intense heights and depths of human emotion that only music could convey — it created a social revolution. Claudio Monteverdi, the father of opera himself, adopted Venice as his home.

 

By 1773, Venice had seven theaters which produced plays and music. The grandest was San Benedetto, which was located where the Rossini Multiplex is today, and whose current facade was designed by the celebrated Venetian architect, Carlo Scarpa. Inaugurated on December 26, 1755, it was built by the Grimani family on land owned by the Veniers, and later assigned to a consortium of aristocrats, the Nobile Società dei Palchettisti -- Noble Association of Boxholders.

Teatro San Benedetto was destroyed by fire in 1773, and shortly rebuilt on the same site. The consortium and the Veniers haggled over who owned the new theater, and in 1787 a judicial ruling forced the Boxholders out. 

 

Undeterred, the Boxholders decided to immediately build a more sumptuous theater in a finer location, and call it ‘La Fenice’ after the legendary royal bird reborn from its own ashes. They bought land in a posh part of town, knocked down some private houses and held a competition for the design of the opera house, which was won by the architect Giannantonio Selva. Work began in 1791 and was completed just 18 months later, featuring a neo-classical facade and 174 boxes perfectly alike, gilded in gold. 

Teatro La Fenice was inaugurated on May 16, 1792 with I Giuochi di Agrigento by Giovanni Paisiello, and promptly became one of the leading opera houses in Europe. Then, just five years later, Napoleon came on the scene, and the entire Republic of Venice was no more.

 

Royal Box at La Fenice - Photo: Pietro Tessarin

But La Fenice was still standing, and Napoleon himself decided to pay it a visit. Since all Venetian nobility -- and their boxes -- were considered equal, Selvi had not designed an imperial loggia, which the emperor now required. Six central boxes were destroyed and a provisional loggia hastily constructed, with the definitive model unveiled the day after Christmas, December 26, 1808. 

 

Over the years, as Venice flipped between Napoleonic France and the Austrian Empire, then fought for its independence, then became part of the Kingdom of Italy, which itself morphed into a republic, the imperial loggia changed its form to accommodate the politics. Today it is called the “royal box” with the symbol of the Italian royal family on the side walls, and Venice’s lion of St. Mark front and center on the crown of the cornice. 

On December 13, 1836, while Venice was under the rule of the Austrian Empire, fire struck again. The theater was engulfed in flames caused by an Austrian heater, destroying everything but the facade, foyer and the Sale Appollinee. Again the Boxholders leapt into action, appointing the architect Giambattista Meduna and his engineer brother, Tomamaso, to resurrect The Phoenix. In less than a year, La Fenice was reborn.

 

During the next two centuries, composers such as Rossini, Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten dazzled spectators with world premieres. Verdi composed four of his operas for La Fenice, including La Traviata, which had its world premiere in Venice on March 6, 1853 and has since become a staple of every season. Divas like Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas -- who has an exhibition on the third floor -- thrilled audiences with their vocal gymnastics.

 

La Fenice fire, Jan. 29, 1996 - Photo: Ufficio Stampa

Then, on January 29, 1996, a stunned world watched as La Fenice burned again to the ground, this time a victim of arson. By then, the Boxholders had ceded their shares to the Comune di Venezia, making the opera house publicly-owned. The mayor declared it would be rebuilt “where it was, how it was.”

This time, it took nearly eight years for The Phoenix to rise from its ashes, reconstructed on a posthumous design by the celebrated architect, Aldo Rossi. La Fenice finally reopened on December 14, 2003 with music by Beethoven, Stravinsky, Caldara and Wagner, conducted by Riccardo Mutti.

 

However, it would be nearly a year later until the theater was ready to stage an entire opera. La Fenice's inaugural opera after the 1996 fire was, fittingly, Verdi's La Traviata, which was performed on November 12, 2004 and directed by Robert Carsen with Lorin Maazel conducting the orchestra. 

 

Audience during intermission at Teatro La Fenice - Photo: Cat Bauer

Today, the theater looks much like it did in the 19th century, diligently restored, right down to the putti. Like the mythical bird it is named after, La Fenice has burned and risen from its ashes on more than one occasion, flying high above Earthly strife to delight humankind with music from the heavens. 

