by Martina B. Priviero

Venice is very ancient and through its millenary history it has fascinated the whole world; yet behind this glorious life lies an intricate plot of legends and mysteries: it is the hidden Venice that hides its secrets and its stories among the city’s calli, canals, campi and campielli.

In Venice the word semblance thus takes on a double meaning: the very city that has always been a scenography for drama, masks, and opera, hides in its largest theatre, a latent history. It is the Gran Teatro La Fenice which, inaugurated in 1792, already ascribes a destiny to its name: nomen omen the Latins would say, much more than an appellation, well beyond a toponym, the Fenice is already a story from its name. Ovid in his Metamorphoses describes the phoenix, the firebird that has flown over all the mythologies of the ancient world and that still fascinates us today. Every five hundred years, Ovid explains, it withdrew from its flight and, having built a nest of balsamic herbs, let itself be burned by the sun; from here it rose and grew again with the same eagle-like features as before. However, the Fenice in Venice did not wait five centuries and, perhaps rushed by the stage that sees a thousand stories recounted every year, the theatre burned twice in just over two centuries, in 1836 and in 1996. It was then rebuilt following the original project and obeying the imperative “where it was, how it was”. A fate that intersects, even in appearance, with that of the bird from which it takes its name, from the Greek phoenix, meaning purple red. The phoenix has purple wings like the opera curtain, curtains that unfurl before taking flight; it has golden flames in the sky like the Royal Box and a circular destiny like the plan of a theatre. Cyclical lives yet marked by points, theatrical acts and fires, ashes, and rebirths. This is La Fenice or the phoenixes, who burn and are reborn together and who keep the birth of life in the ashes: this is Venice.