A celebratory symphonic concert will be held tonight at Venice’s La Fenice Theater to commemorate the 10th anniversary of its reopening, after the 1996 fire which completely destroyed it.
The Maestro Lorin Maazel will conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Built in 1792, La Fenice is still one of the main Italian and European theaters. It is first of all a repertory theater, finding its roots in the great heritage of 19th-century Italian opera: for La Fenice, Rossini wrote Tancredi and Semiramide, Bellini wrote I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Verdi wrote five operas, including La Traviata and Rigoletto.
During the 20th century, La Fenice hosted world premieres of works such as Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel and Nono’s Intolerance, and attention to contemporary creativity continues to be one of the highlights of its program, as recent premieres of works by Kagel, Guarnieri, Mosca and Ambrosini have shown.
La Fenice burned down and was rebuilt twice. The second fire, which was ruled as arson, occurred in 1996, and completely destroyed the theater. Reconstruction based on 19th-century style began in 2001 and on December 14, 2003, a concert conducted by Riccardo Muti celebrated the theater’s reopening.
