From Illustrated Police News September 11, 1880
It is largely forgotten now that the Cincinnati Zoo was originally organized as a for-profit enterprise. The stockholders soon realized that they needed to bring in more paying customers than exotic fauna could entice, and therefore musical concerts, summer dances, beer gardens and other non-zoological affairs soon peppered the Zoo schedule.
As the summer of 1880 wore on, Zoo visitors marveled at the construction underway around the central lagoon. Word got out that the Zoo had planned an extravaganza to exceed any of its previous entertainments and that the city’s finest artists had been recruited to bring this spectacular performance to life. Those artists were Henry Farny and Matt Morgan.
Farny, born in France, sketched for the local newspapers and executed a few theatrical posters before his excursions into the still very Wild West cemented his legacy as a premier painter of Native American life and culture.
Morgan, a Britisher, was lured to the United States by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly who needed a pen as talented and acerbic as that of Thomas Nast at the competing Harper’s Weekly. For much of the 1880s, Morgan was a leading artist at Cincinnati’s Strobridge Lithographing Company. He also staged “tableaux vivants” or “living pictures” at the Vine Street theaters, featuring nearly nude women posing in scenery reminiscent of classical paintings.
From Kenton County Library Faces & Places Collection
The Zoo seems to have entrusted Morgan and Farny with a substantial budget for their major production, to be titled “Visions of Venice.” The sets featured 40-foot replicas of the columns of San Marco and San Todaro, realistic façades of the Doge’s Palace, the Library of St. Mark, the Arsenal and other Venetian landmarks. The highlight of the presentation was to be a recreation of the traditional Sposalizio del Mare, the “Marriage of the Sea” ceremony, in which the Doge tosses a golden ring onto the waves to symbolize the entwined fates of the “Floating City” and the Adriatic Sea. The two artists succeeded in impressing the Cincinnati newspapers who attended the premiere. The Enquirer [August 24, 1880] waxed rhapsodic:
“So much has been written in advance regarding this pageant, that but little other than the fact that the intentions of its design have been nearly realized remains to be told. The spectator is supposed to be seated on the place of St. Mark and all around him are the islands and canals of the Gem of the Adriatic. The effect is wonderfully realistic, and, to quote the words of one who lived long in the city of the Doges, ‘more beautiful by far than the original.’”
From New York Public Library Digital Collections
On opening night, the audience included many of Cincinnati’s leading citizens and their families. The Cincinnati Gazette [August 25, 1880] identified Zoo founder Andrew Erkenbrecher, fur merchant A.E. Burkhardt, the McAlpin dry goods family, Times-Star publisher Charles Taft and others.
The evening began around 9:00 p.m. with a number of gayly decorated gondolas gliding into the Zoo’s lagoon, sporting colored lanterns at prow and stern, and carrying faux Venetians clad in elaborate Renaissance costumes. A serenade thrilled the crowd, though the Gazette confessed it was not exactly authentic in nature:
“In the middle, too, stood a minstrel, who sang to the accompaniment of a guitar. The moon was just rising over the roof of the Doge’s palace on the left and, as though apostrophizing it on the scene, he sang his song, ‘Wie Schoen Bist Du!’ – How beautiful art thou! The singer was Conrad Mueller, a German actor, and his Italian was very German; but his voice rang out high and clear and the effect was very beautiful.”
It was about this moment that the tableau was disrupted by a most amusing, if unscheduled, performance by the Venetian band. The Cincinnati Gazette recorded the ensuing debacle with undisguised relish:
“A fine orchestra had been engaged for the occasion and perched upon a platform built at the edge of the treacherous sea. While the musicians were waiting for the approach of a stately gondola the platform listed toward the water. A fat tuba player slipped over the side and fell into the Adriatic with a frightful splash. The ’cello player, who was related to him by marriage, plunged in to rescue him. This created a rush to the other side of the platform and, the whole thing giving way, the entire band was precipitated into the sea, instruments and all. The big fiddler jumped upon his fiddle and rode away to shore as majestically as though sealed in a pinnace. Not so easily did the others escape.”
The Cincinnati Commercial [August 24, 1880] concurred that the impromptu orchestral bath was as entertaining as any of the intentional scenes arranged for the audience’s enjoyment:
“Fiddles and bows, horns and violincellos went flying through the air, and then gently floating on the receiving waves they danced there, but they made no music. That was furnished by the musicians sans instruments. They cried aloud and with a strong voice, ‘Save me, save me, I can not swim.’ It was Mr. Farny, who must be a most comfortable object for a drowning man to contemplate, who rescued these trusty musicians from their untimely fate.”
While Farny, the celebrated artist, was performing in his new and improvisatory role as a lifeguard, someone—this being Cincinnati, the City That Sings—managed to round up a completely new and completely dry orchestra and the ceremonial pageant resumed with only a slight delay.
The next event of the evening was billed as a jousting contest. The jousters were mounted on little platforms secured to the front of the gondolas. The young men of Cincinnati, although intimately familiar with horses, had little acquaintance with jousting outside Scott’s Waverly novels and put on a decidedly lackluster demonstration. According to the Enquirer:
“The first pair were very tame and afforded little sport. After they had ‘monkeyed’ around awhile and punched at each other much after the style of a washerwoman punching clothes in a boiler with a clothes-stick, they were allowed to retire, and a fresh pair took their places.”
Eventually, a proper joust was conducted, the Doge tossed a matrimonial ring into the Zoo lagoon, the Queen of Love and Beauty (a Main Street debutante) bestowed crowns upon a couple of ersatz knights, and the evening closed with a choral ensemble. Perhaps to encourage positive reviews, the Zoo restaurant picked up the tab for all the journalists in attendance that evening. “Visions of Venice” enjoyed a popular run over several weeks until the weather chilled.
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