Teatro San Angelo

The Teatro San Angelo (in Venetian) or Teatro Sant'Angelo (in Italian) was once a theatre in Venice which ran from 1677 until 1803.

It was the last of the major Venetian theatres to be built in the 1650s–60s opera craze following Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in 1654, Teatro San Samuele 1655, Teatro San Salvatore 1661, Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo in 1667.[1]

The Teatro San Angelo was located in the Campo San[t'] Angelo, facing the Grand Canal and Rialto Bridge, on the sites of two demolished palazzi belonging to the Marcellos and Capellos.[2] The project was completed in 1676 by Francesco Santorini, and opened in 1677 under the families of Benedetto Marcello and the Capellos.

The house was opened with the opera Helena rapita da Paride of Domenico Freschi, (1677) and continued with operas by Freschi, Gasparini, Albinoni and Bononcini. From around 1715 onwards the house was best known as the venue of many of the operas of Antonio Vivaldi.[3] Under Vivaldi the opera house became increasingly populist and commercial. Soon theatre was home to the operas of Baldassare Galuppi, (Argenide 1733), and plays of Goldoni.

In the 1790s the Abate Pietro Chiari wrote for the Teatro San Angelo, and in 1797 Casanova wrote an attack on Chiari incurring the enmity of Antonio Condulmer, co-owner of the theatre and a member of the Council of Ten. At this point the theatre was in terminal decline.

The theatre closed in 1803 and was converted into a warehouse. It was then demolished and rebuilt as the Barocci Palazzo, today the four star Hotel NH Collection Palazzo Barocci.

  1. ^ Denis De Lucca Carapecchia – master of Baroque architecture in early eighteenth Century Venice 1999
  2. ^ Margaret L. King, The death of the child Valerio Marcello University of Glasgow.
  3. ^ John Booth Vivaldi 1989 "On 4 February 1715 he [Von Uffenbach] returned, as he reports in his diary: I went with several acquaintances to the Teatro San Angelo, which was smaller but also not so costly as the one I have described above. Its impresario was the famous Vivaldi, ..."