Teatro La Fenice & Campo San Fantin
Why is it significant?
The pale neoclassical front in Campo San Fantin, with its columns and a golden phoenix over the door, looks almost modest. It is a disguise. Behind it is the most famous opera house in Venice, Teatro La Fenice, and nearly everything you would see inside has been rebuilt at least once.
Key Facts
| Place | Teatro La Fenice & Campo San Fantin |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo San Fantin 1965, San Marco, 30124 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43370, 12.33390 |
| Part of Walk | Vivaldi, Opera and the Phoenix: A Walk Through Musical Venice |
| Generated | Generated |
The pale neoclassical front in Campo San Fantin, with its columns and a golden phoenix over the door, looks almost modest. It is a disguise. Behind it is the most famous opera house in Venice, Teatro La Fenice, and nearly everything you would see inside has been rebuilt at least once.
La Fenice opened in May 1792, designed by Giannantonio Selva for the nobles who had lost San Benedetto. It quickly became the stage where Italian opera made history: Rossini's Tancredi in 1813, Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in 1830, and then Verdi, with Ernani, Rigoletto in 1851 and, on 6 March 1853, La Traviata. The first night was a fiasco. Verdi wrote to a friend that he did not know whether the fault was his or the singers', and that time would judge.
The theatre's name turned out to be prophetic. In December 1836 a fire gutted it, and it was rebuilt within a year. Then, on the night of 29 January 1996, it burned again, so fiercely that the glow lit up the whole city and helicopters scooped water from the canals. It was arson. Two electricians, working for a firm facing penalties for delays on renovation work, had set the fire, and both were later convicted.
The rebuilding became a detective story. How do you recreate gilded boxes and painted ceilings that have turned to ash? Part of the answer came from cinema: Luchino Visconti's 1954 film Senso opens with a performance inside La Fenice, and its colour footage helped the restorers. The theatre reopened in December 2003, just as Venetians had demanded, com'era, dov'era... as it was, where it was. Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress had premiered on this stage in 1951; the music came back too.
Beside the theatre, the sober stone building is the Ateneo Veneto, once the Scuola di San Fantin, a confraternity whose members comforted the condemned on their way to execution. Music and mortality, side by side. Walk down to the broad shopping street of Calle Larga XXII Marzo and follow it east to the extravagant church at its end.