This is Opera - Season 2 Episode 10 Vivaldi and Venice

Gener explains the three reasons why opera came to Venice in the middle of the 17th century and became a true phenomenon for the masses. Then Gener heads to the wonderful Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza, the first enclosed theatre in the world, to understand what theatres were like before opera exploded on the scene as a fashionable spectacle and to see how theatres alla italiana were born and proliferated in Venice.