Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza, Italy; designed by Andrea Palladio and completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, 1585.© travelview/Fotolia
In 1588–89 Scamozzi designed the Teatro all’Antica, a small court theatre for the Gonzaga family at Sabbioneta. Unlike the Teatro Olimpico the stage here is a single architectural vista behind a shallow-raked open platform, after the manner of the stage illustrated by Sebastiano Serlio. At Sabbioneta a divided horsehoe-shaped bank of seating leaves an empty arena, at floor level, in front of the stage. This space, backed by the permanent bank of seating, can be used for additional seating, but it also accommodates other uses and paves the way for the most famous and influential of all Renaissance theatre buildings, the Teatro Farnese.
The Teatro Farnese lies about 12 miles west of Sabbioneta at Parma, in a palace of the Farnese family. The theatre, designed by Giovanni Battista Aleotti and built in 1618 (but not used until 1628, to celebrate the marriage of a Medici daughter to a Farnese son), was the first proscenium theatre to be designed for movable scenery and is the earliest large-scale indoor theatrical facility to have survived. It was severely damaged by fire bombing in World War II but has since been restored to its former glory. There has also survived an extensive catalog giving details of events held there, including some contemporary comment on performances. The catalog describes the variety of uses to which the theatre was put: drama, opera, and ballet were performed on stage; equestrian acts and sumptuous balls were held in the spacious arena between stage and seating, which could also be flooded to a depth of two feet and used for mock naval battles; and, in addition, the theatre accommodated such court ceremonies as ambassadorial receptions, proclamations of state, and princely extravaganzas. The Teatro Farnese has windows (as did the Teatro Olimpico and the Teatro all’Antica at Sabbioneta before it) behind and above the banked seating, which helped to illuminate the space during daytime use; tallow candles or animal-fat lamps, in wall and overhead fixtures, were the only source of nighttime illumination for this and all interior theatres until the introduction of gas lighting in the 19th century. The Teatro Farnese set the style for stage and auditorium design over the next 250 years, with the exception of the courtyard-patio (corrales) theatre in Spain and the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre of England. George C. Izenour Howard Bay Clive Barker Developments in staging
In the latter half of the 16th century, intermezzi became a popular element of theatrical production. These entertainments, inserted between the acts of a play and totally unrelated to it, were generally on classical themes and were originally mounted during masked balls and banquets. The need to change settings rapidly for the alternating segments of plays and intermezzi encouraged the development of new devices for shifting scenery. The first solution to scene shifting adopted for intermezzi was derived from discussions of periaktoi found in Vitruvius. Nicola Sabbatini’s “Manual for Constructing Theatrical Scenes and Machines,” published in 1638, listed three main methods of changing scenery: one used periaktoi; the second maneuvered new wings around those already there; and the third pulled painted canvas around the wings to conceal the previously visible surfaces. In addition, the author explains how to change the flat wings near the back of the stage by sliding them in grooves or turning them like pages in a book. All of Sabbatini’s devices indicate a considerable simplification of Serlio’s wings (e.g., the substitution of painted details for three-dimensional ones).
The demands of scene changing required that flat wings replace the angled ones. The problem of transferring a perspective picture successfully to a series of flat wings was not solved until 1600. By 1650 angled wings were completely outmoded; at each wing position as many flats were set up, one behind the other, as there were settings. Scenery was changed by removing the visible wings to reveal the set behind. Grooves were made in the stage floor to support the flats and facilitate their movement. The background was painted on two flats, called shutters, which met at the centre of the stage; and cloths that could be rolled up were occasionally used.
The final step in scene-shifting was introduced by Giacomo Torelli in 1641, when he perfected the chariot-and-pole system. According to this system, slots were cut in the stage floor to support uprights, on which flats were mounted. These poles were attached below the stage to chariots mounted on casters that ran in tracks parallel to the front of the stage. As the chariots rolled to the centre of the stage, they carried the flats into view. An elaborate system of winches, ropes, and pulleys made it possible to change every part of a setting by turning a single winch. This invention, adopted by every European country except England and Holland, was the standard method of shifting scenery until the end of the 19th century.
The Italians were particularly taken with special effects and delighted in elaborating on medieval practices. Most of the special effects were associated with the intermezzi and involved the replacement of biblical characters of the Middle Ages by pagan deities. Machines capable of flying up to 50 characters might be used. According to Serlio, moving mechanical figures representing men, animals, and objects were cut out of pasteboard and drawn across a scene by invisible wires. In many productions clouds that engulfed the stage would hide the activity of lowering painted cloths and flats. The front curtain was used to conceal the scenery and increase amazement at the beginning of a performance. At first the curtain was dropped, but, as this was hazardous, the roll curtain was soon adopted.
Alongside the theatre of the aristocracy existed the enormously popular commedia dell’arte. The term commedia dell’arte only began to be used in the mid-18th century, though it has since come to denote the traveling companies of actors whose masked, improvised farces enjoyed a period of great popularity in Italy and throughout Europe in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The origins of the commedia are questionable, though it seems most likely that it derived from an ancient tradition of popular dancing and buffoonery, combined with stock characters from Roman comedy. Popular legend associates commedia performances with improvised acting in the open air, but evidence suggests that the commedia was not infrequently performed in enclosed spaces, since its emergence in the early 16th century proves it to be quite clearly a commercial theatre. The development of the commercial theatre, perceived by Vasari in the 16th century as an extraordinary innovation, parallels the emergence of the commedia companies, known for at least a century and a half as performers of commedia mercenaria (mercenary commedia), commedia all’improvviso (improvised commedia), commedia delle maschere (mask commedia), and, in France, as the comédie italienne. The basis of the commedia companies was continuity; roles and plots were transmitted orally, often from generation to generation. The companies traveled constantly and performed in hired indoor spaces, only occasionally on outdoor stages, making use of perspective scenery when they could but relying primarily on the skills of individual actors. Particularly famous were Francesco Andreini and his wife, Isabella, who was a playwright and poet in her own right, besides being a successful actress, Tiberio Fiorillo, and Vicenza Armani, whose arrival in many cities was accompanied by ceremonial cannon fire.