La Fenice theater reopens, as it was

La Fenice rises from the ashes again Sunday, eight years after the famous Venetian theater burned to the ground.

After years of squabbles and delays, Riccardo Muti will lift his baton and lead a gala concert of the company’s orchestra and chorus, marking the return of the city’s premier cultural jewel.

“It’s the same theater like before,” La Fenice’s music director, Marcello Viotti, said over coffee in New York last month. “Two years ago it was nothing -- ground zero, like you say here.”

The eight-day inaugural festival will include performances by the London Philharmonic (Monday), Elton John in his Venice debut (Dec. 19) and the Vienna Philharmonic (Dec. 20). For his opening program on Dec. 18, Viotti has commissioned an overture by composer Emanuele Casale, which will be given its world premiere.

La Fenice, among the most famous opera houses in the world, was designed by Giannantio Selva and opened on May 16, 1792. The house burned down on Dec. 13, 1836, and was rebuilt, then was remodeled in 1937 only to burn down again on Jan. 29, 1996 -- in an arson by employees of a subcontractor.

But La Fenice in Italian means “the phoenix,” a mythological bird that rises from ashes, and that it did. The restoration project by architect Aldo Rossi was driven by the phrase dov’era, com’era -- as it was, where it was.

Verdi wrote five operas that premiered at La Fenice from 1844 to 1857, including “La Traviata” and “Rigoletto.” Rossini wrote three for the company from 1813 to 1823, including “Tancredi” and “Semiramide,” and Bellini and Donizetti composed two each. Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” opened there in 1951, and Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw” debuted there three years later.

Viotti has been working at commissioning operas for more premieres. “This city has always had modern music,” he said.

In August, with scaffolding up and a huge crane high above Campo San Fantin, it looked as if there was little chance the theater would be ready on time. And even though the theater is opening now, opera won’t return to the 1,076-seat auditorium until November, when Lorin Maazel is scheduled to conduct “La Traviata” with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna.

While waiting for La Fenice to reopen, the company has spent the last two years at Teatro Malibran, a restored auditorium a few canals away, and that is where it performs this season while technical equipment is installed and tested. In the future, the company will perform in both houses.

Viotti is programming new productions, including French rarities such as Chausson’s “Le Roi Arthus” and Dukas’ “Ariane et Barbe-bleu.” And he wants to put on works by the composers who are a part of the lagoon city’s history.

“Like Salzburg is for Mozart, Bayreuth is for Wagner, Venice is the city for baroque music,” he said. “Cavalli, Monteverdi, Vivaldi -- if we don’t make a festival for baroque music, we are totally crazy.”

The company already has been in touch with mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, who has dazzled the last few years in the music of Vivaldi, Gluck and Salieri.

Viotti, 49, spends five months a year in Venice and the rest of the year either at his home in Petite Rosselle, France, or guest conducting. He won’t lead the opera reopening next November because he’ll be back in New York for performances of Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani” and “Aida” at the Met.