The Phoenix

I was in a rush: I had to get to a campo near the Rialto bridge by 9:30am  - You know the one with statue of the jolly chap in the three cornered hat.

I had to be there by 9:30 to meet with my art history class.  Thankfully,  most of the walk was along the main tourist drag between the ferrovia and the Rialto bridge and it was quite  early so only the Venetians and myself were about to disturb the pigeons. Still I wasn't sure about how long it would take when quite by chance I came across a poster for a concert that evening at la Fenice - the Phoenix - Venice's sole remaining opera house.

 

I say sole remaining for  Venice is one of the two homes of Opera as an art form. The first was Florence where the camerata had introduced it, but where it may have died of lack of princely love and patronage hadn't it been for the interest of Claudio Monterverdi.

Monteverdi had moved from Mantua after the death of his wife to Venice (which was the prime  place to be if you were a musician in the late 16th century), to take over the role of capelmeister  to the church of St Mark in Venice after the death of Gabrielli.   There he wrote and  produced two great operas: "il ritorno di Ulyssees ",  and  "la incorronazione di Poppea" (He had already written his first opera (Orfeo) for the marriage celebration of the Gonzago's in Mantua). These works were incredibly successful and very quickly what had been once a princely entertainment  and an innovators curiosity became all the rage. Very soon opera houses were springing up all over Venice - there may have been dozens in the early 17th century - but now the Phoenix, like  the bird itself is singular. The only one remaining in Venice.

The metaphor doesn't end there though - the phoenix sings in its flames and is then reborn and so with  this  opera house:  la Fenice is itself the third  operatic phoenix to rise up and sing on the  same site.

Two hundred year ago the second phoenix  burned down and was rebuilt in the style of the time: late rococco mixed with the emerging Biedermeier - a building with very elegant and tasteful interiors.

 Ten years ago, two electrical contractors, late in finishing the work they were contracted to perform decided to take a short-cut and in a manner not contemplated in their contract,  burned the opera house down.

The Venetians demanded that their phoenix should rise again, "In the same place and in exactly the same form" and so it did.

la Fenice

But I digress: the poster was for a gala performance by  a Dresden youth orchestra playing music by Vivaldi and Porpora.  The concert would feature a theorbo player and a soprano singing  a song of praise to the Virgin. It would cost only  15€ and be conducted in the Salle Apollonea - what wasn't there to like?

The only problem was that it started at 8pm and was on the other side of the grand canal from class  (which finished at 8:15) - could it be done?

At the end of the art history class for the day I rushed back down the main pedestrian thoroughfare, passing through the milling crowds around the Rialto bridge, back down to the small campo near the Rialto bridge near where the traghetto's ply their trade across the grand canal (50c for a ride across to the other side of the canal),

The view from a traghetto while crossing the grand canal

Our gondolier - it's hard work (though they make it seem easy)!

followed my hand-made map and located the ticket office which was inside a rather large and mysterious palazzo on the banks of a small rio two rii down from the main footway. The building itself was externally quite dilapidated but being repaired but  inside it was a haunted house - grand and gloomy but nobody seemed to be at home. I walked in and up the staircase and found an empty office - I lost my courage and bounced down the stairs again. Where I gathered up the remains of my wilting bravery and pressed on the door-bell (which I hoped was the correct one - there were six) thankfully nobody replied with a booming "You rang" rather - instead of Lurch from the Adam's family -  a pleasant female German  voice beckoned me up the stairs to the office.

The young lady took my money and while she printed  my ticket and a map of the location of la Fenice the padrone introduced himself (a German man in his early sixties, with little English and head of the local Goethe institute) invited me to look around his palace.  He particularly asked me to note the Tiepolo ceiling in the drawing room of the piano nobile and the  trompe l'oeil frescos in a second room. They were rather fine - though pale shadows of some of the paintings I had seen in the Accademia. I thanked him for his kindness and departed ticket in had for that night's  performance.  Polite welcoming people as I 've found universally to be the case in Venice.

As I was on my way to school,  I took care to find la Fenice (hence I got lost) and when I finally did find it I timed how long it would take to reach it from school (around 30 minutes on foot - everything in Venice is on a human scale).

In class it was my final night with my grammatical muse - Claudia - before I left school and her final words to me (translated from the Italian) were: "Geoff I will become your incubus (nightmare), every night when you go to sleep my face will rise up in front of you and say - You must speak in Italian Geoff!". I thanked her for her kindness and after the traditional kiss on each cheek farewelled her….

And so, truncating my second class with Sara (my  muse of good conversation) I bravely set forth in search of the phoenix, map in hand, night closing in and the grand canal somewhere before me in the dark.  And dear reader, much to my surprise I found it….

La Fenice sits in a small rio not that far from the Accademia bridge. It's easy enough to find on opera night - just follow the immaculately dressed older women and men  in their ball gowns and evening suits as they stroll out from the calle near the shops selling the expensive clothing behind St Mark's. The ladies are very tastefully dressed and the men clad just so - nothing over done.

There are a few restaurants in front of the surprisingly small façade of the opera house - indeed the complex is much smaller than I imagined - smaller than a typical suburban town hall. Milling around the front is the usual assortment of American tourists wondering if they could still take the daily tour of the inside. The face of the building is white and not terribly elaborate, the interior hall a spare Tuscan pumpkin colour. My ticket is taken from me and I'm directed (admittedly somewhat hot and sweaty after the walk) to the upstairs room - a large drawing room in fact - the Sala Apollinee.

Sala Apollinee

The room is painted a pale pink, the walls decorated with large gilt mirrors, two Murano chandeliers complete the ornamentation. The seats are individual not banked or raked like in a typical modern concert hall. Our host greets me warmly and then with little more ado the orchestra takes its place at the head of the room, surrounding the harpsichord (cembalo) and the theorbo player. I was very touched by their appearance. They were bright and handsome children on the cusp of adulthood. The boys in their suits and the girls - young women really - in their formal-wear with their hair up. The young ladies had a more knowing, adult awareness about them than the young men.

I said I found it very  touching  and  the reasons for that were manifold - the building   was both very old and very new (being a replica of what had been lost), the music they played was of its time and place - old - and yet they gave it a new birth and freshness, they were young yet were helping in the maintenance of some quite ancient.

Vivaldi wrote many of his pieces (of which I was to hear a number) for the orchestra of young women that performed at la Pieta on the Giuedecca canal. And here, I was having come from very far away in time and space, to re-enact my part in such a performance.

It helped that the performers were so accomplished. The horn concerto is a virtuoso piece and the young men that played it played it with such panache and skill that it appeared easy. 

The bassoonist made his difficult instrument speak with eloquence and a mellifluous  ease that made the joker of the orchestra sound instead like its philosopher. So many things combined - the poignancy of the young performers on the edge of adulthood, the phoenix reborn, the fact that the music being played belonged so much to the city, the room itself and its décor had a great effect upon me and gave me cause for a wistful, elegiac happiness which belonged, for me at least, nowhere else but here, in the phoenix, reborn, singing in its ashes, in Venice.