Entertainment

Venice Jazz Club

Venice Jazz Club

Jazz is alive and swinging in Dorsoduro, where the resident Venice Jazz Club Quartet improvises funky tributes to Miles Davis and Charles Mingus and grooves on Italian jazz standards. Drinks are steep, so starving artists booze beforehand and arrive by 8pm to pounce on free cold-cut platters.

Tarnowska's

Watch your step as you pop down a couple of steps into this elegant hotel bar (locals know it as La Contessa, the Countess), ideal for a cocktail or postprandial brandy. With its polished tile floors, it spreads into several separate spaces. Alongside those having an animated chat over lovingly prepared tall drinks are other folks beavering away at computers, for this is one of those rare things in Venice, a wi-fi spot. The Russian Countess Maria Tarnowska, it is said, had one of her lovers assassinated in this very place.

Teatro Junghans

Cutting-edge theatre takes on a literal meaning at this three-sided stage, nicknamed Teatro Formaggino (Little Cheese Theatre) because it looks like a wedge of cheese. The experimental theatre seats 150, but you’re not expected to just sit there: Teatro Junghans offers workshops on costume design in August, mask-acting in July and September, and commedia dell’arte (archetypal improvisational comedy) in August and September. If you’d rather leave that sort of thing to the professionals, check the online calendar for performances when the company is in residence. (back to top)

Musica a Palazzo

Hang onto your wineglass and brace for impact: in these intimate palace drawing rooms, the soprano’s high notes might make you fear for your glassware, and the thundering baritone is felt in the base of the spine. The drama unfolds over 1½ hours of selected arias from Verdi to Rossini, with 70 guests and their drinks trailing singers in modern dress as they pour their hearts out in song, progressing from receiving-room overtures to heartbreaking finales in the bedroom. (back to top)

Collegium Ducale

Spend a perfectly enjoyable evening in prison with this six-member chamber orchestra, whose grace notes in Bach and Albinoni performances escape through the high, barred windows of the converted cell. Opera singers occasionally perform arias with the group, which can get loud in the reverberating stone chamber; ears not trained by blasting MP3 players might prefer concerts in nearby Chiesa diSanta MariaFormosa, where the acoustics are kinder. (back to top)

Interpreti Veneziani

Everything you knew of Vivaldi from elevators and mobile ring-tones is proved fantastically wrong by Interpreti Veneziani, which plays Vivaldi on 18th-century instruments as a soundtrack for living in this city of intrigue – you’ll never listen to The Four Seasons again without hearing summer storms gathering over the lagoon, or echoing footsteps hurrying over footbridges to a late-night winter rendezvous.
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Enjoy Gondola Ride