Venice was a commercial republic whose prosperity was based upon trade, with a vigorous middle class not overawed by the aristocracy. Yet its patrician elite, as ancient and as self-conscious of its privileges as any in Europe, set the tone of the city's life and was resourceful in maintaining its position and power. Since there was no court and no court-sponsored entertainment, the city combined private and public efforts. The public opera house evolved from this tradition. The palaces of the Venetian patricians (San Cassiano has been the home of the Tron family) often had theaters in them, used for numerous private theatrical performances. Now, Venetian noblemen formed companies to build and manage opera houses, drawing audiences from the entire community and not just one class. And eyewitness noted that the Venetians competed to give these "as they say, works in music, ample and exquisite form." Opera became a popular entertainment, "the industry of the people, the wealth of the country itself," entertainment specially suited to a city which, with its open, sunny piazzas, was like "one vast dwelling-place where the inhabitants could conduct their lives in the open, just as if they were at home, rich and poor united as it were in the bond of a common existence." The Venetian opera house was truly revolutionary. Money, more than class, determined who could attend.
No wonder musicians like Claudio Monteverdi, Piero Cavalli, and Pietro Cesti flocked to the city. Venice created its own style of opera, combining high drama and bawdy farce and emphasizing spectacular stage effects. Its theaters had the most sophisticated stage machinery in Europe. The English traveler John Evelyn was impressed by the "variety of scenes painted and contrived with no less art of perspective, and machines for flying in the air, and other wonderful notions." The aria became a more integral part of the musical drama and the role of the orchestra was also expanded, using carefully selected instruments to give dramatic color to the music. The place of the orchestra in the theater was fixed, in front of the stage, and its members became regularly employed professional musicians. Another significant innovation followed from the increased emphasis given to songs: singers began to play a more independent role. Written contracts for performers, simple agreements to appear at a certain theater for a given fee, date from this period. Along with stars singers, Venice also produced the first touring companies.
Tracts of open land were not readily available. It was therefore important to pack as many people as possible into the available space, so Venetian opera houses expanded vertically and eventually became much larger than court theaters. The San Moise Theater, opened in 1640, seated eight hundred and came to be thought small by Venetian standards. In the interior the Venetians introduced another of their fusions of the public and the private----the opera box. San Cassiano was built in the form of a U. Around the perimeter of the auditorium were installed rings of walled-off, self-contained compartmens, or boxes, tiers of these rising one above the other to as many as seven levels. At the back of each box was a "withdrawing" room sometimes equipped with a fireplace, in which food and drinks were served. Everyone paid a fee for entering the opera house for each performance. In addition, boxholders paid annual rent for their boxes, which provided a substantial part of the operating income of the companies which built the theaters.
Financially, in terms of use of space, the opera box was inefficient. Open galleries would have held more people. But that was beside the point. The Venetian opera theater was a second house for citizens, the box another room in that house. If Saint Mark's Square was "the drawing room of Europe," a box at the opera was the boudoir adjoining it, where politics and fashion (and sometimes music) were discussed. Possession of a box was thought of in familial, not individual, terms. The box became part of hereditary rights, belonging to it so long as the rent was paid; at the death of a tenant, it passed, like all entailed property, to the heirs. The city took responsibility fore maintaining public order in the boxes, and the Doge himself allocated them to the heads of foreign diplomatic missions. A resident English diplomat frankly explained that, "he did not care for music, esteem poetry or understand the stage, but merely desired [a box] for the honor of his office."
The invention of the opera house as a public social institution had far reaching consequences that are still being worked out in our day. It altered the relationship of members of the audience to the music drama on the stage and to each other. The stage performance was now separated from the audience both by the proscenium arch, which framed the action, and by the orchestra. The occupants of the boxes faced one another across the auditorium as well as the stage. To see and be seen was as much identified with the function of the opera house as to see and hear what took place on stage. ...
Venice contributed enormously to the expansion and enrichment of opera as a musical form. It's achievement in the social sphere was equally impressive: the creation of an informed and critical musical public, the basis of musical culture as we have come to know it. Venetians didn't feel that they have to choose between esthetic and social values. For them, opera consisted inseparably of both. In Venice, Walter Pater wrote, "life itself was conceived as a kind of listening."
John Dizikes "Opera in America: A Cultural History", 1993 [Excerpt]
