Horatio F. Brown

“ The Venetians were always a music-loving race. Not only did the people display a natural ability for the art in the popular music of the streets and the songs of the gondoliers, but the city long possessed schools of cultivated music in the choir of St. Mark's, in the theatres, and above all in the four great Scuole or Conservatoires, which were attached to the pious foundations of the Pietà, the Mendicanti, the Ospedaletto, and the Incurabili. ”

“ The names of Lotti, Galuppi, Scarlatti, Hasse, Porpora, Jomelli, Cimarosa, to take a few only, must always shed a lustre upon the Conservatoires over which they presided; and there is a tradition that Mozart, when under contract to produce an opera for the Fenice, promised an oratorio for the Incurabili choir.
The four hospitals were not, in their origin, designed as schools of music. They were built and endowed by the munificence of private citizens, to receive the poor and infirm: their position as Conservatoires was only gradually developed. ”

“ Special tribunes, called Coretti, were reserved for ambassadors and high state officials. Inside the church applause was forbidden, but the audience marked their approval by drawing in the breath and by shuffling their chairs on the ground. ”