How Venice became the birthplace of opera

The widespread modern stereotype of the opera as elitist and stodgy stands in stark contrast to what audiences thought of it in mid-17th-century Venice. Back then, it was popular and breathtakingly new. “Taken together, it is one of the most magnificent diversions the wit of man can invent,” wrote the English diarist John Evelyn after seeing his first opera in Venice in 1645.

Opera was born in Venice, and Evelyn’s description was written just as the art form was gaining more popular appeal. Its roots, however, lay not in the great public theaters but in the court. An abbreviation of the Italian expression opera in musica—work in music—opera was conceived around 1600 by a group of Florentine intellectuals, musicians, poets, and humanists who came to be known as the Camerata. They believed they were inventing an art form that would fuse music and poetry into a language all its own. Halfway between singing and speaking, it was intended to re-create the grandeur of ancient Greek drama.

Sponsored by princes and local nobles, these early productions were performed in banquet halls and ballrooms with admission by invitation only. There was little distinction between the stage and the audience, and the latter would wear masks and join in. The spectacle was often exaggerated to impress visiting dignitaries.

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Artistic revolution

In the early 1600s, Europe was going through a “fundamental historical crisis,” as the 20th-century Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci put it, which encompassed a major transformation in all institutions. New, popular money-making ventures were emerging, which were displacing old, feudal forms of economic organization.

This dynamic atmosphere impacted opera amid the Venetian carnival in 1637. A whirlwind of theatrical activity, the city was a tourist hot spot and home to traveling theater companies. Composers Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli arrived in the city and rented the Teatro San Cassiano from the aristocratic Tron family. There they premiered the opera Andromeda, the first public opera open to anyone who could afford a ticket. Prices were low enough that all but the most disadvantaged of Venice’s citizens might attend.

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The libretto of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea from 1642

Library of Congress, Music Division

Despite the initial stir caused by this new experiment, “opera was, in fact, a slow-burn rise to success, rather than an instant hit,” Tim Carter, distinguished emeritus professor of music at the University of North Carolina, told History. In its previous iteration, courtly opera had simply been about trying to tell a story with musical speech. The content didn’t matter much to those audiences at that time, as they were in attendance to be seen, rather than to see the performance.

When composers started writing for the public stage, however, they had to learn how to cater to the masses by grabbing attention and drawing the public into the story once the music took over in a “game of push and pull between the stage and the audience,” according to Carter.

During the 20 years following the Andromeda production, composers and producers figured out how to consolidate opera’s appeal to the masses in Venice. By the end of the 17th century, there would be nine opera houses in the city.

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Lavish productions

Opera’s storylines weren’t the only things transformed to captivate audiences. Opera made itself more alluring through its staging, which included bold costumes, enchanting scenery, and inventive special effects. Among Torelli, who specialized in innovative stage machinery. A naval engineer who came to Venice in 1639, Torelli was passionate about the theater. His well-known “glories,” were platforms that allowed singers to appear suspended in midair. Using a wheel-driven winch and counterweight system, Torelli was able to change sets quickly between acts. To match his grand visions, a larger “canvas” would be necessary. In 1641 he built the Teatro Novissimo, the world’s first purpose-built opera house.

Dancing down into the underworld

Scala, Florence

La Venere Gelosa, an opera with a libretto by Niccolò Enea Bartolini and music by Francesco Sacrati, was performed to great acclaim at the Teatro Novissimo in Venice in 1643. The image above is from the second act of the play. Venus (at left) and her friend Clio (at right) have descended into hell to ask Proserpina, the goddess of the underworld (at center) to kill a hated rival. The opera’s score was lost, but the libretto survived. Ballet was an important part of this opera, harkening back to its classical origins. The opera itself comes from Bacchanalia, ancient ceremonies in which participants would dance in honor of the god Bacchus (Dionysus). The Greeks incorporated dance and music on stage, and Venetian composers and producers drew on that tradition in their works. Reconstructing the actual dances has been difficult for scholars, as many of the original materials detailing the choreography have been lost to time.

Torelli’s stage designs caused a great sensation. Giulio del Colle, who wrote contemporary accounts of the technical novelties of the operas of his day, described Il Bellerofonte, which premiered at the Novissimo in 1642. “Out of the clouds appeared Pallas Athena and Diana on a sophisticated machine; the spectators, unable to see how it was operated … were astonished,” he wrote.

There were several other key elements to opera’s resounding success in Venice. One of them was the sheer talent of composers who wrote for the new genre, namely Claudio Monteverdi and his pupil Francesco Cavalli. Both were gifted in eliciting emotions from the audience through music. Cavalli became one of the city’s most prolific composers, putting on more than 20 operas between 1639 and 1669.

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Anna Renzi was a singer, actress, and Italian opera star in 17th-century Venice.

Alamy/ACI

Performers were also crucial in the rise of opera’s popularity. Both male and female singers were beloved—from the castrati (male singers who underwent castration to preserve their high-pitched tones), such as Giuseppe Maria Donati, to renowned sopranos, like Anna Renzi.

One of the singers who appeared in La Finta Pazza (The Feigned Madwoman) by Francesco Sacrati in 1641 was said to sing “so delicately that the souls of the listeners, as if drawn through the portals of the ears, raised themselves to heaven.”

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Creative risks

Venice’s embrace of opera enabled it to flourish for centuries in the city’s halls and concert venues. The sights and sounds of Venice, such as its carnival, stimulated creativity. Nevertheless, opera was risky. It required major upfront investment. Ticket sales rarely covered production costs in its early years.

But by the 1660s, the economics of opera consumption were established. The cheapest ticket price was the equivalent of a worker’s daily wage. The best seats in the house, the central boxes, were usually rented out to wealthy families or ambassadors. The auditorium was lit by candles, and refreshments were served during the performance. Shouting, cheering, and booing were all part of the experience.

The San Salvatore Theater, now the Goldoni Theater, was inaugurated in 1622 in Venice. Thirty years after its debut, the owners converted it into an opera house. One of the most spectacular productions staged there was the opera Germanico sul Reno (Germanicus on the Rhine), its title page and opening libretto shown here. Opening in 1676, it featured music by Giovanni Legrenzi.Title page and opening of the libretto of Germanico sul Reno (Germanicus on the Rhine), written by Giulio Cesare Corradi.

Library of Congress, Music Division

Audience members sometimes struggled to follow the plot or identify with the characters, which led to the introduction of comic scenes. These originated in the Italian semi-improvised form of the commedia dell’arte (comedy of professional artists) and provided some light relief. Comic characters who usually held a low social position were a means to appeal to a wider public who could better identify with them. Comic arias or duets appeared, an early example being Monteverdi’s 1642 opera, L’in-coronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), in which the main character, Damigella, shares a comic love duet with her page, Valletto.

Thanks to these and many other innovations, Venice kept its title as the major center for opera until the mid-18th century. Alongside Naples, Venice was home to the main musical training centers and main singers in Europe. Although opera became a global musical art form, Venice has remained a hub for opera performances. A faithful historical reconstruction of Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano, where the pioneering, 1637 production of Andromeda took place, is under way. The project will install baroque-era stage machinery to achieve the same kind of moving sets and special effects the theater’s first audiences saw, celebrating what is now a global art form in the city of its birth.

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