More significant for the future than these private court theatres were the
public theatres which were coming into existence in Venice. (The earliest
is in fact not in Venice but in Yugoslavian territory that was then
Venetian
—the plain little theatre on the island of Lesina, now Hvar, of
1612

These theatres were financed either by noble families or by
shareholders, but in either case the motive was profit. The owners rented
out the boxes, leaving the income from the pit and galleries to pay the
expenses of the actors. This system had an immediate effect on architec­
ture. Instead of elegance and ostentation and the close association of stage
and auditorium (since at masques the audience often joined in themselves),
the overriding consideration was now the need to accommodate as many
customers as possible. Instead of one, or at most two, tiers of galleries
centred on the royal box, with the
parterre
often left empty, the new
theatres crowded in three or four tiers, divided them up into boxes, filled
the
parterre
with benches and put the orchestra (in the modern sense) in the
space which at court often linked the stage and the auditorium. The Teatro
San Cassiano (1639), by Benedetto Ferrari, was traditionally the first
theatre designed in this way. Between then and 1699, at least sixteen
Venetian public theatres have been traced, known mostly by the names of
the parishes where they were located. Only the Teatro San Moise partially
survives as a cinema. Throughout this time the commercial theatre became more competitive and better organized. Prices of admission went steadily
down, government regulations were issued to control safety and hours of
performance. Evelyn attended one in 164^ and decided that ‘taken together
it is one of the most magnificent and expensive diversions the wit of man
can invent’. Another observer, about 1672, found the theatres ‘large and
magnificent’, the decorations ‘superb and varied, but very badly lit’. Lighting of the auditorium, to judge from such scanty records as survive, was by a single large chandelier which was drawn up during the performance.

From Venice, the public theatres spread to the other Italian cities. In Rome the original Teatro Tor di Nona, of 1660, seems to have been the first. Like the Venetian theatres, those of Rome tended to have a bad reputation morally, and Pope Innocent XI ordered all the partitions between the boxes to be taken down.