Casanova, Venice and Europe

Casanova in Time 1725 – 2025 is the title of the international symposium focused on the historical figure of Casanova, emblematic of a world that was fading, such as the Republic of Venice, but also of the transformations within modern society. His myth has traversed the past three centuries, reflecting the perspectives of eighteenth-century scholars, historians, artists, filmmakers, and figures from both culture and politics.

The symposium, which will take place on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and at Ca’ Dolfin, is the result of a collaboration between the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Institute for the History of Venetian Society and State) and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Department of Linguistic and Comparative Cultural Studies), along with the Ateneo Veneto, the State Archives of Venice, the Museum of Venetian Eighteenth Century Art, and the Correr Museum Library.

Three of the six advanced courses scheduled at the Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute are dedicated to the world of Casanova. On 29 May, the focus will be on the lives of singers, librettists, and Vivaldian contemporaries as seen through the caricatures of Zanetti. On 17 July, Casanova before Casanova will explore the myth of the libertine: the seminar will conclude with a concert by the students dedicated to the musical drama L’inganno trionfante in amore, which premiered in 1725, the year of Casanova’s birth, at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice. Finally, from 26 to 29 November, there will be a study day on Venetian culture in Dresden: Casanova – Pisendel – Casanova.

The Vivaldi Academy offers high-level training activities aimed at groups of students selected through public calls: an opportunity to refine performance skills and deepen musicological aspects of Vivaldi’s compositions.

The Egida Sartori and Laura Alvini Seminars in Early Music, directed by Pedro Memelsdorff, explore the possible shared Parisian experiences of Giacomo Casanova and Joseph Boulogne, through the research and study of musical scores and other related materials.

Twenty years younger, Boulogne shared several biographical traits with the more famous Venetian: a frequent visitor in other noble circles, a legendary seducer, violinist, and later, a political agent and freemason. Boulogne’s work will thus be considered in the context of his political activities.

The seminar and concert titled Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de St. George: Concerts and Symphonies (1770-1780) will be led by Théotime Langlois de Swarte, a young star of European and global baroque violin. Assisting him with the symphonic repertoire will be the seminar’s director himself.

The exhibition aims to evoke and stage the cultural and artistic atmosphere of the early decades of the eighteenth century in Venice, which form the backdrop to the birth and development of Casanova.

The exhibition project is hosted between the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Galleria di Palazzo Cini, with scientific coordination by Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History. At its heart lies the extraordinary collection of caricatures from the Album of Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder, alongside a selection of paintings, drawings, engravings, objects, books, and further artefacts from the Foundation’s collections, as well as precious loans from Italian and international museums and collections.

Particularly captivating will be materials from the Nino Rota Archive, preserved by the Institute of Music, which relate to the renowned film Il Casanova by Federico Fellini (1976): notebooks with musical notes, manuscript scores, and photographs. From the Malipiero Archive, other documents will be available, reflecting the celebrated composer’s particular attention to eighteenth-century Venice, to which he dedicated a significant body of works, as well as a text (Giacomo Casanova and Music, in Il filo d’Arianna. Saggi e fantasie, Einaudi 1966), for which notes and transcriptions are preserved.

The Institute for Theatre and Opera is organising a study day to explore the theatrical scene during Casanova’s time and to examine the echoes of Casanova in twentieth-century Italian theatrical productions. Scholars from various European universities will reflect on how the myth of Casanova has been portrayed on Italian stages in the contemporary era.

The initiative, which will take place on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, is organised in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Université Sorbonne of Paris.

Musicians Stefano Albarello (conductor, qānūn, baroque guitar), Peppe Frana (lutes, lavta, and tanbūr), Giovanni De Zorzi (ney flute), and Gianfranco Russo (viola d’amore) have been invited by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Musical Studies, as a tribute to the cosmopolitan profile of Giacomo Casanova.

The concert Casanova al Levante will feature music popular during his travels in Eastern Europe and Constantinople, derived from both Venetian and Ottoman traditions, performed with instruments from both musical cultures.

Among the writings left by some ambassadors of the time, we find music transcribed according to Western standards, instrumental and vocal compositions that could be described as turquesque. The musical instruments used also create a fusion between the importation of Eastern culture and the “orientalisation” of Western instrumental tradition. This is the case of the viola d’amore, later adopted in the Ottoman world under the name sine kemān.