In 1672 the first public performance of a play was offered in Moscow. A special theatre was built in the Tsar’s residence; there seems to have been no scenery outside a fir tree on either side of the stage, although there was a sliding curtain. The Tsar (Alexis), who was so excited that he sat in the theatre for 10 hours on the day of the first performance, paid for the founding of a theatrical school. The problem with the theatre during the next 80 years was precisely that it had been founded on the Tsar’s order: it was attached to the court and subsidized by the aristocracy (who chose German directors); it assumed political overtones and aimed at pleasing only the monarchy.
The beginning of change came in 1730, when an Italian group brought the commedia dell’arte, elaborate sets, and machinery to Moscow. During the next 10 years, Italian opera and ballet were also introduced to Russia. Despite the success of foreign companies, the significant event was the birth of the national theatre in 1749. This enterprise was open to the public, and, although it was popular, lack of funds made it a weak rival to court theatre. Its impact lay in the fact that it introduced the concept of theatre to a large audience.
By the end of the 18th century, companies were touring the major cities, and privately owned theatres were being opened. In general, only the aristocracy patronized the theatre, and nobles established their own serf troupes. One prince, who owned 21,000 serfs, established his own ballet, opera, and dramatic companies. Owners occasionally rented their troupes for public performances, until the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Little is known of the staging of their productions beyond the fact that it was imitative of French and Italian theatre. Developments in the 19th century Theatre in France after the Revolution
Under Napoleon, French theatre was little different from that of the 1780s, specializing in Neoclassical drama. Popular drama, as performed by what were known as “boulevard theatres,” introduced melodrama, a form that was to dominate theatre in the 19th century. Melodrama, in turn, by popularizing departures from Neoclassicism and capturing the interest of large audiences, paved the way for Romantic drama.
The dramatic debut of Romanticism is dated at 1830, when public pressure forced the Comédie-Française to produce Victor Hugo’s Hernani. After a spirited opening at which Hugo’s Bohemian claque overwhelmed the staid regular theatregoers, Romanticism was victorious and ruled the Parisian stage for 50 years. The grandiose bombast of Romanticism did not overturn the Baroque, it merely diluted it; the formal artificial structure was broken into sentimental, melodramatic episodes depicting the distraught hero buffeted by an unfeeling world and the awesome elements. The melodramas introduced natural disasters that were significant to the plot, so that emphasis could be placed on special effects and spectacle. Dramatists also deliberately included exotic locales or examples of local colour, so that a variety of historical periods and fantastic sets would hold the attention of the audience. Throughout the 19th century, architectural perspective was replaced by neo-Gothic sentimentalization of nature. Painted Romantic scenery, in the style of Loutherbourg, was the rage in France.
The two important designers of this period were Jacques Daguerre, who was also the inventor of the daguerreotype, an early photographic technique, and Pierre-Luc-Charles Ciceri, the most important designer of this period. The panorama, a major scenic innovation, was invented in 1787 and first used on the London stage in 1792. The panorama was set up in a circular building in which the audience, sitting on a central platform, was totally surrounded by a continuous painting. Daguerre started his career as one of the first panorama painters. He went on to invent the diorama, in which the audience sat on a platform that revolved to show paintings on proscenium-like stages. Although the scenery remained stationary, Daguerre created the illusion of constant change by controlling the light on the semitransparent sets. The panorama was more popular than the diorama because it did not depend on the ability to alter stage lighting. Its shape, though, was altered to resemble the diorama. The next development in spectacle was the moving panorama, in which a continuous scene was painted on a long cloth, hung from an overhead track, and attached at both ends to spools. When the spools were turned, the cloth moved across the stage so that the actors with their carriages and other props could move from one location to another without changing wings and drops. The sky borders were dispensed with, and flats of architectural units or natural objects forming an arch were placed at the front of the stage, through which was seen a distant view painted on a curved panorama stretching across the back and sides of the stage.
Ciceri’s importance arose from his abilities to depict local colour, ruins, and historical backgrounds. He founded the first scenic studio in Paris independent of a theatre, with specialists in various types of design. After the opening of the new Opéra in 1822, interest in spectacle was so great that promptbooks were published, describing scenery and special effects and how they could be adapted for theatres with less equipment.
By the end of the 19th century, the process of scenic design and construction had become standardized. The director gave the requirements to the scenic designer, who made cardboard models. The scenery was constructed by the theatre’s carpenters and then sent to a scenic studio for painting. Howard Bay German Romanticism and Naturalism
The 19th century in Germany was a study in contrasts. The beginning decades saw the rise of Romanticism, which, 50 years later, was still strong, primarily in the figure of the composer Richard Wagner. The century’s middle decades of political and economic disillusionment before the unification of Germany were conducive to the emerging Naturalist school, the philosophy of which was first embodied in the Meiningen Players, organized in 1866 by George II, duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
By the middle 1820s, after the defeat of Napoleon, the political turbulence in Germany led to municipal control over the theatre and strict censorship. Repertoires consisted of “safe” classics and insipid new plays, resulting in competent but uninspired theatre. This competence was reflected in the staging. One of the few important designers of this period was Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who had been trained in both Italy and Germany. He introduced the diorama in Berlin in 1827.
One true innovator during the first half of the 19th century was Ludwig Tieck, who advocated realistic acting on a platform stage. With the help of an architect, he tried to reconstruct an Elizabethan public stage. He also championed the open stage in the belief that pictorial realism destroys the true illusion of the theatre. Invited by William IV of Prussia to stage Antigone at the court theatre in Potsdam in 1841, Tieck extended the apron in a semicircle over the orchestra pit and built a skēnē as the only background for the drama. In 1843 he adopted Elizabethan conventions to the proscenium theatre for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Using the front part of the stage as a large open space, he built a unit in the rear consisting of two stairs leading to an acting area eight feet above stage level. The stairs framed an inner stage below the platform. He then hung tapestries at right angles to the proscenium, thus masking the sides of the stage. Although Tieck was universally respected, it was not until the 1870s that his innovations received widespread support. The works of Wagner and Saxe-Meiningen were responsible for this change in the public’s attitude.