 

Go to Teatro La Fenice to watch their online performances. 

 

This article was originally published in a slightly different form in the Fall/Winter 2017-2018 print edition of Luxos Magazine. 

 

 

 

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog 

Musica Venezia Presents Rossini’s “Moses in Egypt” for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Giorno della Memoria) 2021 at Ateneo Veneto in Venice

Moses and Aaron come before Pharaoh, from the Golden Haggadah, c. 1320, Northern Spain, probably Barcelona (British Library, MS. 27210, fol. 1o verso)

(Venice, Italy) Musica Venezia has been entertaining and educating Venice for decades with its distinct, top-quality events in some of the city's most impressive venues. Roberta Reeder, the Artistic Director of Associazione Culturale Musica Venezia and long-term resident of Venice, brings her rich background as a scholar and producer of culture events to focus attention on rarely performed works of great composers. From sacred music selections on Assumption Day in front of Titian's Assunta at the Frari, to outdoor sound and light projections on the facade of Palazzo Zenobio to celebrate Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, the events produced by Musica Venezia are exceptional, with spoken narration in both English and Italian. 

Venezia Musica always commemorates the Giorno della Memoria, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with a special event. This year the performance will be arias from Gioachino Rossini's Moses in Egypt at the Ateneo Veneto, a distinguished cultural institution in Venice that just celebrated its 209th birthday. Due to the ongoing pandemic, this year there will not be a public performance -- the concert will be available on Ateneo Veneto's YouTube channel starting on Sunday, January 24 at 5PM. It is available on demand, so you can watch it whenever you like from that time on.

 

Roberta Reeder, Artistic Director of Associazione Culturale Musica Venezia

 

Here is a description of the event written by Roberta Reeder, the Artistic Director:

Associazione Culturale Musica Venezia

presents

GIORNO DELLA MEMORIA DI VENEZIA 2021

DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

MOSES IN EGYPT: A SACRED TRAGIC ACTION

Arias from the opera by Gioachino Rossini 

Piano version – streaming

ATENEO VENETO – 24 January, 2021 at 5 p.m.

Contact:  Ateneo Veneto.  041 522 4459

Every year Musica Venezia presents a special event to commemorate the Holocaust.

 

This year they will perform “Moses in Egypt,” an opera by Rossini dedicated to a concrete event with a universal theme relevant at this time in history –  the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt —  symbolizing the deliverance of oppressed peoples all over the world.  This performance is part of the events of the City of Venice to commemorate the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust (Giorno della Memoria).

This performance is composed of beautiful arias from the original Italian version of the work with piano accompaniment.  It was written as a “sacred tragic action” (azione tragico-sacra) for Lent, the solemn period before Easter when it was not allowed to perform operas in Italy.  Later, when living in France, Rossini wrote Moise, Opera en quatre actes, a much longer grand opera version of this work in French.  The Italian libretto is by Andrea Leone Tottola and is based on an 18th century play by Francesco Ringhieri.  It premiered in March 1818 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, but it is usually performed in the 1820 third version.  It has recently been performed in Pesaro 2011 and Naples in 2018.  Balzac said this work reflects the genius of Italy and Stendahl praised it highly.

The opera is about Exodus, when Moses was chosen by God to lead the Jews, his people, out of slavery in Egypt. The work ends as they cross the Red Sea on the way to the Promised Land.  However, the librettist transformed the Biblical story to include a romantic theme — Osiride, the Pharaoh’s son, is in love with Elcìa, a young Jewish girl, which is why he convinces his father to rescind his promise of liberation of the Jews and keep them in Egypt. 

In the end, Osiride dies by the last plague, death of the first-born Egyptian sons.  The Pharaoh then again makes a false promise to free the Jews, but this time they escape when the Red Sea parts to let them through. As the waves close in behind them, the Pharaoh and his army drown in their chase after the Jews. At the end the Jewish chorus sing one of Italian opera’s most famous choral works, “The Prayer” (Dal tuo stellato soglio), praising God for their delivery. 

