Checchia’s project for San Fantin was not without its merits on the mechanical side. Among the twenty-eight competitors, mention must be made of Pietro Checchia, the theatrical architect, experienced in reconstructing and renovating Venetian theatres.Ĭhecchia had rebuilt the San Benedetto Theatre after its destruction by fire, a theatre that was considered the best in Venice.
Nine of the various competing scholars, architects and mathematicians presented projects that included drawings and wooden models.
By the time the deadline expired, twenty-eight studies had been presented. The competition stirred up a lively debate, with rival factions supporting different competitors, some of whom fanned the flames by publishing illustrative pamphlets supporting their own projects. Manlio Brusatin, Giuseppe Pavanello, Il Teatro La Fenice, Venezia, Albrizzi 1987, p.
The closed-box system had its disadvantages, but was justified by the fact that the public of the day would never have agreed to forego the comforts of the separate loggias, which made each box a miniature home, where one could sit alone or in company, eat or play, and thus recreate, in a portion of privatized theatrical space, the network of relations and behavior typical of society at that time. It was thus a typically Italian choice, recreating within the building the conditions of an Italian piazza – a natural amphitheatre where people could be both at home and in the open it also offered the spectator a close view, typical of anatomical theatres. Some said it was a theatrical solution in keeping with Italian traditions elsewhere, in the eighteenth century, theatres were built to different criteria in France, for example, the usual system was one of galleries with open boxes above a semi-circular or slightly lengthened area of stalls.
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