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PALLADIO AND THE VENETO | Teatro Olimpico - Vicenza - (1580) | ||||||||||||||||
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Founded in 1556, the Accademia Olimpica would have to wait over twenty years before it managed to construct a permanent venue to host the theatrical representations until then staged using ephemeral wooden structures in palace courtyards or inside the salone of the Palazzo della Ragione. Only in 1580, in fact, did the Accademia set in motion building works for the theatre (on a land near the Isola given up by the City Council of Vicenza), according to the project of their own academician, Andrea Palladio. However, in August of that year, the architect died without being able to see the outcome of his labours, finished by his son Silla. After Palladio, it fell to Vincenzo Scamozzi to intervene in the theatre, inserting beyond the proscenium the sets (prepared for the inaugural representation of 1585, The Seven roads of Thebes) which were thereafter destined to remain an integral part of the building. Recent studies have demonstrated that the original Palladian project made provision only for a single perspectival backdrop on axis with the central portal of the proscenium, while painted backdrops were intended to fill the two lateral openings. The caesura of the two flanking walls, and the “soffitto [ceiling] alla ducale” above the stage, also date from the era of the Palladian project. The Teatro Olimpico was the concrete realization of a dream, until then never achieved, of generations of Renaissance humanists and architects: to execute in permanent form one of the buildings that had become a symbol of the classical cultural tradition. The Palladian project reconstructed the Roman theatre with an archaeological precision founded on the thorough study of Vitruvius’ text and the ruins of ancient theatrical complexes. In this sense it constitutes a sort of spiritual testament to the great Vicentine architect. With the Teatro Olimpico was reborn the theatre of the Ancients, and in its creation Palladio attained an absolute consonance with the language of great classical architecture, a language in which, over an entire lifetime, “with long labours, and great industry and love”, he had sought to rediscover the laws of secret harmony. |
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