Project for a theater for Electoral Prince Friedrich Christian, 1749, by Giuseppe Galli Bibiena

In 1749, Giuseppe Galli Bibiena was not only redesigning the royal opera house in Dresden; he also produced these renderings for a free-standing theater on the banks of the Elbe River, in the so-called Italian Village. Four designs associated with the project have survived and will be housed in the SLUB following their exhibition in the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege: Italienischer Barock in Dresden (16 Nov. 1023 – 27 March 2024; curated by Jan Eining, Tobias Knobelsdorf and Martin Schuster). In 1753, the theater project was dedicated to the music-loving Crown Prince, though the building was apparently never constructed. https://www.denkmalpflege.sachsen.de/ausstellungen-4031.html

According to his travel diaries, the Prince witnessed Bibiena theaters in Mantua and Verona in December 1739, while en route to Venice. He also visited the Bibiena theater in Vienna on August 4, 1740.

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Comte de Lusace

Friedrich Christian (Sept. 5, 1722- Dec. 17, 1763) was the eldest son of King August III and Queen Maria Josepha of Saxony/Poland. Sickly at birth and crippled by what was described at the time as "palsy", he toured Italy in 1738-40 on a quasi-Grand Tour-cum-pilgrimage and cure, aged 15-18. Traveling incognito as Comte de Lusace, he departed Dresden on May 13, 1738 in the company of his sister, Maria Amalia, the new Queen of Naples, for a four-week journey via modern-day Czech Republic, Austria and Slovenia to arrive in Naples on June 22, 1738. Following a cure on Ischia (July 12-Sept. 23, 1738) and a period of recuperation in Portici and Naples (July 23-Nov. 15, 1738), the prince sojourned for a year in Rome residing in Palazzo Albani alle Quattro Fontane (Nov. 18, 1738-Oct. 14, 1739). After Rome, he toured Tuscany, Lombardy and the Veneto (Oct. 14-Dec. 21, 1739) before floating into Venice for six months in Ca'Foscari (Dec. 21, 1739-June 11, 1740). Prior to returning to Dresden on Sept. 7, 1740, the prince spent two months in Vienna with his grandmother, Dowager Empress Wilhelmine Amalia. Three unpublished diaries written by the prince and two members of his entourage offer parallel accounts of each day of a unique tour of Italy and are presented here in the form of a blog, together with auxiliary documentation and illustrative material. NB: Inaccuracies, idiosyncrasies and misspellings are retained; some writing is bound into the margins and illegible. Autocorrect has occasionally introduced misspellings for which I apologize.