Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Venice was primarily known as a centre of opera, with several flourishing opera houses. The most prestigious of these was the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, named like the others after the parish in which it was located. It had been built by the brothers Giovanni, Carlo and Vicenzo Grimani, whose uncle Giovanni Grimani had built the Teatro SS Giovanni e Paolo (1639) and the Teatro San Samuele. The oldest public opera house in Venice, the Teatro S.Cassiano (1637), was owned by the Tron family. In 1640 Almoro Zane had opened a small theatre called San Moise, later distinguished by a famous impresario, Francesco Santurini. The latter in turn built a theatre of his own in the parish of Sant' Angelo; operas were produced at this theatre from 1677 to 1752. Another small house, San Fantino, opened in 1699, only to close in 1719. The Teatro San Salvatore, owned by the Vendramin family, was also known as the Teatro San Luca; this name was changed twice again in its three-hundred-year history (to Teatro Apollo and Teatro Goldoni; see Wiel 1897, XLIV). All in all, sixteen Venetian theatres had opened by the end of the seventeenth century, eight of them serving both for straight comedy and opera (Galvani 1879, 13).