Musical life in Venice in the 1700s (the places: the Basilica, the Churches, the Theaters, the Schools ...)

The image of "Venice-all-music" is one of the many myths built up over time, especially from the reportages of educated travelers (de Brosses, Rousseau, Burney, Goethe, Musset, Wagner, Proust), the same ones who perhaps talked about incredible excesses of the Carnival semester (from 5 October to Ascension), in which "the parish priests would be disowned by their parishioners, and the bishop by the priests, if they did not wear the mask on their nose, or at least in their hand" (de Brosses).

However, it is true that the quantity of music performed was impressive: aside from the theaters, the “musical city” lived in the Doge's chapel, in the sacred concerts of the four hospitals, in the activities of the four large schools and the cathedral church of Castello; then, more than two hundred lay brotherhoods managed about 170 churches and their patron feasts, while all the churches, in addition to the individual Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecostal musical seasons, took care of private celebrations such as baptisms, weddings, name days, monacations, funeral services.

A frenetic activity, often with two or three events a day at the same time, by musicians from San Marco and the hospitals with an incessant sale of music, new or revived as such.