mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
ready to rush off but soon realized there was a large basin in front of
them to catch the roaring waves, and it had all been part of the show.
Opera became popular in Venice in 1637 and spread like wildfire to
other Italian cities. While most nobles held performances on a temporary
stage set up in their largest room—the reception hall or ballroom—
in 1640 Cardinal Antonio Barberini built a theater seating three thousand
attached to his palazzo. He and his brother Francesco tried to surpass
each other in giving the best operas, each spending thousands of scudi
on a single performance.
The brothers were often so immersed in their competing productions
that they forgot to visit their uncle the pope, leaving him cooling
his heels in the Vatican while they fidgeted with stage sets. Particularly
troubling was when the pope went to hear Mass sung in the Sistine
Chapel and the pontifical choir was missing; they were at the Palazzo
Barberini theater, rehearsing for the next opera.
Olimpia attended the Barberini operas and must have had a good
laugh at the 1642 première of Antonio’s The Enchanted Palace. The performance,
which had cost the cardinal eight thousand scudi, flopped
due to malfunctioning machines. “His Eminence became fearfully enraged,
threatening prison and similar things,” wrote the musician Ottaviano
Castelli to Cardinal Mazarin in France. 4
We aren’t told exactly how the machines malfunctioned, but it is
tempting to imagine Divine Dignity toppling out of her flying chariot
and landing on the stage below with a thud. Or perhaps a flying Christian
Glory belting out an aria became stuck in the air, unable to descend,
legs flailing helplessly until he was plucked to safety by a
stagehand with a ladder. The audience, which was supposed to have
been swept away by the glorious rapture of the moment, fell into paroxysms
of laughter.
According to Castelli, the most irritating thing about it was that Antonio’s
own brother was seen laughing loudest of all. “It was believed
that Cardinal [Francesco] Barberino laughed at seeing these disorders,
as if from jealousy that Antonio had wished, with the display of a celebration
superior to all the others, to obscure his own.” 5
Problems cropped up not only onstage but sometimes in the audience
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