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19-602: The Teatro Comunale di Firenze is an opera house in Florence , Italy. It was originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele , which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti 's Lucia di Lammermoor and which seated 6,000 people. It became the focus on cultural life in the city. After closure caused by fire, it reopened in April 1864 and acquired

38-425: A large orchestra section, one tier of boxes, and two wide semicircular galleries, which betray the building's amphitheatre origins. As the theatre became more closely associated with Italy's first and most important music festival, the annual Maggio Musicale Fiorentino which had begun in 1931 as a triennial festival and, except for the war years, became an annual one after 1937, so its name was changed once again for

57-405: A religious nature found a special place in the mystery plays performed on cathedral squares. As before, they dealt with sacred subjects, but they were not about worship per se. Secular musical theater also existed, but had a more popular and intimate aspect (see, for example, Adam de la Halle 's Jeu de Robin et Marion ("Play of Robin and Marion"), in the 13th century). At the beginning of

76-609: A roof in 1882. By 1911 it had both electricity and heating. In 1930 the building was taken over by the city authorities who renamed it the Teatro Comunale . Bombing during the Second World War damaged the building once again, and other problems closed it for three years in 1958. Finally, in May 1961, the then-modernized theatre reopened with Verdi 's Don Carlo . It had become a 2,000 seat elliptically shaped auditorium consisting of

95-516: The Opernhaus vorm Salztor in Naumburg in 1701. With the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, and vaudeville shows as well as operas and other musical events. In

114-462: The Suda , intended for the rehearsal of music that was to be sung in the grand theater or, according to Plutarch , for the jury to audition musicians competing for a prize. Ancient theaters provided the ideal conditions, but it was not yet time for opera: the aim was to worship the deities, not to venerate the muses . The subject was religious, it was accompanied by singing and instrumental music. Worship

133-656: The 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambition and social position. There was no opera house in London when Henry Purcell was composing and the first opera house in Germany, the Oper am Gänsemarkt , was built in Hamburg in 1678, followed by the Oper am Brühl in Leipzig in 1693, and

152-857: The 17th century, in Italy, singing underwent yet another renewal, with the emergence of Baroque art at the height of the Renaissance . Italy continues to have many working opera houses, such as the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (the biggest in the country), the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan . The Teatro San Cassiano in Venice was the world's first public opera house, inaugurated as such in 1637. In

171-483: The 2000s, most opera and theatre companies are supported by funds from a combination of government and institutional grants , ticket sales, and private donations. In the 19th-century United States, many theaters were given the name "opera house", even ones where opera was seldom if ever performed. Opera was viewed as a more respectable art form than theater ; calling a local theater an "opera house" therefore served to elevate it and overcome objections from those who found

190-496: The French National Library (Lat 11331) ; the text is by Hilarius , and no music accompanies it. The second version is a 13th-century drama with monophonic music, written about 1227 to 1234 by students at the school of Beauvais Cathedral , located in northern France. A large portion of the text is poetic rather than strictly liturgical in origin; it closely follows the narrative of the biblical story of Daniel at

209-661: The Harmonia Mundi usa label. A new production of the Play of Daniel by the Boston Camerata, this time under the direction of French-born medievalist Anne Azéma , was presented in Boston in November, 2014. Daniel was played by tenor Jordan Weatherston Pitts. In 2008, a new production, staged by Drew Minter with musical direction by Mary Anne Ballard in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of

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228-464: The architects of ancient Greek theater , Vitruvius described, in the 1st century BC, in his treatise De architectura , the ideal acoustics of theaters. He explained the use of brazen vases that Mummius had brought to Rome after having had the theater of Corinth demolished, and as they were probably used in the Theater of Pompey . As wooden theaters were naturally sonorous, these vases, placed between

247-762: The court of Belshazzar . In the United States, the latter play was revived in the 1950s by Noah Greenberg , director of the New York Pro Musica ; a commentary in English, written and performed by W. H. Auden , was used in some of their performances. A recorded 1958 performance by the group at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , and featuring boy choristers of the Church of the Transfiguration as satraps and soldiers,

266-509: The festivals to the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino . 43°46′30.01″N 11°14′20.47″E  /  43.7750028°N 11.2390194°E  / 43.7750028; 11.2390194 Opera house While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other opera houses are part of larger performing arts centers. Indeed, the term opera house is often used as a term of prestige for any large performing arts center. Based on Aristoxenus 's musical system, and paying homage to

285-495: The seats on the stands, served as resonators in the stone buildings: "By means of this arrangement, the voice, which will come from the stage as from a center, will extend in circles, will strike in the cavities of the vases, and will be made stronger and clearer, according to the relationship of consonance that it will have with one of these vases." The odeon built by Pericles near the Theater of Dionysus in Athens was, according to

304-403: The theater morally objectionable. Notes Sources Play of Daniel The Play of Daniel , or Ludus Danielis , is either of two medieval Latin liturgical dramas based on the biblical Book of Daniel , one of which is accompanied by monophonic music. The play itself dates from c. 1140. Two medieval plays of Daniel survive. The first version is in a manuscript conserved in

323-510: Was completely renewed. The Jeu de Daniel ("Play of Daniel") was a sung play, characteristic of the medieval Renaissance of the 12th century . The subject, taken from the biblical Book of Daniel , deals with Israel's captivity in Babylon . The play was written and performed by students of the Episcopal School of Beauvais , located in northern France. In the 15th century, sung theater of

342-587: Was public, and the audience was made up of citizens as well as other categories of the population. Four centuries later, the Church abandoned spectacles as practiced in Antiquity. Histrions , representative of Greco-Roman civilization , gradually disappeared. The Middle Ages saw the abandonment of ancient theaters, which were transformed into gigantic stone quarries , like many other ancient buildings, both public or private. Music still had its place in worship. It continued to bring audiences together, but its content

361-804: Was released by Decca , with sleeve notes by Paul Henry Lang and Dom Rembert Weakland , O.S.B. , who had discovered the text at the British Library . Since the New York Pro Musica production it has enjoyed many performances among early music troupes. Also important in the history of modern revivals of the Beauvais Cathedral version, Daniel was the 1985 production of the Boston Camerata , staged by Andrea von Ramm, with musical direction by Joel Cohen . In 2008, The Dufay Collective and William Lyons released their CD, The Play of Daniel on

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