Inventing the opera house : theater architecture in Renaissance and baroque Italy / Eugene J. Johnson, Williams College.

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Ferrara and Mantua, 1486-1519 -- Rome 1480's-1520 -- Early theaters in Venice and the Veneto -- Sixteenth century Florence, with excursions to Venice, Lyon and Siena -- Early permanent theaters and the commedia dell'arte -- Theaters in the ancient manner and Andrea Palladio -- Drama-tourney theaters -- Ferrara, Parma, Pesaro, and theaters of Giovanni Battista Aleotti -- Seventeenth century theaters in Venice: the invention of the opera house -- Seventeenth century theaters for comedy and opera -- Teatro di Tordinona in Rome, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Carlo Fontana.

In this book, Eugene Johnson traces the invention of the opera house, a building type of world-wide importance. Italy laid the foundation theatre buildings in the West, in architectural spaces invented for the commedia dell'arte in the sixteenth century, and theatres built to present the new art form of opera in the seventeenth. Rulers lavished enormous funds on these structures. Often they were among the most expensive artistic undertakings of a given prince. They were part of an upsurge of theatrical invention in the performing arts. At the same time, the productions that took place within the opera house could threaten the social order, to the point where rulers would raze them. Johnson reconstructs the history of the opera house by bringing together evidence from a variety of disciplines, including music, art, theatre, and politics. Writing in an engaging manner, he sets the history of the opera house within its broader early modern social context.