Giovanni Burnacini

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Portrait of Giovanni Burnacini from 1653

Giovanni Burnacini (also Iohannes Burnacinius) (* 1610 in Cesena ; † July 21, 1655 in Vienna ) was an Italian theater architect and set designer .

Life

Giovanni's father and ancestor of the Burnacini family was the artilleryman ("Bombardino") Lodovico from Cesena, who married a not further identified Giustina. Father Lodovico and mother Giustina gave birth to five children: Francesco, Giovanni, Santa, Marcantonio and Nicola. Giovanni married a certain Grazia around 1630. Their marriage had five children: Giustina, Costanza, Giacomo and Antonio Felice and Lodovico Ottavio , who also became an architect.

Scene from Antonio Bertali's opera “La Gara” (1652) in the newly opened theater building by Giovanni Burnacini

Giovanni initially designed and built stage sets in Mantua and went to Venice around 1640 . After that he built in 1642 in Ferrara in the courtyard of the Palazzo Pubblico a makeshift theater with four tiers on the Le pretensioni del Tebro e del Po of Benedetto Ferrari was staged a tournament Festival of Cardinal Alessandro Pio of Savoy.

In the same year he built an apparatus for the feast of the Virgin Mary on the piazzetta of San Marco in Venice.

In 1641 he created the stage sets and stage technology for the opera Le nozze di Enea con Lavinia by Claudio Monteverdi (libretto: Giacomo Badoaro ) at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo , in 1642 he created the same for the Monteverdi operas L'incoronazione di Poppea and Gli amori di Giasone e Isifile (libretti: Giovanni Francesco Busenello ), Narciso ed Eco immortalati (libretto: Orazio Persiani ). In 1643 he worked there as a set designer and impresario for the opera La finta savia by Benedetto Ferrari. After that, he worked there again for the opera Gli amori di Alessandro Magno e di Rossane by Francesco Lucio (libretto: Giacinto Andrea Cicognini ), which was performed in 1651, on record.

During his time at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, he built the small theater Teatro Apostoli in the courtyard of the Casa Bellogno from 1648, which opened on November 1, 1649 with the opera Orontea by Francesco Lucio (libretto: Giacinto Andrea Cicognini), including Burnacini probably created the sets.

Since 1651 he and his brother Marcantonio were the theater architects of Ferdinand III. committed to Vienna. With Giovanni, his son Lodovico Ottavio also entered the imperial service.

Title page of the opera L'Inganno d'Amore 1653 drawn by Burnacini

In 1651/1652 he built the oldest free-standing theater building in Vienna, which was also the first theater in Vienna with a backdrop system. The hopeful Theatrum was a wooden theater building that was opened in January 1652 with the opera La Gara (music: Antonio Bertali , libretto: Alberto Vimina ), on the occasion of the birth of Infanta Margaret of Spain .

Also in 1659 a wooden theater building was built on the Tummelplatz in Vienna (the riding arena is identical to today's Josephsplatz ), which had previously been built by Giovanni Burnacini in 1653 in Regensburg for the coronation celebrations of Ferdinand IV , then immediately dismantled, brought to Vienna by ship and in imperial arsenal was stored until reconstruction. Burnacini also designed the title page of the Regensburg opera L'Inganno d'Amore by Antonio Bertali (libretto: Benedetto Ferrari ).

One of his last works is the design for a funeral scaffold ( castrum doloris ) made in 1654 for the funeral of Ferdinand IV.

literature

Castrum doloris for Ferdinand IV. From 1654 (design by Giovanni Burnacini)
  • Ulrich Thieme / Felix Becker [Hrsg.]: General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present. 37 volumes, Engelmann Leipzig 1907–1950.
  • Flora Biach-Schiffmann: Giovanni and Ludovico Burnacini, theater and festivals at the Viennese court. Krystall, Vienna 1931.
  • Alphons Lhotsky: The building history of the museums and the new castle. (Festschrift of the Kunsthistorisches Museum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its existence), F. Berger, Vienna 1941, p. 13, note 81. * Heinz Schöny: Wiener Künstler-Ahnen. Genealogical data and lists of ancestors. Viennese painter. Volume 1: Middle Ages to Romanticism. Self-published by the Heraldic-Genealogical Society "Adler" Vienna 1970, p. 39.
  • Rudolf Schmidt: Austrian artist lexicon. From the beginning to the present. Tusch, Vienna 1974–1980.
  • Herwig Rischbieter [Hrsg.]: Theater-Lexikon. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1983.
  • Verena Keil-Budischowsky: The theaters of Vienna. (Wiener Geschichtsbücher, 30–32), Zsolnay, Vienna a. a. 1983, p. 45 ff.
  • Rudi Risatti (Ed.): Grotesque Comedy in Drawings by Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini (1636–1707). Hollitzer, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-99012-614-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Samantha Santi o De Santi: The Burnacini, a dynasty of theater engineers. New discoveries about their origins . In: Rudi Risatti (Ed.): Grotesque Comedy in the Drawings of Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini (1636-1707) . Hollitzer, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-99012-614-1 , p. 39-61 .
  2. ↑ : Viktoria Franić Tomić, Slobodan Prosperov Novak, Ennio Stipčević The Italian Opera Libretto and Dubrovnik Theater: (17th and 18th Century). Hollitzer, Vienna 2020, p. 109.
  3. ^ Yearbook of the Society for Vienna Theater Research Notring of the Austrian Scientific Associations, Vienna 1951, p. 45.
  4. ^ Elisabeth Th. Fritz-Hilscher: Vienna Music History: From Prehistory to the Present Litt, Vienna, 2011, p. 564.
  5. ^ Gustav Zechmeister: The Vienna theaters next to the castle and next to the Kärntnerthor from 1747 to 1776. Böhlau, Vienna 1971, p. 19.
  6. ↑ Article about the opera in Regensburg at maelzels-magazin.de
personal data
SURNAME Burnacini, Giovanni
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burnacinius, Iohannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian stage architect
DATE OF BIRTH 1610
PLACE OF BIRTH Cesena
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1655
Place of death Vienna