Venice, a major exhibition and many events will celebrate Giacomo Casanova 300 years after his birth

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Casanova (April 2, 1725 - June 4, 1798), the Giorgio Cini Foundation is participating in the city’s celebrations with a rich annual program involving all its institutes and research centers. The initiative aims to restore a multifaceted and multidisciplinary portrait of one of the most emblematic figures in the history of Venice, a protagonist of the last century of the Serenissima’s life. The Foundation wants to celebrate Casanova’s European spirit: among the main events is a major exhibition to be held from October 2025 to February 2026, between the Palazzo Cini Gallery in San Vio and the two Carnelutti and Piccolo Teatro halls on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

“The project dedicated to Casanova is an opportunity to emphasize the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s deep connection with the city, its history, and its cultural context by taking inspiration,” explains President Gianfelice Rocca, “from the great personalities and important themes that run through History. It is an opportunity to highlight the expertise, research and collaboration among the Foundation’s Institutes and Centers in an international projection. The vocation of the Foundation is to be an active part, with this and other events, in the global scenario of a dialogue based on cultural diplomacy as a useful and necessary tool to react to an age like ours, in which cultures and civilizations risk living each other as enemies and unable to listen to each other, understand each other and collaborate.”

“The Giorgio Cini Foundation is working to propose a reading of Casanova that goes beyond the usual imagery, the ’myth’ established in the interpretative tradition that surrounds him,” emphasizes scientific director Daniele Franco. “The aim is, first and foremost, to highlight a complex character, a man who moved and traveled across Europe from Venice, in a historical period of rapid cultural and political change in which a vision of European society pervaded by uncertainties, tensions and a gradually freer and more complex cultural debate came to be prefigured. In Casanova’s writings we can find so many of the contradictions and drives for change that Europe is experiencing today.”

The international symposium, June 4 -7, 2025

Casanova in time 1725 - 2025 is the title of the international symposium around the historical figure of Casanova, representative of a disappearing world, such as the Republic of Venice, but also of the transformations of modern society. His myth has spanned the last three centuries, reflecting the views on the 18th century of literati, historians, artists, filmmakers, cultural and political figures. The symposium, which will be held on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and at Ca’ Dolfin, is the result of a collaboration between the Giorgio Cini Foundation (Institute for the History of Venetian Society and State) and Ca’ Foscari University Venice (Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies), together with the Ateneo Veneto, the State Archives of Venice, the Museum of the Venetian 18th century and the Correr Museum Library.

Vivaldi Academy, three workshops

Three of the six Master Courses scheduled at the Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute are dedicated to the Casanovian world. On May 29, the vicissitudes of Vivaldi’s singers, librettists and competitors in Zanetti’s caricatures will be studied. On July 17, Casanova before Casanova will address the myth of the libertine: the seminar will close with a student concert dedicated to the drama for music L’inganno trionfante in amore, whose debut took place in 1725, the year of Casanova’s birth, at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice. Finally, on November 26 - 29, a day of musical studies on Venetian Culture in Dresden. Casanova - Pisendel - Casanova. The Vivaldi Academy offers advanced training activities aimed at groups of students selected through calls for applications (available on the Foundation’s website): an opportunity to perfect their interpretation and to delve into musicological aspects of Vivaldi’s compositions.

Music Seminar and Concert, Sept. 22 - 26, 2025

Early Music Seminars Egida Sartori and Laura Alvini, directed by Pedro Memelsdorff, investigate the possible common Parisian acquaintances of Giacomo Casanova and Joseph Boulogne through research and study of scores or other musical material. Twenty years younger, Boulogne shared several biographical traits with the more famous Venetian: habitué in other aristocratic spheres, legendary seducer, violinist, later, also political agent and Freemason. Indeed, Boulogne’s work will be put in perspective with his political activities. The seminar and concert entitled Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de St. George. Concerts and Symphonies (1770-1780) will feature Théotime Langlois de Swarte, a young star of European and world Baroque violinists, as lecturer; assisting him in the repertoire of symphonies will be the director of the Seminars himself.

The exhibition, October 30, 2025 - February 17, 2026

The exhibition aims to evoke and represent the rich cultural and artistic atmosphere of the first decades of the 18th century in Venice, a period that marked the birth and formation of Giacomo Casanova. The exhibition project, under the scientific coordination of Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Institute of Art History, will take place between the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Gallery of Palazzo Cini. The heart of the exhibition will be the extraordinary collection of caricatures contained in the Album of Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder, accompanied by a selection of paintings, drawings, engravings, objects, books and other documents. These materials, from both the Foundation’s collections and loans from Italian and foreign museums and collectors, will offer a unique view of that lively historical context. A particularly striking aspect will be the display of materials from the Nino Rota Fund, held by the Institute of Music, related to Federico Fellini’s famous film Il Casanova (1976). These include notebooks of musical notes, autograph scores and photographs. In addition, the Malipiero Fund will make available documents that reveal the composer’s connection with 18th-century Venice, an era to which he dedicated many significant works. Prominent among the materials is the text Giacomo Casanova e la musica (in Il filo d’Arianna. Saggi e fantasie, Einaudi 1966), of which notes and transcriptions are preserved.

Casanova and the theater, November 19, 2025

The Institute for Theater and Melodrama is organizing a day of study to investigate the theater scene in Casanova’s time and delve into Casanovian echoes in 20th-century Italian theater production. Scholars from several European universities will reflect on how the myth of Casanova has been told in contemporary times on Italian stages. The initiative, to be held on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, is organized in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University Venice and the Université Sorbonne in Paris.

Concert, Nov. 19, 2025

Musicians Stefano Albarello (conducting, qānūn, baroque guitar), Peppe Frana (lavta lutes and tanbūr), Giovanni De Zorzi (ney flute) and Gianfranco Russo (viola d’amore) are invited by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies as a tribute to the cosmopolitan profile of Giacomo Casanova. The Casanova al Levante concert will feature performances of music in vogue at the time of his travels to Eastern Europe and Constantinople, both Venetian- and Ottoman-derived, with instruments belonging to the two musical traditions. Indeed, among the writings left by some ambassadors of the time, we find some music transcribed according to Western criteria, instrumental and vocal compositions that could be described as Turkish. Even the musical instruments used create a combination of the import of Eastern culture and an “orientalization” of Western instrumental tradition. This is the case with the viola d’amore, later adopted in the Ottoman world under the name sine kemān.

Libertinism and Spirituality, Dec. 16 - 18

With the conference Libertinism and Spirituality: between Desire and Rebellion, the Center for the Study of Comparative Civilization and Spirituality makes its contribution to the understanding of the figure of Giacomo Casanova three centuries after his death. In the imagination, the myth of Casanova has been built primarily around his reputation as a libertine. In common sense, the term “libertinism” is used with the meaning of licentiousness in relation to unrestrained and unrestrained moral or social behavior. It actually has a long philosophical history with roots in antiquity, in which sensuality often represents only one aspect. The various forms of libertinism, when at odds with religious dogmatisms and more moderate forms of philosophical reflection, spread through clandestine channels in which it is not uncommon to find intersections with alternative and esoteric forms of spirituality. In particular, for Giacomo Casanova, intellectual and sensual libertinism was not unrelated to interests in the esoteric dimension. Scholars and researchers from many international universities will discuss this topic. The event is co-organized by the Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam and the Harvard Divinity School.

Venice, a major exhibition and many events will celebrate Giacomo Casanova 300 years after his birth

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