In 1637 one saw in the “Gran Teatro del Mondo” a new form of performance, one never conceived previously: for the first time in Venice the doors were opened to an audience paying to attend a completely sung theatrical spectacle.
It was the birth of public opera, also to be called “mercenary”, so as to distinguish it from the court opera organized by rich princes and patrons purely to self-praise and exalt their own power and wealth, at their own expense and for a few invited VIPs.
What took place that year at the Teatro S Cassiano, at the initiative of two actor-musicians, Francesco Mannelli and Benedetto Ferrari (known as“dalla Tiorba”), was in reality the end-point of a long process of transformation, converging with the earlier experiences of the actor-singer companies of the commedia dell’arte, who had for some time already opened up in Venice and other cities their own audience-paying theatres called stanze. |
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