The Imperial Court Theater in Vienna from Burnacini to Galli Bibiena

• Published in: Music in art 2017-10, Vol.42 (1-2), p.71-96
• Main Author: Sommer-Mathis, Andrea
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Decoration of Performance Space: Meaning and Ideology
• ISSN: 1522-7464; 2169-9488

Although the very first opera performances at the imperial court of Vienna can be traced back to the 1620s, we do not know very much about their venues and the decoration of these early performances. Various living rooms and dance halls of the imperial palace were adapted for the occasion, with simple stages and seating arrangements for the audience. It took three more decades until the first free-standing theater building was constructed by Giovanni Burnacini (1610–1655) who was engaged from Venice in 1651. He not only introduced the newest Italian stage techniques in Vienna, but gave also shape to the proscenium of the theater; it was still rather simple but it included the imperial crown and coat of arms of the Habsburg dynasty. These first structural attempts were reinforced and extended by Giovanni Burnacini’s son Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini (1636–1707) who built the huge Teatro sulla Cortina, inaugurated in 1668 with the performance of Il pomo d’oro, though afterwards used only on very rare special occasions and finally demolished in 1683. Yet the preserved engravings of the auditorium and the proscenium lavishly decorated with allegorical figures and imperial devices are precious documents of the dominant Habsburg ideology. Again it should take three decades until Francesco Galli Bibiena (1659–1739), the first member of the famous family of architects and stage designers active in Vienna, remodeled the former dancing hall into an opera house that had all the characteristics of a representative court theater: rows of boxes with a central royal box, an ornate proscenium, a splendid stage curtain and a magnificent ceiling painting, probably by Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709).