This project is as much about the future as it is the past. By putting Venice and Venetians at the centre of this project, the theatre will offer Venice a sympathetic contribution to a commercially secure and environmentally sustainable future. Both in build and in operation, the Teatro San Cassiano will create new jobs, new businesses, new opportunities, and all driven out of an ethos for a sustainable regeneration of Venice. Its outreach programme will reimagine the meaning of “public opera” in the 21st century.

The Teatro San Cassiano was famously the first theatre to introduce opera to the wider public. Our hope is that the educational arm of the theatre will continue this work in a modern 21st century context by introducing opera to as wide a community as possible. Opera is and should always be accessible for all.

By embracing its shared cultural heritage, but with a modern global outlook, the Teatro San Cassiano will deliver the perfect blend of employment, investment and regeneration to Venice that is simply unprecedented in modern times. This is an Impact project delivering long-term sustainability. Since its launch, the Group has targeted contracts to over 25 Venetian companies and the completed theatre will employ c. 160 direct and indirect staff. The theatre will create and maintain its own historically-informed scenery and costumes, offering apprenticeships and employment to Italy’s talented artisans.

The Teatro San Cassiano’s outreach programme will reimagine the meaning of “public opera” in the 21^st century. In addition to an “open-access” policy for all the community to make it “their” theatre, the planned outreach projects will inspire the next generation and all parts of the community to place the theatre at the heart of a shared Venetian identity. Singers, musicians and production staff will take opera scenes into schools and to the wider community to educate, to rehearse and ultimately to perform in the San Cassiano before their own families. Music therapy will be a continuous and core element therein.

The theatre itself will form the perfect example of “Historical New Build” using traditional methods blending with modern technology with the objective of a carbon negative contribution to the Venetian environment, flora and fauna both in its build and operation.

To learn more, see: https://www.teatrosancassiano.it/en/education