Thirty years have passed since the fire that, on the night between 29 and 30 January 1996, destroyed the Teatro La Fenice. Thursday 29 January, on the occasion of this anniversary, the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice will open the doors of the Campo San Fantin Theatre to the public free of charge from 9:30 am to 3 pm., for enthusiasts and the curious for a visit to the reconstructed Theatre. And for those who already know the reconstructed Theatre, there will be the opportunity to compare the current image with the memory of the previous one. stake. Thanks to a exhibition set up for the occasion with the photographs collected by Daniele Paolin in 1989 and with other evocative shots preserved by the Historical Archive and exceptionally exhibited for this occasionFrom the Fest website, festfenice.com, it will be possible to download the audio guide for the visit to the theatre. The exhibition will remain visible to the public until Thursday, February 12, 2026.
The memory of the theater in the photographs of Daniele Paolin
The images collected by Daniele Paolin are intended to teach, to explain, and today also to remember. To remember what the Theater was like. Around 1989, Paolin – a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, set designer of the Fenice and stage person – had the spaces of the 'old' Theatre photographedThe hazelnut-colored boxes, the walnut doors, the red-carpeted stalls, the Apollonia converted into a rehearsal room, lived in and transformed by daily work. Those photographs were for the students, when the Theater was unusable due to ongoing rehearsals. They are therefore the fruit of an educational project, but they are also an honest glimpse into what the public didn't see then and still doesn't see now. Paolin is present in those images; in one of them we find him at work, standing, painting a backdrop in the set design studio above the stage: the very place where, a few years later, the fire would start.
«Today these photographs resurface as a tribute, and everyone – the public, of course, but also us, the workers of the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice – thank Daniele Paolin for having given them to us. By giving us the memory of a theatre very similar to today's, yet profoundly differentThis isn't a story of reconstruction. It's something more intimate: a collection of previously unseen images, fragments preserved over time. A surprise even for those who experience this theater every day.A section of the exhibition will feature images depicting the "hidden heart of the Theater," the part the audience doesn't see or know. It's the back of the stage: the space of work, of waiting, of technique, of the silent gesture that makes magic possible. The photographs on display, dated 1937 and sourced from the Theater's historical archive, show the stage under restoration as it was before the fire. A unique piece, never before exhibited.
(Photo credits: Teatro La Fenice press office)
