Fenice revival quickens Venice’s pulse

The facade of Venice’s luxuriant opera house, La Fenice, is again gleaming white. Inside, bare-breasted plaster nymphs once more show themselves off against a ceiling of gold leaf and a painted azure sky.

The acoustics seem as rich as ever -- no microphones needed, thank you.

Sunday night, nearly eight years after arsonists burned it to the ground, one of Italy’s most storied theaters came back to life. If you listened hard enough, you could hear not just triumphant strains of a Beethoven overture, but a collective sigh of belief. La Fenice has been rebuilt. Maybe decrepit, ever-sinking Venice has a future after all.

“In the back of everyone’s mind was the feeling this could never happen. And behind that attitude was a belief that nothing good could ever really happen in Venice,” mused Mayor Paolo Costa, under whose administration La Fenice, which means “the phoenix,” literally rose from the ashes. “If La Fenice had just disappeared forever, well, maybe it was also true that Venice would disappear.”

Sunday’s concert provided the climax to an epic of crime, intrigue, despair and renewal that made La Fenice a Venetian symbol on par with St. Mark’s Square and its winged lions. On Jan. 29, 1996, two electricians set the theater aflame to avoid a financial penalty for failing to complete a sprinkler system to put out fires.

Then-Mayor Massimo Cacciari defiantly pledged to rebuild La Fenice “as it was, where it was.” This rallying cry was not original -- Venetians invented it in 1902, when the bell tower at St. Mark’s collapsed and they mobilized to put it back up.

In all, the restoration cost about $90 million. Fifteen percent came from insurance money, 5% from donations and the rest from the central government.

For Venetians who previewed La Fenice last week, the result was like running across an old friend who everyone thought was dead. He looks the same, but something is different. Were those curtains really green? Weren’t the seats a deeper pink? Where did those frescoes come from?

Riccardo Muti, music director of Milan’s La Scala opera house, who led La Fenice’s orchestra Sunday, praised the acoustics. Konstantin Becker, first French horn, recalled the thrill of walking into the theater the other day. “My heart beat fast. I was incredulous and happy. After so many years of exile, I was at home again.”

The first opera in the refurbished theater won’t be mounted until next fall, after the acoustics are refined and stagehands learn the intricacies of the new machinery. This week’s festivities are meant as a kind of trumpet blast. “We want to show we’re in business,” said superintendent Gianpaolo Vianello.

He gingerly suggested that La Fenice will host events other than classical music to raise money. This week, Elton John will give a concert. It’s the house’s first step into the pop world.

Costa hopes La Fenice’s rebirth will stimulate progress on the infinite work of making Venice livable. The biggest undertaking is the construction of mobile dikes to block the entrance to Venice’s lagoon against devastating winter floods. Another is the conversion of the Arsenal, Venice’s former shipyard, into a high-tech industrial park. Yet another is the construction of a series of tunnels to link some of the islands and make travel among them easier.

“The nightmare is over,” Costa said. “The city still has a pulse.”