Ludovico Ottavio Burnacini
Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini[a] (1636 – 12 December 1707) was an Italian architect, and theatrical stage and costume designer, who served the imperial court in Vienna beginning in 1652.
His work as a stage designer for the lavish entertainments at the court of the Emperors Leopold I and Joseph I is preserved in numerous engravings[1] and in many drawings in the collections of the Theatermuseum in Vienna.
Since an intense and continuous period of artistic activity in the career of Giovanni Burnacini has been documented beginning in 1636 in Venice,[4] it seems plausible that Lodovico Ottavio was born in the lagoon city.
Working in his father’s workshop, Lodovico Ottavio, from an early age, witnessed the theater world, observing the eager cooperation and collaboration of impresari, engineers, composers, musicians, actors etc.
It seems plausible that during his time in Venice Lodovico also had a chance to see the famous maschere (masks and disguises) of the Venetian carnival and to watch performances of the Italian comedians, which were very popular in the 17th century.
The move of the Burnacini family to Vienna was presumably due to an invitation by Empress Eleonora Gonzaga-Nevers, who in the same year (1651) became the third wife of Emperor Ferdinand III and who made intensive contacts with the Venetian cultural scene.
The most famous Burnacini stage works from this early period at the service of the Habsburgs include the tournament opera La gara by Alberto Vimina (Vienna, 1652) and L'inganno d'Amore by Benedetto Ferrari, which was held on March 3, 1653 in Regensburg on the occasion of the Reichstag (December 1652 – May 1654) and was premiered in a specially built, wooden theater house.
[6] Various other works followed, sometimes for ephemeral buildings such as the Triumph of the Blessed Sacrament in Prague in 1652 and the Castrum Doloris for Archduke Ferdinand IV from 1654, of which exists a copperplate engraving in the collections of the Albertina in Vienna (inv.
Although it was interrupted by the plague in 1679 and the Turkish siege in 1683, there was an extremely lively cultural life in Vienna in the late 17th century, in which Burnacini played a major role.
The wooden theater, which Giovanni Burnacini had built in Regensburg in 1653 on the occasion of the Reichstag, was dismantled and shipped down the Danube to Vienna, to be re-erected on the Rosstummelplatz (riding arena) in summer 1659, at Emperor Leopold I's request.
It became an extremely popular comedy house and was an impressive theater “in the size and height of a fairly large church building” with a spacious ground floor and two tiers with 60 boxes (“Zimmerl”), which is said to have offered space for “several thousand people”.
Between 1666 and 1668 Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini constructed the so-called Theater auf der Kurtine,[15] which rose next to the fortification of the imperial palace (Burgbastei) at the site of today’s court library, near Josefsplatz.In this theater the most magnificent operas of the Leopoldin court were performed, first and foremost Antonio Cesti's Il pomo d’oro (1668) on occasion of the first wedding of Leopold I with the Spanish infanta Margarita Teresa and of her 17th birthday.
In the mid-1680s, he made designs for the Pestsäule (Trinity or Plague Column) on the Viennese Graben, which were carried out in 1687 under his direction by the brothers Peter and Paul Strudel, with whom, according to Tessin, he was friends.
Lodovico Ottavio worked for the imperial court for over 55 years and remained in office until he died at an advanced age on December 12, 1707 from pneumonia in his house zur goldenen Säule ("at the golden column") on Vienna's Judenplatz.
Based on archival sources, it is known that he not only served in the military, but also in service of festivals, such as for the visit of the papal legate Cardinal Alessandro Orsini in 1621 in Cesena, where Giovanni prepared and set off wonderful illuminations and fireworks.
