Teatro La Fenice

Stand for a moment in the small square of Campo San Fantin. The paving stones are smooth underfoot, worn by centuries of footsteps. Somewhere a door opens, and for a second you might catch a scale sung through an open window, or the tuning of a violin. In front of you rises a pale, calm facade with columns and statues. It looks almost modest for a city of marble palaces. Yet this is one of the most celebrated opera houses in the world.

Its name is La Fenice, which means the Phoenix. The name was chosen with care. In the late eighteenth century, a Venetian opera company lost its theatre after a fire and a legal dispute. Its members decided to build something new, and better. They named it after the mythical bird that burns and rises again from its own ashes. Nobody could know then how many times this name would come true.

The theatre opened in 1792. Its architect was Giannantonio Selva, who won a design competition for the project. The site was difficult. Venice is a city of narrow lanes and canals, and there was no wide space for a grand building. Selva fitted the theatre into a tight plot between the square and the water. Look up at the facade and you will see the word Societas, a quiet reminder that a society of patrons paid for the house.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. La Fenice has two front doors. One faces this square, for guests on foot. The other opens onto a canal at the back, so that wealthy Venetians could arrive by gondola and step almost directly into the foyer. If you walk around the building, you can still see that water entrance. On an opera night, it is easy to imagine the boats waiting in the dark.

The first great disaster came in 1836. A fire destroyed much of the interior. The Venetians did not hesitate. Two brothers, the architects Tommaso and Giovanni Battista Meduna, led the rebuilding, and the theatre reopened within about a year. The new hall was rich with gilded carvings, painted ceilings and soft colours. It is this nineteenth century look that most people still picture when they think of La Fenice.

And then came the music. The middle of the nineteenth century was the age of Giuseppe Verdi, and La Fenice gave the world several of his operas for the first time. Ernani opened here in 1844. Rigoletto followed in 1851. Two years later came La Traviata, the story of a doomed courtesan in Paris. Today it is one of the most performed operas on Earth.

But here is the surprise. The first night of La Traviata was not a success. The audience was unhappy, and Verdi himself wrote to a friend that the evening had been a fiasco. Part of the problem was the casting and the staging. When the opera returned to Venice a year later at another theatre, it was received very differently. So one of the greatest hits in opera history began with a disappointed composer walking home through these streets.

Verdi was not alone. Earlier in the century, Gioachino Rossini premiered operas here, including Tancredi and Semiramide. Vincenzo Bellini brought his version of the Romeo and Juliet story. In the twentieth century, the house looked outward. Igor Stravinsky premiered The Rake's Progress here in 1951, and Benjamin Britten brought The Turn of the Screw a few years later. This small theatre has always punched far above its size.

Now we come to the darkest night. On the 29th of January, 1996, La Fenice burned again. The fire spread through the wooden interior very fast. To make things worse, nearby canals had been drained for maintenance work, so firefighters struggled to find water. Helicopters dropped water from the lagoon. People stood in the squares and watched the sky glow orange. By morning, only the outer walls were left standing.

The cause was not an accident. Investigators found that the fire had been set on purpose. Two electricians working on a renovation were later convicted. Their company faced penalties for delays, and the court found they had started the fire to escape them. It was a small, sad motive for the loss of something so loved. For Venice, the shock was enormous.

The city chose to rebuild the theatre as it was, where it was. Venetians use this phrase, com'era, dov'era, for their great reconstructions. The design was based on plans by the architect Aldo Rossi, who died before the work was finished. To recreate the lost decoration, craftspeople studied photographs and old records. Some accounts say they even used scenes from a 1950s Italian film shot inside the theatre. In December 2003, La Fenice opened its doors once more.

If you go inside, the hall feels both grand and intimate. Tiers of boxes curve around the stage in a horseshoe shape. Gold leaf catches the light. Pale painted panels soften the space. At the centre, facing the stage, is a large royal box, a reminder of the emperors and kings who once ruled Venice. It is a room built so that people could watch the opera, and also watch each other.

Today the theatre is alive again, with a full season of opera, ballet and concerts. Each New Year, a concert from this hall is broadcast across Italy. Musicians, stage hands and tailors still work behind these walls every day. The Phoenix is not a museum piece. It is a working house, and its story is still being written each night the curtain rises.

Before you leave, look once more at the pale facade in front of you. Listen to the square. The footsteps, the voices, perhaps a gondolier calling out on the canal behind. These walls have seen fire twice and music for more than two centuries. As you walk away into the narrow lanes, you may find yourself humming a tune you heard long ago... and some of those tunes were heard for the very first time right here.