Among the most recent Murano glass mirrors of our collection, Fenice is for sure the most preacious creation.
Result of our skillful master artisans’ wise work, Fenice unites art of glass and a lovely lichens and stabilized moss arrangement, that turns this masterpiece into a truly innovative piece of furniture.
With this creation, we’ve chosen to honor an excellence of our city, the Phoenix, opera theatre and brilliant example of Venice’s beautiful architecture.
La Fenice Theatre is the principal opera theatre in Venice and one of the most beautiful theatres in Italy. Built between 1790 and 1792 on a project by the neoclassical architect Giannantonio Selva, the Theatre is situated in Sestriere of San Marco, in Campo San Fantin.
Its building raised many controversies, in particular about the huge expenses that surpassed a lot the amount expected in project site. Despite all, the theatre was inaugurated on the 16th of May 1792, during the Festa della Sensa, with the first show of “I giuochi d’argento” by Giovanni Paisiello.
Throughout the 19th century, La Fenice theatre distinguished itself for its prestige: it has been seat of various first representations of operas by the most famous Italian musicians, such as Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini and Giuseppe Verdi.
In particular, the first of the Rigoletto in 1851 and the first of La Traviata in 1853 were premeried, this latter loudly whistled by the public. The theatre also hosted royal visitors like Napoleone Bonaparte in 1807, Austria and Hungary emperors Francesco Giuseppe and his wife Elisabetta in 1859, and the king of Italy Emanuele III, who met here in 1895 his future wife, the princess Elena di Montenegro.
The theatre continued also in the next century to be home to great successes of international artists like Igor Stravinskij, Sergej Prokofiev, Luigi Nono, Mauricio Kagel, Bruno Maderna.
During its existence, La Fenice theatre burned down two times in 1836 and in 1996, and then it resurrected from its ashes, omen nomen, both times. If the first burning almost entirely destroyed the theatre saving just the entrance and the outer walls, the second one was intentional and it committed firemen all night.
Thanks to artisans’ and conservators’ intervention, the beautiful stuccoes and gilding have been fixed and recretaed in an almost identical way to the original ones.
The new theatre’s renaissance was celebrated with an entire week of concerts, from the 14th to the 21st of December 2003, seven years after the tragic fire.
