Francesco Milizia (1725-1798) and the acoustics of his Teatro Ideale (1773)

During the 18th Century several French scientists prior to Pierre Patte proposed a new concept of theatre architecture based on a democratic vision of the theatre, which was founded on Neoclassical architecture. The French vision of theatre architecture re-called the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, designed by Andrea Palladio, and reintroduced many neoclassical (i.e. Greek/Roman) elements such as columns, semi-circular shapes and a large balcony in place of box stalls. The new French ideas of theatre architecture did not find many followers in Italy. The only scientists that accepted this new concept of a “democratic theatre” were the ar-chitects Earl Enea Arnaldi (Vicenza, 1716-1794) who wrote Idea di un teatro nelle principali sue parti simile a' teatri antichi all’uso moderno accomodato del conte Enea Arnald” (Vicenza, 1762), and Francesco Milizia (Oria, 1725-1798), author of Del Teatro (Rome, 1773 and Venice, 1794) [1]. Milizia wrote his book after having read the Arnaldi’s work and followed the idea of a semi-circular plan for the theatre with columns and other antiquarian elements. He was therefore influenced by the Teatro Olimpico architecture in Vicenza and introduced many Neoclassical elements into his conception of theatre architecture. He proposed the Teatro Ideale would solve several problems that existed in contemporary theatre archi-tecture, including acoustic difficulties. In this paper, the Teatro Ideale proposed by Francesco Milizia has been acoustically analysed. Using his sketches as a starting point, a numerical model was created in order to simulate the acoustic behavior of the theatre, as is done today when a modern theatre is acoustically analysed. The results from the simulation are presented and commented on, with comparisons of the acoustic data measured in the Teatro Olimpico, and afterwards rendered by means of 3D auralisation.