Classical music
As in painting, there was also a Venetian school of music. By the early 16th century, Venice had become a major centre of European musical life, following in the footsteps of Rome, whose attractiveness to artists declined after its sack in 1527. A prosperous city with a stable government, Venice quickly became a major center for the publication of musical scores. Composers flocked from all over Europe to take advantage of this innovation, particularly from Flanders. This explains why the first representatives of this Venetian school were Flemish, Jacques Buus and above all Adrian Willaert, who imported the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school to Venice. But it was with an Italian that the Venetian school reached its first high point: Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). The eldest son of a cultivated and music-loving doctor, Monteverdi was born in Cremona, then part of the Duchy of Milan. In 1590, he arrived at the court of Mantua, where he was appointed to head the small group of musicians accompanying Vincent de Gonzague on his campaign against the Turks. He undertook the composition ofOrphée - considered one of the first operas - in order to satisfy the Duke. In 1612, Vincent de Gonzague died, and his son François, who succeeded him, dismissed Claudio Monteverdi and his brother. Having tried his luck unsuccessfully in Milan, the composer moved to Venice, where the death of the Master of St. Mark's Chapel left a vacancy. In 1613, he was admitted on the basis of an audition. His musical authority soon extended beyond his duties at St. Mark's, and illustrious Venetian families vied with each other for the honor of receiving a composition from the master. Early in 1643, "the most famous musician of the century" asked to be relieved of his duties at San Marco. He died in Venice in 1643. His funeral at the Basilica Santa Maria Gloriosa Dei Frari was that of a prince.
Three decades later, one of its most illustrious inhabitants was born in Venice, a violin prodigy and admired composer of the Baroque period: Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1742). The eldest of seven children, Antonio Vivaldi was the son of an excellent violinist attached to St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. Ordained to the priesthood at the age of 29, Vivaldi's health was frail and he was soon released from his clerical duties. He was given the job of music teacher at the Pietà hospice. Vivaldi composed extensively for the hospice orchestra, encouraged by the high standard of his pupils. Today, the Chiesa della Pietà, also known as the Church of Antonio Vivaldi, stands where the hospice once stood. It is located in the sestiere Castello, not far from Piazza San Marco. This place is highly symbolic in the history of Venetian music, as it was here that Vivaldi composed his first musical works. Three years later, he took charge of Venice's San Angelo theater, becoming its director in 1714. It was a very demanding job: Vivaldi signed contracts, settled disputes, resolved situations, planned tours and, above all, staged his own operas. In 1723, he moved to Rome, where for a year and a half he staged three operas and played before the Pope. His fame was international, and the whole world sought him out. Vivaldi played his works, including the celebrated Four Seasons, at the home of the French ambassador, and wrote a cantata to celebrate the marriage of Louis XV. But in autumn 1740, he bade farewell to the Pietà and left Venice. No one knew his destination. A year later, poor and already completely forgotten, he died in Vienna.
A contemporary of Vivaldi but overshadowed by him, Tomaso Albinoni is the other great Venetian composer of the Italian Baroque.
Contemporary music
Among contemporaries, the Serenissima also gave birth to a great name: Luigi Nono (1924-1990). At the cutting edge of new music, this composer traversed serialism, aleatoric music, musique concrète and electronic music, without ever becoming a prisoner of one style or another. His scores show him to be a powerful creator, deeply human and warm-hearted. Rejecting official distribution channels, the composer did not take part in the Venice Biennale. He then devoted much of his creative activity to electro-acoustic music that could be easily transported on magnetic tape in the street or in factories, such as Un volto del mare for two voices (1968). In 1955, he married Schoenberg's daughter Nuria, with whom he had two children. His Il Canto Sospeso marked an aesthetic and ideological turning point, and in 1960, the premiere of his two-act opera Intolleranza 60, based on texts by Brecht, Eluard, Sartre and Mayakovsky, was a protest against imperialist policies and social iniquity. Luigi Nono wanted to bear witness to a corrupt, unjust and destructive society. Less committed and, above all, less well known today, the Venetian Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was one of the most widely performed Italian composers in the world before the First World War. His three-act comic opera I quatro rusteghi ("The Four Rustlers"), based on Carlo Goldoni's 18th-century play, is well worth listening to, as it is written in Venetian dialect. Giuseppe Sinopoli, a leading conductor who worked with all the most prestigious orchestras: Deutsche Oper, Scala, London's Royal Opera, Metropolitan Philharmonic... Giuseppe Sinopoli died on stage in 2001, struck down by a heart attack during the third act ofAida at Berlin's Deutsche Oper.
