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San Carlo
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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Carasale is primarily remembered in
Naples as the "architect of