“Because it’s a political fire, and I don’t investigate political fires.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Politicians are involved. They are among the people being charged with negligence. Now, there are two conflicting charges: negligence and arson. Naturally the negligence suspects all want the verdict to be arson, and the arson suspects want it to be negligence. Each side will try to find experts to prove their point. Two of the negligence suspects have offered to give me a blank check if I would testify as an expert for them. They told me I could fill in the figures. Obviously they wanted me to say it was arson, even if I didn’t think so. That’s why it’s a political fire, and that’s why I refused.”
“Who were they?”
“That I won’t say. But the defendants are not the only people who have a stake in the outcome of this case. A lot of people lost property. The apartments of some of the neighbors were damaged, other people had equipment or personal belongings that were destroyed in the fire, and they all want to recover losses not covered by insurance. If the verdict is arson, none of them will collect anything by suing the electricians, because they have no money. However, if it’s found to be negligence, then these people have a choice of rich targets to sue: the city of Venice, the Fenice Foundation, and the fifteen individuals charged with negligence. Two of the defendants for negligence have already put their property in their wives’ names.”
Signor Zucchetta’s rowing partner arrived. They prepared to board the gondola.
“I assume you’ve been following developments in the case,” I said.
“Yes, I have,” Zucchetta replied, stepping into the gondola and steadying it as his rowing partner climbed in.
“Do you have an opinion about how it happened?”
“Certainly,” he said. Zucchetta untied the mooring line and pushed away from the dock.
“Do you think the electricians did it?”
Zucchetta shook his head. “If the electricians burned down the Fenice,” he said with a smile, “then plumbers are responsible for
acqua alta.
”
{11}
OPERA BUFFA
A FEW DAYS AFTER THE ARRESTS OF THE TWO ELECTRICIANS, I was riding in a vaporetto headed for St. Mark’s when a water taxi fell in behind us. Five men in business suits were standing on the taxi’s foredeck behind the pilot, and even from a distance of fifty feet, I could tell there was something important about this group. A robust, elegant, white-haired man in sunglasses was clearly the leader of whatever pack this was. He had strong features, a florid complexion, and a regal bearing. I assumed the other men were business associates or even bodyguards. Then the head man removed his jacket, and I could see he was wearing his wristwatch over his shirt cuff. I knew immediately who he was. Nobody did that but Gianni Agnelli.
Agnelli, the chairman of the automotive giant Fiat, could have been in Venice for any number of reasons. In the 1980s, he and Fiat had bought the neoclassical Palazzo Grassi, restored it, and converted it into a magnificent exhibition space for major art shows. One of Agnelli’s sisters, Cristiana Brandolini d’Adda, lived directly across the Grand Canal from Palazzo Grassi in Palazzo Brandolini. Another sister, Susanna Agnelli, owned a vacation apartment in San Vio. It was likely, however, that Gianni Agnelli’s reason for being in Venice had something to do with the rebuilding of the Fenice.
Reconstruction of the opera house had been thrown open to competitive bidding, and six consortiums had submitted plans. Fiat had entered a bid through Impregilo, a group of construction companies headed by Fiat Engineering. The announcement of the winner was expected soon. Impregilo was the odds-on favorite, thanks largely to Agnelli’s magisterial presence and to the fact that Impregilo had successfully renovated Palazzo Grassi, making it the only company in the Fenice competition that had already experienced the logistical nightmare Venice imposed on construction projects. The difficulties were unique to Venice, and prodigious. Giant cranes essential for construction would have to be disassembled and floated to the Fenice through a narrow, heavily traveled canal on barges that would be unable to pass under the canal’s two bridges during especially high tides. Bricks, structural steel, wood planks, metal pipes, blocks of marble, and other building materials would all be brought to the Fenice by the same route, but since there would be no room to store these things at the Fenice, off-site containment areas would have to be created in the nearest open spaces—in Campo Sant’ Angelo, for example, or even on platforms erected on the Grand Canal.
Agnelli, who was known affectionately to the public and the press as “L’Avvocato” (the Lawyer), had assembled the same team that had worked so well on Palazzo Grassi ten years earlier. That included the architects Gae Aulenti in Milan and Antonio Foscari in Venice.
Gae Aulenti would be the senior architect on this project. She was best known for her transformation of the nineteenth-century Parisian railroad station Gare D’Orsay into the Musée D’Orsay, and for designing the modern-art gallery at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Antonio (Tonci) Foscari and his architect wife, Barbara del Vicario, lived in Palazzo Barbaro in an apartment directly beneath the Curtis family’s ornate
salone.
Tonci Foscari, a professor of architectural history at the University of Venice for the past twenty-five years, was the current president of the Accademia di Belle Arti. At present, the Foscaris were working together on the restoration of the seventeenth-century Malibran Theater near the Rialto. That project had suddenly taken on a new urgency, because the loss of the Fenice had left Venice without a major theater for live performances.
Of all Tonci Foscari’s architectural projects, the one best known to the public was his and Barbara’s restoration of their country house along the Brenta Canal: the Villa Foscari, also known as La Malcontenta. Andrea Palladio had designed the villa in the sixteenth century for two Foscari brothers, and it was a model of perfect simplicity and harmony.
House & Garden
had featured it in an article entitled “The Most Beautiful House in the World.”