Today's Venice has retained all its musical aura. The same inspiration is to be found here, the same breath of life conducive to creation, and it's always a pity to leave the city without attending a concert of Baroque music. The ultimate venue for a performance - no doubt about it - is the La Fenice Theatre... This stage, one of the most prestigious in the world, is emblematic of the splendor of Venetian lyrical music. After eight years of renovation following the terrible fire of 1996, La Fenice has risen from the ashes and reopened its doors. The hall was rebuilt identically, thanks to a sumptuous restoration project carried out with great finesse. In total: 174 boxes, 1,100 seats, and a grandiose oval auditorium of rare elegance, where gold and red blend radiantly, in the pure Baroque tradition of the 18th century. Of course, the La Fenice theater is famous for its Divina, whose portraits still adorn the walls... Maria Callas had a special bond with La Fenice. In 1947, she made her debut as a young diva, and at just 24, her interpretation of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde opened the door to success. La Fenice is a legendary venue for music lovers, and attending a performance here leaves an unforgettable impression. Operated by the same management as La Fenice, Teatro Malibran is one of the oldest theaters in the Serenissima (inaugurated in 1678). In 1996, it became the Theatre of the Venetians, pending the reopening of La Fenice. Today, it hosts classical music concerts and plays. The sumptuous Scuola Grande Di San Giovanni Evangelista promises a few Stendhal syndromes to anyone who comes to hear Verdi's La Traviata, Puccini's La Tosca or Rossini's The Barber of Seville. A sublime setting where works by Carpaccio, Bellini or Titian can be seen. Just a stone's throw from the Basilica dei Frari is the Palazzetto Bru Zane, an architectural gem. Once a small salon for pleasure and leisure, it now houses the Centre de Musique Romantique Française, dedicated to promoting a musical repertoire from 1780 to 1920, as original as it is little-known. The promise of a wonderful evening in a unique setting.
Popular music
Since the post-war years, Italian popular music has been one of the most successful in crossing borders and braving language barriers. Like us, Italians have a wealth of variety and pop, and its great (often broken) voices can be heard anywhere - stores, cabs, the street - and at any time. These include the great artists of the leaden years, such as the fantastic crooner Paolo Conte, Adriano Celentano and the foundations of Italian rock, Lucio Battisti and his famous italo-disco hit Ancora Tu (an italo-disco that would soon be brought to fame by a certain Giorgio Moroder), the pop-rock of Zucchero or Eros Ramazzotti in the 1980s, and the vocal variety of the 1990s embodied (very differently) by Laura Pausini and Andrea Bocelli.
Theater and dance
In France, when asked about Italian literature, the answer is usually Dino Buzzati and Dario Fo - or more recently, Elena Ferrante. But there is one Venetian playwright whose name has a particular resonance here: Carlo Goldoni. An admirer of Molière, he was the creator of modern Italian comedy, imbuing commedia dell'arte with greater realism and drawing inspiration from everyday life. Criticized and even mocked by audiences and peers alike for his style, Carlo Goldoni was forced into exile in Paris in 1762, where he died thirty years later (1793). Ironically, Goldoni's impact on Italian theater was such that a venue was dedicated to him in Venice. The Teatro Stabile Del Veneto - Carlo Goldoni is a small "Italian-style" theater (with four orders of boxes on top of each other) where his plays are performed, as well as a number of lyric operas, concerts and ballets. The Teatro a l'Avogaria also offers avant-garde programming in a beautiful space for Italian-speaking lovers of contemporary theater.
