Actually, we simply don’t know the precise date when L’Andromeda was first performed, but such was the opera's success that the libretto was published a few months after the original staging with a passionate recounting of this new world of special effects and spectacle in a public space: the Italian opera house (or better the teatro all’italiana) had been born.

Thereafter, the first Venetian theatres not only offered the greatest music performed by the best singers, musicians and dancers of the day, they also used the latest technology available of stage machinery and special effects of the time to set the operas in a magical world of descending dei ex machina, rolling seas, thunder-storms, twinkling stars and scene-sets which changed in the blink of an eye. It was like nothing ever seen or heard before, and sadly since. Almost 400 years later this legacy has been lost. Today, no such theatre exists.

That is until now.

Our research will allow us to reconstruct our theatre as it was in 1637 and to offer HIP performances complete with the costumes, gestures and acoustics of a small teatro all’italiana. Importantly, it will give us an insight into the type of Venetian theatre that allowed opera to evolve as it did in its early years. With a stage only five metres deep from the proscenium arch to the back drop and an auditorium with only six rows of seats, the Teatro San Cassiano will reveal its secrets of how, when combined with its small cast and orchestra, it encouraged ornamentation in a way that delivered drama through music that was clearly articulated in both diction and counterpoint: opera da camera one might say.

This will be Venice at its most glorious. Entering a box will be like walking through a time-machine. Once inside, we will find a Venetian Baroque theatre of 153 boxes over five tiers and with a platea (stalls) just six rows deep. With each box at just under a metre’s width and a capacity of just 405 spectators, the theatre will be intense, immediate, and intimate. It will introduce its guests to a world of “HIP”, where each opera will have been meticulously researched, now to be performed as its composer would recognise it, complete with period staging, gestures and costumes. It will celebrate the world’s greatest composers, but also restore those currently forgotten.

The aim in going backwards is to improve our understanding to take opera forwards.

Our project to reconstruct the original Teatro San Cassiano of 1637 targets completion by 2028 and with it will seek to restore Historically Informed Performances (“HIP”) of Baroque opera to Venice.

Happy 6 May 2025!