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| A Shakespeare comedy, with a wrestling match...As You Like It! |
In Germany, the aristocracy had been subsidizing theatre since the
late eighteenth century. There were subsidized theatres throughout
Germany and Austria, in centers such as Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and
most importantly in Vienna.
Playwright Ludwig Tieck
was as important for his experiments in staging as for his writing. Tieck
made use of the predominant style in staging – historically accurate settings
framed by a proscenium. But he realized that ancient Greek plays and plays by
Shakespeare had not been performed with elaborate scene paintings or on a
proscenium arch stage. For certain kinds of plays then, Tieck advocated a
return to an “open” stage, a radical
notion at the time.
Tieck produced an “open” staging of Antigone, in which he experimented with Greek staging
methods. His production premiered in Potsdam in 1841, and later it was staged
in cities throughout the German states. Even more famous was his
production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at Berlin in 1843. In it, Tieck made use of a highly complex scenic
background, which was not Elizabethan in form, but he kept the downstage area
completely free of set pieces – open, like the wooden platform stage of Elizabethan
public theatres. The production was very popular not only for its
innovative staging, but also for its music, written by Felix Mendelssohn, who
had scored the entire show, complete with overture and incidental music.
In fact Mendelssohn’s music was used in productions well into the twentieth
century.
In spite of their popularity, Tieck’s stagings, they remained only
experiments. Much more typical were productions such
as
director/playwright/performer an producer August
Wilhelm Iffland’s staging of Schiller’s The
Maid of Orleans at the Berlin National Theatre in 1801, which featured an
historically accurate rendering of a Gothic cathedral and a huge procession in which
800 extras tromped around the stage! “Processional” staging, used to
create often meaningless spectacle, grew very popular in early nineteenth
century Europe. Historically accurate pictures in a proscenium frame –
the staging style in early nineteenth century Europe.
German actors of the era worked in one of two styles: the
Weimar style, introduced by Goethe and characterized by elegant, fluid moves
and postures and a formal vocal style, in an attempt to capture
“truth;” and the Hamburg style, which was said to be much more
“realistic.”
In France, Napoleon subsidized the Comédie Française, the Odéon,
the Opéra, and the Opéra Comique as the four “legitimate” theatres in Paris,
and repressed smaller theatres, limiting those to four as well. By
mid-century however, there were 28 major theatres operating in France, most
located in the city of Paris.
At this time strong central figure began to organize and stage all
aspects of production. Full-time professional directors did not exist in
the early nineteenth century, but in Paris two
famous playwrights began to
control all aspects of their increasingly complicated productions.
Pixérécourt’s melodramas often featured collapses of bridges high above the
stage floor, actors dangling from cliffs, and so forth, and the author
supervised the staging of these dangerous scenes. Victor Hugo took perhaps more
interest than had anyone previously in what the stage looked like from moment
to moment and in the relationships of actors on the stage. Hugo broke up
the dull semi-circular groupings typical in eighteenth century staging,
creating more realistic arrangements of the actors.
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| You can bet that at one point that natural bridge is going to collapse and there will be a literal "cliffhanger" at the end of an act |
As for actors, Talma remained a favorite in Paris until his death
in 1826. Some of his leading ladies at the Comédie
were Mlle Mars, who has an entire floor
named after her backstage at the Comédie! Mlle
Duchenois was Talma’s usual partner in tragedy – Phédre was her finest role. The younger and very beautiful Mlle George soon became Duchenois’
rival on stage, as well as Napoleon’s mistress, but he Empress Josephine
retaliated by taking Duchenois under her protection.
In the popular boulevard theatres that had sprung up after the
demise of Napoleon, two very different actors became popular in the first part
of the 19th century. Jean-Baptiste
Déburau worked in pantomime at the Théâtre des
Funambules, where he created the character of a pale, love-sick Pierrot and
became a sensation. Frédéric
LeMaître depended more on his voice and became the most popular actor in
Paris between 1830 and 1850. He was known for breaking the “lines of
business,” (the rigid assignment of
actors to specific kinds of roles) by
playing comedy as well as tragedy, Shakespeare and melodrama. May Dr Jack HIGHLY recommend to you the brilliant French film Les Enfants du Paradis (The Children of Paradise), which
examines the lives of performers in the Romantic era, and in which Déburau and
LeMaître are brilliantly depicted? Of course he may! For this is after all,
theatre history according to…well, yours truly!
Rachel (born Elisa Félix but known by
that single name) became the most popular actress at the Comédie Française
almost instantly after she made her debute there in 1838. She
excelled at tragedy and her strengths were said to be in playing scorn,
triumph, rage and lust! She lived as she acted (lustily, having affairs
with three members of the Bonaparte family among other men), contracted
consumption (tuberculosis) and died before she reached 40. Her most
famous role was the title character in Eugene Scribe’s Adrienne Lecouvreur, one of the earliest plays about a specific
actress. Lecouvreur had also died young, you may remember from an earlier
lecture, in Voltaire’s arms.
Louis-Jacques
Daguerre worked in theatres early in his career, where he made use of the
panorama, a long painted
scroll mounted on rollers set upstage. When the
panorama was turned, the stage picture seemed to move. He also invented the
diorama. The simplest version of this complex bit of stage magic made use
of a cloth painted on both sides; through changes in lighting, details could be
made visible or invisible. Daguerre’s most famous diorama was “Midnight
Mass at St
Etienne du Mont,” which showed an empty church gradually filling
with people and then emptying. Another highly popular diorama displayed throughout
Europe and America was called “The Burning of Moscow,” relating the Russian
decision to burn their capital rather than let it fall into the hands of
Napoleon. On this diorama the onion-shaped domes of Moscow gradually caught on
fire and became consumed by it. Panoramas and dioramas were used in
plays, but also became very popular as independent events. They are
thought of as early experiments in “moving pictures” which anticipated
film. His work with these forms drew Daguerre away from theatre and on to
his most important invention, the Daguerrotype, one of the first forms of
photography.
At the Paris Opéra, the principle designer was Pierre-Luc Charles Ciceri, who created
historically accurate spectacles
for that space. He worked in the Opéra’s
new building, completed in 1822. It was lit
by GAS, which greatly increased possibilities for lighting. By
midcentury designers began using light to focus the stage picture and to focus
in on actors, via the invention of the powerful carbon arc and limelight spotlights. The limelight was one of
the first lights that could create a movable pool of light on
stage. Ironically, some actors complained that the light from these new
instruments was too bright and harsh. Stars wanted to be “in the
limelight” but brighter, more directed lighting made audiences aware that a
50-year old was playing the young ingénue!
The new Opéra featured systems and machines for creating fountains
waterfalls, first seen in 1828. Similar machinery was concocted to create
a volcano, causing Mount Vesuvius to “erupt” on stage. The method for
this visual treat had been stolen from La Scala in Milan, which claimed the first
on-stage volcanic eruption. Let the spectacle increase!
In the early nineteenth century England led the Industrial
Revolution. London was the largest city in the world in 1800, with a population
of 1,000,000; but by 1843 that number doubled! Nearly the entire
influx consisted of illiterate workers who needed cheap and easy entertainment,
and melodrama filled the bill. In the early nineteenth century Covent
Garden and Drury Lane each seated more than 3,000.
Drury Lane and Covent Garden were the two “legit” theatres, but
audiences flocked to minor forms as well. One such form, the burletta, became popular: a work
of 3 acts with at least 5 songs per act. If it met those requirements, it
was not subject to examination and possible censorship demanded by the
Licensing Act of 1737. All sorts of new burlettas popped up in London
theatres. Even Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Macbeth
(billed as a “ballet of action”) were cut to three acts: add 5 songs, and
perform! One production of Othello
called itself a burletta by striking a chord on the piano every 5 minutes! Burletta-ed Bard, anyone?
In other words, it began to be very easy to get round the
Licensing Act of 1737. Illegitimate theatres sprang up everywhere in
London, producing burlettas, comic operas and pantos. Finally, Parliament
rescinded one half of the Licensing Act in a new law, the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843, which abolished the patents for the
Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres. After 1843, any London theatre could
produce any play. However, plays were still subject to licensing –
any play could still be censored – and this part of the law stayed in effect
until 1968! It was almost never acted on, but the Lord Chamberlain’s
office had as part of its job the censorship of English plays until just under 50
years ago.
Melodrama remained popular in the early nineteenth century, and
three bizarre variations were introduced.
Hippodrama, or horse drama, had its start in the 1770s, when Philip
Astley, a sergeant-major in the British Army,
began to run horsemanship
shows in amphitheatres around London. He gradually added pantomimes and music
and began to stage mock battles. These shows became so popular that Astley
built his own theatre, the pit replaced by a horse-ring. Designers
created historically accurate scenery for Astley’s spectacles, which featured
very simple plots that culminated in tremendous battles. In 1824 The Battle of Waterloo was staged, with
90 horses. Another, The Blood Red
Knight, featured 20 pages of text and ran for 1½ hours. Its 125
performances profited Astley 18,000 pounds, a huge profit and an extremely long
run for the time. The hippodrama vogue grew, and even Shakespeare was
equestrianized: Richard III was
re-worked so that Richard’s horse, White Surrey, was the star of the play!
Dog drama became as popular in London as it had been in Germany
and France. Pixérécourt’s The Dog
of Montargis was translated into English, and it, along with other dramas
with dogs as heroes popped up in many theatres.
Finally, aquadrama!
Sadler’s Wells Theatre was named for and built next to deep wells. Pumps
brought water from the wells into huge tanks on the stage, where mock sea
battles such at the Siege of Gibraltar
(1804) were staged.
From the late eighteenth century into the early nineteenth, one
family of actors, the Kembles, virtually controlled the
London stage. John Philip Kemble performed all the
great tragic roles in dignified, solemn & measured neoclassical
style. Some have disparagingly labeled this the “teapot” school of
acting, but at the turn of the nineteenth century, Kemble was the top star in
England – the era is known as the Age of Kemble. Kemble managed the
Covent Garden Theatre from 1802-1817, during which time it grew more popular
than Drury Lane.
As a manager, Kemble advocated historically accurate scenery and costumes, and emphasized
spectacle over all the other elements of theatre. Kemble’s Macbeth was filled
with special effects
(especially in the witches’ scenes) and in the banquet scene 100 people were placed
on stage, most of them extras. Kemble added processions to plays that did
not call for them, all to increase spectacle. His production of Coriolanus, for example, featured huge,
long, and elaborate parades. The same production also displayed five huge
completely different settings accurately depicting locations in ancient Rome,
along with twelve different drops painted for shorter scenes.
John Philip Kemble’s sister Sarah and his younger brother Charles
were other outstanding members of the family. Sarah Kemble Siddons was even more popular than her brother.
Mrs. Siddons dominated the London stage from the 1780s into the 1820s, for
nearly 40 years. One critic, William Hazlitt, had this to say about her
abilities: “Power was seated on her brow; passion emanated from her
breast as if it were a shrine; she was tragedy personified.”
Charles Kemble took over
management of the Covent Garden after John Philip retired in 1817. You
may remember
him as it was his company’s visit to Paris that was a catalyst for
the Romantic movement in France. Charles acted but was known primarily for his
management, in which historical accuracy reached its zenith in British
theatre. Unfortunately his productions were at times accurate to the detriment
to the play. In his production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kemble cut nearly 1/3 of the
text, but the
performance lasted 2 1/2 hours, filled with several settings, all featuring
accurate scene paintings of fifth century BC Athens, elaborate fairy dances,
and huge, time-consuming processions. To execute his preferred design style,
Kemble relied on James Robinson Planché.
Planché wrote several highly popular plays, but he was primarily a designer,
and for Charles Kemble he first minutely researched, and then sketched
historically accurate scenes and costumes for productions of King John (1823) and Henry IV part 1 (1824).
Charles’s daughter Fanny Kemble
was also an actress. She made the mistake of marrying an American plantation
owner named Pierce Butler who took her to the U.S., where he
abused both her
and his slaves, causing her to split from him and to begin a career on the
American stage, but in a unique manner. Fanny read whole plays solo, taking on
all the characters, before adoring audiences. In a time when “blood-red
melodramas” thought to be unsuitable for women and children, were the rage in
New York, she and other readers introduced a gentility to the stage welcomed by
those who believed that theatre could teach as well as delight. Fanny Kemble is
an excellent example of an actress who was not only talented, but also a brave
woman who made the best of an unpleasant situation.
The Kembles were thought of as Neoclassical actors, but the vogue
for that style faded in favor of a new school of performers – enter,
often staggeringly drunk, the Romantics!
George Frederick
Cooke was the earliest major actor to embrace the Romantic style on the
English stage. Critics
found his style much more “natural” and
“realistic” than John Philip Kemble’s. Whereas Kemble had held himself like a
teapot, Cooke flung himself around the stage, demonstrating physically the
emotions of the character, and emphasizing emotion over intellect, as a good
romantic actor should. Cooke was one of the biggest drinkers of his age.
This might have helped free him up for outbursts of inspiration on stage, but
it made him notoriously uneven and unreliable. Cooke’s favorite roles were
villains, such as Richard III and Iago.
His last years were spent in America. The story goes that
intrepid American theatre managers asked Cooke to cross the Atlantic for a U.S.
tour. He refused, but the Americans got him drunk, and when he passed out,
spirited him aboard a ship -- when he woke, he was on the high seas. He
was the first big star to tour the U.S., but he was past his prime, usually
drunk, and he didn’t always please -- in fact he didn’t always show up!
Edmund Kean was the
greatest Romantic actor in England, and perhaps one of the greatest English
actors, period.
Beginning in 1815 we enter what some scholars
characterize as the Age of Kean. The poet/critic Coleridge wrote that
seeing Kean act is “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” Kean
played all of the Bard’s great tragic heroes and performed popular melodramas
as well, as long as the star role was juicy. Kean too was plagued by alcohol,
and his performances, especially late in his career, were embarrassing when he
couldn’t refrain from hitting the bottle before the show.
Master Betty (1791-1874) was
often known as the “young Roscius.” In the first half of the nineteenth
century, England
and America experienced a craze for child actors – playing NOT
children, but adults; not in boys’ companies, but a 10-13 year old playing an
adult in an otherwise adult company. Young Master Betty played all the great
roles. Hamlet was a favorite – after 1811 the young Roscius grew up and
disappeared into obscurity, but more children, boys and girls alike, came after
and a few had brief success on stage.
William Charles
Macready became the leading actor on the English stage after Kean, from
approximately 1830 to
1850. Macready was one of the smartest and most
idealistic of the actor/managers. He cut his own texts, but sparingly,
and restored many of Shakespeare’s own words. His acting combined the
dignity of Kemble with the fire of Kean. Macready was emotionally and
psychologically involved with the characters he portrayed, attempting to play
the “whole” character, rather than to play “for points,” as was then the
fashion. As a manager he increased rehearsal time and used that time for hard
work in stage business and in the building of characters, demanding focused
work in rehearsal as well as in performance. His productions were historically
accurate; he was the first major actor to play Macbeth in kilts!
The fascinating Madame
Vestris was a highly talented singer/actress. One of the earliest female theatre managers in
history, Madame Vestris managed and performed at the Olympic Theatre in London,
where she presented “burlesque extravaganzas” – fantasies filled with music and
spectacle. One of her most famous burlesque-extravaganzas was Midsummer! In adapting it, Vestris used
most of Shakespeare’s text, added much music, and herself played Oberon (often
played as a breeches role in the nineteenth century). This allowed her to
display her apparently terrific legs, which she showed to good advantage in
several other roles as well.
Vestris hired J.R. Planché to work on cutting Shakespeare’s texts
and in writing some of her extravaganzas. Vestris was one of the first to
use a “box set” – an interior
setting (usually of a house) that uses flats painted as walls rather than
painted wings – in her production of London
Assurance at Covent Garden in 1841. In using the box set she was moving a step or two towards realism, which we'll discuss very soon, after a detour across the great pond to view for the first time theatre in America!
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