THE PROJECT
A LIVING LEGACY
The project has three clear objectives
To reconstruct the Teatro San Cassiano of 1637 as faithfully as modern scholarship and traditional craftsmanship will allow to deliver a fully functioning, dedicated Baroque opera house, complete with its own fully operational Baroque stage machinery, moving scene-sets and special effects.
To restore historically-informed Baroque opera to Venice.
To establish the Teatro San Cassiano as a world-renowned centre for the research, the exploration and staging of Historically Informed Performance, literally studying Baroque opera through its recital on stage and in the orchestra pit.
THE CONCEPT
The Teatro San Cassiano is conspicuous in history as the first opera house to open its doors to a wider ticket-buying public and to move opera away from the preserve of private patronage and forward to a commercially independent entertainment accessible to all.
This momentous act sparked a global opera boom with Venice as its celebrated capital and ensured that forevermore the Teatro San Cassiano would be revered as the world’s first public opera house.
In fact, one can go further: it is the birthplace of modern-day opera. It is undoubtedly the most culturally significant theatre in the history of music, and yet…it no longer exists. While the demand for Baroque opera continues to grow, in Venice and in Italy, no single, fully-functioning, commercially active Baroque theatre survives. All have perished with time. Venice has lost its ability to stage historically-informed Baroque opera. The Teatro San Cassiano itself was demolished under Napoleon’s instruction in 1812.
But it is not too late. We have the means to recover the theatre from the clutches of time and Venice can once again lead the world in Baroque opera production; better still, all can be achieved within a modern vision of a forward looking and sustainable Serenissima.
WIDER AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
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Having rebuilt the theatre, our aim will then be to preserve for the benefit of the people of Venice, Italy and the world, the musicological, historical, and architectural heritage of one of Venice’s greatest achievements and contributions to world culture.
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Our goal will be to join with Venice in celebrating its history in a form that is relevant to the world today, by expanding its music industry and by increasing investment and employment opportunities within the city.
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Our plan is to build upon the theatre’s heritage as the first ‘public’ opera house to re-interpret in a modern context how the theatre can reach out to its modern-day public in new and imaginative ways.
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We are passionate about creating a legacy for future generations of Venetians through our museum and school outreach projects, bringing children into the theatre and into close interactive contact with all aspects of opera performance and production.
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We also want to go further by promoting, maintaining and advancing public awareness of the benefits of music therapy by initiating a programme of music therapy services—related where possible to opera—that reaches out to Venice and allows opera to play an intrinsic role in the well-being of its local community.
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We will deliver the project using an independent hybrid charitable/commercial model that seeks to pursue charitable objectives for the greater good, but finances its activities through commercial enterprise rather than public funding.
CURRENT PREDICAMENT: ITALY AND VENICE
Italy is arguably the only country in the world where you can visit theatres from the Renaissance through to the modern day. Sadly, however, due to a process in which its earlier treasures have either ceased to exist or have seen their interiors modernised, enlarged or adapted to serve other genres, Italy has very quietly lost the ability to stage Baroque opera in its original context. Today, the country that gave the world opera finds itself without a single commercially active Baroque opera theatre with functioning period stage machinery and scene-sets.
Venice is home to the Gran Teatro La Fenice, the Teatro Goldoni and the Teatro Malibran, but none offer the small intimate experience of a Baroque theatre built in 1637. In noting this, we of course salute La Fenice (built 1792) for its excellence in staging Baroque opera and its huge contribution to preserving the genre. It sets the standard to which we will shall aspire. Our project and the need to restore the world’s first public opera house to Venice should not detract from its successes. Indeed, our project is only possible because it alone has made Venice the world’s preeminent centre for opera. For our part, the addition of the Teatro San Cassiano will make Venice the only city in the world able to stage opera in theatres appropriate to every era of operatic production: from its birth through to today.
THE SOLUTION: A VENETIAN BAROQUE OPERA HOUSE
A rebuilt Teatro San Cassiano offers the perfect solution to the current predicament, and at once restores Venice as arguably the world’s foremost centre for Baroque opera.
- The reconstructed 1637 theatre will go to the heart of addressing the need in Venice (and indeed Italy) for precisely the type of small intimate auditorium that shaped the development of opera (and Venetian opera especially) in the 17th and 18th centuries.
- The Teatro San Cassiano will be the only fully active Baroque theatre in the world. Its iconic status will provide the perfect conditions for it to become the world’s foremost centre for of Baroque opera, attracting the world’s greatest conductors, singers and musicians.
- It will establish at its core (both on and off stage) an unprecedented collaboration to bring the worlds of musicology and music performance into a practical union which will go to the very heart of the methodology and practical experimentation necessary to truly explore Historically Informed Performance within opera production.
- Singers, musicians, the theatre and the public will be able to engage and to interact as part of a uniquely Baroque experience, which has until now been lost to opera.
REGENERATION, IMPACT AND SUSTAINABILITY
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.
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 35 Venetian companies and the completed theatre will employ c. 200 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 21st 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.
