The Secrets of the Great Italian Opera Houses (Episode 4): La Fenice Opera House, Venice

Let's go to Venice today I will tell you the story of the Grand Theatre La Fenice Why La Fenice Grand Theatre In the 1600s 1700s and 1800s Venice was literally dotted with theatres Opera theaters that specialized for example in serious opera or in comic opera farces or even in prose Many families had built their own theaters and would fight each other in war And each one sought to bring the best performances asking important composers to write for their theater It is recruiting the best singers and best actors on the scene The 18th century sees the birth of the Gran Teatro La Fenice which will be entirely devoted to the production of serious opera So Gran Teatro And why La Fenice La Fenice is a mythical bird and its origin truly dates back to the dawn of time The Egyptians revered a sacred bird a gray heron whose name was Bennu It was a kind of contact with the afterlife At the end it was the Bennu the origin of the universe It was born from the depths of the primordial seas and its song had given rise to life Here it is its song The Phoenix represents something that is reborn constantly reborn The resurrection the fact that something cannot be erased forever Art and music will never die Song gives birth to life This is the meaning of the Phoenix La Fenice is mentioned and described for the first time by Herodotus in 500 B C Who is he He mediates between what had been the tradition and the myth of the Egyptians And what the actual readers the Greeks wanted to learn from him Then the small bird transforms into a great eagle with an immense wingspan The feathers that were gray turn into a changing red a purple color Phoenicians as the Greeks called the Phoenicians were those who had discovered purple They had made them famous throughout the entire Mediterranean basin and even beyond The great theater La Fenice A mythical bird the Phoenix which gives rise to life It is the one that brings art the one that brings life culture which never dies like art and like music The theater the Grand Theater La Fenice unfortunately burned down twice in 1836 and 1996 It will be rebuilt some of the previous sketches will be used and some new things will be created What matters is that Venice once again has its magnificent theater A theater that rivalled La Scala in the 19th century The most important composers among the most important composers who have written and composed for the Gran Teatro La Fenice I can recall Rossini then Donizetti Bellini Verdi and many others Think that in the twentieth century the Grand Theatre La Fenice became precisely a focal point for the performances of new operas Of 20th-century composers Stravinsky with The Rake's Progress Which Prokofiev with The Firebird and then how can we forget indeed we must not forget at all By Benjamin Britten The Turn of the Screw Let's go back a bit though back to the 19th century In the 19th century Verdi chose the Gran Teatro La Fenice as an alternative venue for his premieres instead of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan Therefore La Scala and La Fenice are perhaps the two most important theaters in Italy during the 19th century Verdi's "La Traviata" was born in Venice on March 6 1853 It will all end in a mess as often happens with first performances Let's think of Rossini's The Barber of Seville in Rome then later of Madame Butterfly from 1904 in Milan But the "Traviata" of March 6 1853 will rise from its ashes just as the Phoenix did the following year in another theater Always from Venice the San Benedetto Theater Will Verdi change many things Will he change everything a bit as Puccini did with Madame Butterfly No no not at all In fact he had said he would change everything a bit but he didn't He changed of course musicologists can tell me no mistake because he changed so many things Certainly if we look into the details in the score we will find that for example Verdi changes some keys Carry something work on the singers' accents in other words adjust a already perfect suit Already prepared for the first edition for the new singers of the 1854 version And this diva will have immense success the second diva And then Verdi will write well I can't understand these people a year ago with the same material we had a failure and now an incredible success In addition to Verdi Venice will host Richard Wagner and will present the Italian premiere of Der Ring des Nibelungen 1883 Only in the year when Wagner died and where he died in Venice at Cavendramin exactly where he had chosen to die In Venice where he had completed Tristan und Isolde And let us leave Wagner abandon Verdi of 1853 to once again find the Traviata A century after the centenary of La Traviata March 6 1953 and the artistic direction of the Gran Teatro La Fenice Who chooses Which one is hers Well naturally Maria Meneghini Callas The performance is a huge success only one journalist the music critic a young music critic from the local newspaper writes more or less the exact words Madame Meneghini Callas was a great singer if she learns to become a great actress she will be the most important singer of the century Titta Meneghini Callas's husband the next day when he reads this review in the newspaper hides the paper so Maria cannot read it Maybe he can't be disturbed he still has to sing but Maria finds the newspaper the little paper that her husband had clumsily hidden Please read the article carefully and would like to meet this journalist Giuseppe Pugliese Well I had the luck to meet him years ago at his house in Lido di Venezia and he told me exactly how the story went She received a call from Maria Meneghini Callas who kindly asked to meet with him to learn more about what he had written The meeting was wonderful at Danieli's bar in Venice and Maria Callas listened attentively to this very passionate young music lover He realized that just singing singing everything perfectly wasn't enough he had to step into the role as a real character And so Maria Meneghini Callas became Callas The grand theater ends in Venice it ends What did they say what did they write and what did they compose in Così Fan Tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte And the faith of women is like a shadow each one says where it is but no one knows