On the night the Fenice burned, the Foscaris were at home when a friend called to tell them a fire had broken out near them. They had rushed to the roof of the music conservatory next door, the tallest building in the area. Tonci Foscari had stood with his camera in hand, horrified, feeling as if he were watching a murder, unable to bring himself to take a photograph. Now he was part of a team hoping to rebuild the Fenice.
We sat in the living room of the Foscaris’ apartment in Palazzo Barbaro. The white walls were decorated with a chaste eighteenth-century pastel stucco trim, a minimalist treatment compared to the riot of baroque embellishment in the Curtises’ old
salone
one floor above. Large windows looked out onto the Grand Canal. Portraits of Foscari’s ancestors—a Venetian admiral and a pope—stared down at us from the walls. The portrait of the fifteenth-century Doge Francesco Foscari, who was immortalized in the Byron play and the Verdi opera
The Two Foscari,
was hanging in the Correr Museum in St. Mark’s Square.
“A French group asked me to participate in a bid to rebuild the Fenice,” said Foscari, “and then a Spanish group. But I hesitated. Finally L’Avvocato Agnelli began reassembling the Palazzo Grassi team. It was almost inevitable that he would. Having restored Palazzo Grassi, he could not
not
compete for the contract to rebuild the Fenice. And, being Agnelli, he could not fail to win. And if he won, he would be able to guarantee absolutely, as no one else could, that the job would be completed on schedule and at the cost he promised. He called me and said, ‘You are with us!’ And at that point, I had to become very pragmatic. It seemed like a secure situation, more so than the others, so I accepted.”
Foscari was under no illusion that his architectural contribution could be much more than seeing to the details in making a new version of the original theater. His real value to Impregilo would be his familiarity with Venice’s complicated building procedures and his experience in dealing with the local bureaucracy.
“Theoretically,” he said, “all the designs submitted should be essentially the same. It’s really just a competition between construction companies, or at least it should be. But—and this is very Italian—it has become a competition among architects with endless debates about their relative gifts.”
“Has Agnelli made an offer Venice won’t be able to refuse?” I asked.
“It will be a good deal for Venice, if Venice chooses it,” he said. “L’Avvocato certainly won’t make any money from it. In fact, he could well lose money. But he’d be doing it as a matter of pride and prestige, not for the profit. Furthermore, when you build in Venice, any anticipated profits could disappear, because the most unexpected events can cause very expensive delays.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, for example, when you’re digging a foundation, you might uncover an architectural relic of historic value. That happened just recently at our restoration of the Malibran Theater.” Foscari’s eyes brightened. This was apparently a delay he relished.
“Do you know what lies beneath the Malibran? Marco Polo’s house! It was built in the thirteenth century. We knew this before we started, of course, and when we dug down, we found it exactly where the documents said it would be. We came to the ground floor of the house two meters below the level of the ground today. That was exciting, but there was more to come, because we kept digging. Soon we came to an eleventh-century floor, and below that an eighth-century floor, and farther down, finally, a
sixth
-century floor! This floor was laid at the time of the invasion of the Lombards, and it represents the original foundations of Venice itself. We have very little knowledge of that period in Venetian history. The written record goes back only as far as the eighth century.
“Seeing those floors was an intensely emotional experience for me. It was dramatic evidence that the water level has been rising, and Venice sinking, for fifteen hundred years, and that the Venetians have been dealing with this problem the same way for all that time, by raising the level of the city. We’re still doing it today. You can see workmen all over the city tearing up the paving stones along the canals and relaying them seven centimeters higher. This will reduce the number of floods for thirty years or so, but we can’t keep doing that forever.
“Excavating Marco Polo’s house and all those floors below it was considered a big ‘problem,’ because it caused a delay in restoring the Malibran. It took us five months. Five very interesting months. Meanwhile all the Venetians were saying, ‘Oh, but you’re five months late! It’s always like this, no one can ever get anything done on time in Venice.’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s very rare that you have the opportunity to do excavations of this sort. It’s important.’ ”
“What’s under the Fenice?” I asked.
“I’ve found a map of the site, drawn before the Fenice was built, so we know where the previous structures were. Fortunately, there’s nothing as important as Marco Polo’s house.”
ON THE NIGHT OF THE FENICE FIRE, while Tonci Foscari stood on the roof of the music conservatory, transfixed, unable to take a photograph, Francesco da Mosto, also an architect, mingled with his dinner guests on his
altana
on the other side of the theater, watching the blaze through the viewfinder of his whirring video camera.
Francesco and Jane da Mosto had been giving their first dinner party as a married couple when their landlord called to ask if they were burning down his house. He had seen smoke rising over the house from across town. Francesco went up to the
altana
to investigate, and when he got there, it all became abundantly clear. The da Mostos’ rooftop afforded a close, unobstructed view of the fire, and as the evening wore on, friends and family members came over, among them Francesco’s father, Ranieri da Mosto. Count da Mosto was a member of the Venice city council, which had abruptly adjourned its evening session upon receiving news of the fire.
Francesco had been working as an auditor for the Public Works Department, and in the days that followed the fire, he was pressed into service with a group seeking to reconstruct the dynamics of how the fire started and to assess the stability of the Fenice’s surviving outer walls.