Reviving Teatro San Cassiano: The Birthplace of Opera

Reviving Teatro San Cassiano: The Birthplace of Opera

Dr. Paul Atkin, CEO of Teatro San Cassiano Group Ltd., Professor Ellen Rosand (Yale University) and Artistic Director Bill Barclay (Concert Theatre Works) will present the visionary project to restore and reconstruct the Teatro San Cassiano, the world’s first public opera house, inaugurated in 1637 in Venice. This important cultural landmark is at the center of a thoughtful and ambitious initiative aimed at revitalizing Venice’s cultural heritage and ensuring its future sustainability.
The evening will include a detailed presentation of the restoration project, exploring the historical significance of the Teatro San Cassiano, the research behind the project, and its broader impact on the preservation of cultural patrimony in Venice.

The event will also feature live performances of early opera arias, offering a glimpse into the music that played a key role in establishing Venice as the epicenter of the global opera movement. The performances will be in collaboration with The Juilliard School: Elisse Albian, soprano, and Alex Vourtsanis, theorbist

Spearkers:

Doctor Paul Atkin, CEO and Founder, Teatro San Cassiano Group

Dr Paul Atkin is a musicologist, a founder and an entrepreneur with almost 40 years’ experience in business.

He first had the idea for this project in 1999 when watching a production of Julius Caesar at Shakespeare’s Globe. The clarity of the play was so enhanced by Sir Mark Rylance’s historically-informed “Renaissance”—as opposed “Roman”—setting that he saw immediately what could be achieved if Venice were to build its own Globe theatre equivalent where “HIP” Baroque opera could truly explore its potential. In 2014, Atkin sold his business interests to enable him to dedicate himself to rebuilding the Teatro San Cassiano. His knowledge of both business and music makes him exceptionally suited to understanding the differing and sometimes conflicting demands of restoring the original Teatro San Cassiano of 1637 to Venice as the world’s first public opera house.

Professor Ellen Rosand, George A. Saden Professor Emeritus of Music, Yale University

Professor Ellen Rosand was the recipient of fellowships from the ACLS, NEH, Rockefeller Foundation, and Guggenheim Foundation, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996. Editor of the Journal of the American Musicological Society (1981-83), president of the American Musicological Society (1992-94), and vice-president of the International Musicological Society (1997-2002),

In addition to her books, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: the Creation of a Genre (1991) and Monteverdi’s Venetian Trilogy: the Late Operas (2007), she edited Orfeo by Antonio Sartorio and Aurelio Aureli (Drammaturgia musicale veneta, vol 6, 1983), I sacri musicali affetti by Barbara Strozzi (1988), and the fourteen-volume Garland Library of the History of Western Music (1985). She is general editor of yet another fourteen-volume collection, this one a critical edition of the operas of Francesco Cavalli. Her other publications include articles on Barbara Strozzi, Monteverdi, Cavalli, Vivaldi, Handel, and music in sixteenth-century Venice.

Bill Barclay, Artistic Director, Concert Theatre Works

Director, writer, and composer Bill Barclay has created dozens of theatrical concerts with the world’s most prominent ensembles. He is Artistic Director of Concert Theatre Works and was Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe from 2012-2019.

Barclay’s original works have been performed at hundreds of venues around the world including The Hollywood Bowl, The Kennedy Center, The Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Barbican, Washington National Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and The Southbank Centre. A “personable polymath” (London Times), his theatrical concerts are praised as “witty and incisive” (New York Times), “Effortless perfection” (The Observer), “quietly transfixing” (The New Yorker), and “quite simply exquisite” (The Guardian). Broadway and West End credits include Farinelli and the King, Twelfth Night, and Richard III all starring Sir Mark Rylance. Major tours include The Chevalier (London Philharmonic Orchestra)