The short, lascivious lives of two Venetian theaters, 1580-85

Renaissance Quarterly, Autumn, 2002 by Eugene J. Johnson

The motion presented to the Ten followed closely the wording of the letter from the Gelosi, incorporating the language about keeping the boxes open and adding the qualification that lights be kept burning until everyone had left the theater. (63) Even so, by a vote of seven for and six against, the parte failed to receive the required two-thirds majority, and so the issue was left pending, apparently never to be voted again, although it was the general practice to bring pending issues back to the council for a second vote. It is not clear if the performances of the Gelosi went forward or not. The Ten would not have found it easy to disappoint favorite performers of a king whom Venice had assiduously cultivated as a counterbalance to Spanish power in the Mediterranean and on the Italian peninsula.

By one of those coincidences that sometimes illuminate history, the Rettori (Rectors) of the city of Vicenza, which was under Venetian control, had written to the capi of the Ten the day before the inconclusive vote on the Gelosi's petition. The Rettori, Venetian patricians appointed to govern Vicenza, wrote to request the council's opinion on the imminent performance in that city of a tragedy in "a very noble and most sumptuous Theater." (64) The tragedy, of course, was Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, and the theater Palladio's Teatro Olimpico. (65) The Rettori, as Venetian patricians, well understood the bad odor in which theatrical performances of any kind were held in Venice, and their letter seems to have been an effort to cover their tracks with the Ten, in case something went wrong as a result of the performance of the tragedy. Understanding the politics of the situation, they were careful to point out the distinguished nature of the membership of the Accademia Olimpica, the interest of foreigners in the perfo rmance, the antiquity of the play, the expenses incurred in building the theater and, hardly least in a government built on precedent, the fact that the performance had already been approved by previous rectors. The Ten, with their wings newly clipped by the Maggior Consiglio, refused to answer the Rettori. Rather, they sent the letter on to the Senate, to which it was presented by the Savij del Collegio. (66) The Collegio and the Senate answered with a rather wonderful piece of bureaucratic buck-passing that did not fail, however, to show that they were behaving responsibly:

... we say to you with the Senate that appearing to us to be sufficient the authority you have to provide for all that will be necessary in such an occasion, and knowing you to be both prudent and diligent, we want to make sure that you yourselves see to it that the affairs of such a Performance pass with that quiet and universal satisfaction that are appropriate. (67)

There can be no question that the Senators knew about the Teatro Olimpico. Sitting among them was Marc'Antonio Barbaro, Palladio's great champion. In Barbaro's villa at Maser, designed by Palladio, the architect quite possibly had died in 1580, the very year of the design of the theater. The greatest of all humanist reconstructions of an ancient theater, the Teatro Olimpico had none of the offending boxes of the Venetian comedy theaters, but rather arena seating, so that the entire audience was open to public scrutiny. In it, to use the words of the Gelosi when they promised to keep the Michiel boxes open, "mai si possa nasconder con scandalo alcuna persona." We know that for the first performances the sexes at the Olimpico were segregated, following long-established custom in court and academic theaters. The wives of the members of the Accademia Olimpica and other women invited to the performance sat in the orchestra in rows assigned to them. The members of the Academy, all men, sat in other rows of the orch estra, while the arena seats were given to men who did not belong to the Academy. (68)