specifies “total boxes: number 31 per tier”, exactly as cited by Chassebras. This total of 153 boxes therefore runs through the history of the theatre from at least the 1650s to the mid-eighteenth century. Given that the first extant testimony dates back to February 1657 more veneto (i.e., February 1658), and in noting that there were no known remakes or renovations between its inauguration in 1637 and 1658, and that further the plot of land on which the theatre stood, as far as is known, remained unvaried from 1637 until the 1760s (it measured c. 27 metres by 18.5 metres), it is reasonable to conclude that from the outset the theatre of 1637 had 153 boxes over five tiers (thus, a ground-floor ‘Pepiano’ tier, plus first, second, third and fourth ‘ordini’). In this regard, and to cite contemporary examples even if in remarkably different contexts, both the temporary theatre built for the production of L’Ermiona (Padua, 1636) and the theatre in the Great Hall of the Palazzo del Podestà (Bologna, 1639) each presented a total of five tiers of boxes, albeit those of Padua are recorded as being of larger (wider) boxes or “loggias”. As such, the structure of five superimposed tiers is attested in those years beyond Venice and constitutes a type of theatre congruent with what is known, to date, of the Teatro San Cassiano of 1637. Artistic life As for the artistic life of the theatre, after the performance of La maga fulminata (1638), again by Francesco Manelli and Benedetto Ferrari, from 1639 onwards Francesco Cavalli became the theatre’s and Venice’s chief protagonist. Cavalli has become one of the most studied and significant opera composers of the seventeenth century because “Cavalli’s operas [...] are not only relevant qualitatively, but they also remain among the few about which sufficient documentation has been preserved. Indeed, it should be pointed out that with regard to the first 25 years of Venetian opera production, by comparison to the approximately one hundred surviving printed librettos, only about thirty scores, all handwritten, remain extant today, of which two thirds are Cavalli’s”. His Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo (1639) remains the first fully extant opera for the Teatro San Cassiano. This was followed by Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne (1640), La Didone (1641), La virtù de’ strali d’Amore (1642), L'Egisto (1643), L’Ormindo (1644), La Doriclea e Il Titone (1645), Giasone (1649),