Italian-Style Opera Houses: A Historical Review

Abstract

Attending an opera involves a multi-sensory evaluation (acoustical, visual, and more), cultural background and other emotional parameters. The present work aims to investigate the historical development of Italian-style opera houses, from the 16th century until today. Called “Italian” due to their origin, they developed thanks to the mutual influence of the genre and the building characteristics. Furthermore, the acoustics of historical opera houses is now considered as intangible cultural heritage, so it should be known and preserved. The paper addressed the state-of-the-art literature—most of which was proposed in Italian—which can be driven easily by the sharing of historical and contemporary knowledge.

Keywords

• acoustics
• opera house
• intangible cultural heritage