Inside Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza’s Bach tradition

The story

When Le Monde travelled through the Veneto in search of Andrea Palladio in 2023, it reserved its strongest praise for Vicenza. After the villas, churches and palaces came the Teatro Olimpico, which the newspaper described as the most moving of Palladio’s works. Commissioned in 1580, the year of Palladio’s death, the theatre opened five years later with Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. Vincenzo Scamozzi completed the perspective streets of Thebes behind the stage, built for that first production and still preserved today.

Bach inside Palladio

Since 2000, another cultural history has developed inside this architecture. Progetto Bach was founded in Vicenza around the work of Michael Radulescu and Margherita Dalla Vecchia, with performances devoted particularly to Johann Sebastian Bach’s sacred music and historical performance practice. Concerts have brought the Passions, cantatas and oratorios into Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico and other historic sites.

Radulescu, a Romanian born organist, conductor, composer and Bach scholar, taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna for forty years. After his death in 2023, the university recalled his work in Vicenza among the Bach interpretations that established new standards. His former student and assistant Margherita Dalla Vecchia has continued that musical inheritance in Vicenza.

An international company

The international company assembled around the project has included musicians from Japan, Germany, Norway, Croatia, Argentina and Brazil. In 2020, sixty three performers gathered in Vicenza for the St Matthew Passion. Collaborations have also involved the Choir of Swiss Radio and Television and Barokkanerne, the Norwegian Baroque Ensemble from Oslo.

The Japanese connection also extends back to Radulescu himself. Japanese organist Mari Ohki, who trained with Masaaki Suzuki, attended his masterclasses in Europe. It places the Vicenza project inside a Bach culture that has long been international.

Hercules meets Bach

Vicenza adds an architectural dimension that other Bach destinations cannot reproduce. Scamozzi’s permanent scenery represents the seven streets of Thebes. Above them, the monumental stage façade contains eleven episodes from the Labours of Hercules, the mythological protector of the Accademia Olimpica.

On 31 October and 1 November 2026, Progetto Bach presents L’Olimpo di Bach, including BWV 213, Bach’s secular cantata about Hercules choosing between Pleasure and Virtue, together with BWV 29. Hercules will therefore be heard beneath a Renaissance architectural programme already devoted to Hercules, inside Palladio’s final building.

Why go

The Teatro Olimpico can be visited during the day and experienced again during selected performances. Its compact size makes Scamozzi’s perspective streets particularly striking.

For audiences following Bach performances from Tokyo to Abu Dhabi, Vicenza offers another reason to add a city to the calendar: Johann Sebastian Bach performed inside Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, with Scamozzi’s original 1585 stage scenery still in place.