In 1637 a new chapter in the history of Western art began with the introduction in Venice of the first opera houses open to the public and with paid admission. Opera, a unique genre, a total theatrical experience combining the arts of poetry, music, dance, painting, and architecture, was then just emerging. Hitherto, the early experiments with opera in Florence and Mantua, corresponding to a desire to revive the canons of classical tragedy, and thus representing the outcome of the aesthetic transformations of the Renaissance, had been reserved for the Venetian élite, the patricians. So why was the public opera house invented in Venice? Let us remember first of all that Venice was the capital of an independent city-state that was a republic. Not a true democracy, of course, but an oligarchy, in which the important families were constantly in competition with each other, each of them having to demonstrate its power and wealth – and in that period when Venice was turning in on itself, the best way of showing that wealth was through celebration, and the sumptuous concerts that went with it. The opening of the first public opera houses by the richest of the patricians was thus the result of that desire to outdo the others in a demonstrative way and at great expense, within a context of economic decline (following the discovery of the New World at the dawn of the sixteenth century and the westward shift of the continent’s geopolitical centre of gravity, Venice was no longer the most powerful city in Europe). Furthermore, concerning secular art, Venice enjoyed greater freedom than anywhere else in the West. There was freedom of thought, freedom in creation and in publishing, stemming to a large extent from the separation many years ago of the Church from the State – a situation that was unique at that time in Europe. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, the only