entry 2004
Angelo Carasale
San Carlo
Carasale
is primarily remembered in Naples as the "architect of
San Carlo"; however, the
original architect—the person who designed the
building—was Giovanni Antonio Medrano.
Medrano was born in 1703 in Sicily, but he did most of
his work in Naples. He died before the theater was
finished and Carasale finished it for him; in
particular, Carasale was the appaltatore, something like "interior
designer," the one responsible for the stage, the boxes,
the elaborate art-work, the chandeliers, the double
staircases—all
that; he was responsible for the oohs and aahs on
opening night, the one who caused Charles Burney to say
that San Carlo "...as a
spectacle surpasses all that poetry or romance have
painted."
Interestingly, neither
Medrano nor Carasale was among the best-known Neapolitan
architect/designers of the time, that time being the
1730s, when the Spanish Bourbon king, Charles III, set up a new
kingdom and dynasty in the former Spanish vicerealm of
Naples. A known architect might have been one such as Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, a
holdover from the late Baroque of Spanish architecture in
Naples. One source (Anthony Blunt, "Naples Under the
Bourbons, 1734-1805" in The
Burlington Magazine, Vol. 121, No. 913, Apr.
1979, pp.207-11) says simply that the king didn't like the
architecture he found in Naples and decided to go with two
lesser known architects for the new opera house. In any
event, the king got from Carasale and Medrano a
neo-classical design that put an end to the highly
ornamental Baroque construction of the previous century.
Among Medrano's other works was his design for the
spectacular Royal Palace at
Caserta. Carasale had earlier worked on the
conversion into a church of the old San
Bartolomeo theater, the predecessor of San Carlo and
was involved with the construction of another "pre-San
Carlo" theater, the Teatro Nuovo in
the 1720s. He may (although no one really knows for sure)
have designed the church
of Saints Giovanni and Theresa.
A lasting story that
one tells about Carasale is that the king was so impressed
by the splendid new theater on opening night that before
the opera he called Carasale to the stage to take a bow
but mentioned —presumably light-heartedly— that the
architect had forgotten to build an interior passageway
from the adjacent Royal Palace, thus making him, His
Majesty, walk around and come in the front door. Carasale
is said to have mumbled something and disappeared from the
stage. After the opera, so the story goes, Carasale
reappeared and told the king that the passageway was
ready. Carasale had knocked down a few walls during the
music and built the new entrance! That story was retold by
Alexander Dumas (Sr.) in his The Bourbons of Naples;
he apparently got the tale from an earlier work entitled Storia del Reame di Napoli
[History of the Kingdom of Naples] by Pietro
Colletta (1735-1831) first published in 1834 by
Presso Baudry in Paris.
Colletta's work (in
Vol. 1, section 49) also tells of Carasale's unfortunate
fate: He protested to the king that he (Carasale) had put
in honest work on the new theater and was nevertheless
destitute. Alas, the king started an investigation and
came to the conclusion that Carasale had been skimming
some construction funds for his own benefit. Carasale
wound up in prison, where he died. Colletta, himself,
gives almost no sources for any of his history of the
kingdom of Naples; thus, there is no way to know how much
any of it all really happened the way he says. (Colletta
did live through much of the period he chronicled, true,
but he was also involved in anti-Bourbon uprisings in 1799 and 1806; thus, his version of things
might be skewed. His "History" was so anti-Bourbon in
parts that the work had to be published in Paris since
Neapolitan censors had rejected it.) The story about
Carasale in jail is likely to be true; the one about the
three-hour building job on opening night is now regarded
as a good story but nothing more. Plans of the original
theater have been found and examined; they reveal an
interior passage, built in right from the start. That is
what modern guides at San Carlo now tell visitors. Me, I
see no need to louse up a good story with facts. Exact
dates on Carasale don't seem to be available, but
1700-1750 would fit.
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