Between 15-17 September 2023, Ondřej Macek, Music director, his Hof Musici ensemble along with stage director, Zuzana Vrbovà of the theatre have staged L'Echo ravvivata by Antonio Gianettini. Gianettini wrote this pastoral opera in Venice in 1681, commissioned by the court of the Duke of Lorraine. It was performed in Innsbruck in May of that year to celebrate the birthday of Eleonore Maria Josefa Habsburg, Archduchess of Austria, Princess of Bohemia and Hungary, Queen of Poland, and Duchess of Lorraine.

We want to thank the Castle Theatre for all the wonderful images they so generously share, which in turn allows us to convey a sense of what the San Cassiano will be like when open.

It was back in 2016 that we first shared the project with Ondřej Macek, Music director of the theatre. In September 2018, we held our first mini-conference at the Castle Theatre. We also collaborated with Ondřej and his Hof Musici orchestra in the staging a modern-day world premiere of L’ingresso alla gioventù di Claudio Nerone, a wonderful unknown opera by Antonio Gianettini with libretto by Giambattista Neri that Paul Atkin had recovered from his PhD research. Ondřej, along with stage director, Zuzana Vrbovà, and Dr Pavel Slavko, the expert responsible for the restoration of the stage machinery in Český Krumlov, brought the opera beautifully to life in Teatro San Cassiano’s first ever collaboration, returning the name of our theatre once again to opera.

Once open, the Teatro San Cassiano will, unquestionably, owe a great debt of thanks to our friends and partners at the Castle Theatre, Český Krumlov, whose expertise extends not only to the reconstruction of their theatre’s stage and its machinery, but also to the recovery of operas lost to the modern world.

It is, then, the restaging of these operas within their original context that Český Krumlov (itself an eighteenth-century “court”-theatre) does so well, and we remain grateful to Maestro Ondřej Macek, stage director, Zuzana Vrbovà, and director, Dr Pavel Slavko, for their insight, passion and guidance as three of our much-treasured consiglieri.