The opera will be performed by Nabila Dandara (Elcìa), soprano, Sara Cortolezzis (Almatea) soprano, Alessio Zenetti, (Osiride) tenor, and Stepan Polishchuk, (Pharaoh and Moses, bass), Alexandra Bochkareva, pianist.  Roberta Reeder (English) and Federica Zagatti (Italian) will be the narrators for a recitation based on the Biblical text.  

Due to the conditions of the Codiv virus in Italy, which precludes a live performance, the work will be available on the Ateneo Veneto YouTube channel starting on Sunday 24 January, 2021 at 5 p.m. 

Ciao from Venezia

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Happy New Year 2021 - The Ancient Majesty of Venice - The 14th Quaderno & Four Columns of the San Pietro Portal

The Four Black & White Aquitaine Marble Columns of the Portal of San Pietro - Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) As you step inside the main entrance, or narthex, of the majestic Basilica of San Marco in Piazza San Marco, you are confronted by a sacred and powerful presence. To the left of the main portal is the portal of San Pietro; the portal of San Clemente is on the right. There are eight free standing columns with shafts of black and white Aquitaine marble that adorn the sides of the portals, two by two. The columns were probably brought to San Marco way back in the first decades of the thirteenth century. 

 

The Proconnesian marble capitals atop the columns date back to the 9th or 10th century, and are embellished with animal and vegetable motifs. Four pairs of eagles, tails crossed, are perched on globes. Snarling from the corners of the capitals are lion heads with wide-open jaws. The remarkable quality and symbolic meaning -- power and domination -- lead to the conclusion that the eight artifacts once belonged to a building in the imperial palace of Constantinople, and were transported to Venice after 1204 when Doge Enrico Dandolo and the Fourth Crusade sacked the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and divided up the empire. The Venetian Doges adopted the lofty title of Lord of a Quarter and a Half-quarter of All of Romania. When you enter the Basilica of San Marco, you come face to face with remnants of Byzantium.

 

Capitals of the Columns of the Portal of San Pietro - Photo: Cat Bauer

 

The lowest point in Venice is at the entrance to Saint Mark's Basilica. When the November 12, 2019 flood pummeled Piazza San Marco, the entire floor of the Basilica was submerged under more than 70cm of corrosive salt water. The construction site where work was being carried out on the four columns of the Portal of San Pietro was immersed by the sea. Then, no sooner had Venice wobbled to her feet after a series of exceptionally high tides, Italy was the first Western country hit by the global pandemic, and the entire country shut down.

 

Nonetheless, the Procuratoria di San Marco, which takes care of the Basilica, has managed to issue its fourteenth Quaderno, published in Italian by Marsilio, which contains essays by prominent scholars detailing the efforts and research conducted to safeguard and restore the ancient marble columns. It was presented at a conference on December 18, 2020 by Francesco Moraglia, the Patriarch of Venice, and Carlo Alberto Tesserin, the Primo Procuratore of San Marco, who have written introductions. Both men are passionate about safeguarding the Basilica, and Venice itself. For those readers who are fascinated by the restoration work, and read Italian, you can get a copy from Marsilio.

Quaderni della Procuratoria

Thankfully, MOSE, the barrier that holds back the Adriatic Sea during times of extreme acqua alta finally seems to be functioning, but there is much more work that needs to be done to protect the Basilica and Piazza San Marco from high tides. Since the area is so low, this most precious section of Venice still floods when the tide does not reach the level necessary to activate MOSE. Immediate solutions must be found.

On December 1, 2020, Italy assumed the G20 Presidency with international meetings and conferences scheduled in various cities throughout the year. Venice will host a meeting of the G20 finance ministers and central banks from July 7 to July 11, which will feature MOSE and "demonstrate its strategic role in the international context."

 

This year Venice has a special birthday -- she will be 1,600-years-old on March 25, 2021, the Feast of the Annunciation. Venice has lived through plagues and floods many times before. Century after century, Venice still stands because of the courage and resilience of those who love her, keeping the most beautiful city in the world alive despite all odds.  

As we begin another New Year, I wish good health, joy, prosperity, courage and resilience to all.

Happy New Year from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog