Theatre of the Italian Renaissance II: Theatre Spaces, Design and Commedia dell'Arte

We ended the last lecture with the birth of opera, in which there was an emphasis on spectacle. It seems appropriate after that to transition into theatre spaces and design in the Italian Renaissance.  Theatre architecture, design and staging were revolutionized in the Renaissance, and are even more important to the history of theatre than is the new style of written drama.  In the physical elements of production, as well as in the dramatic writing, the Renaissance attempted to re-create the stages of Greece and Rome.  You’ll remember Vitruvius from ancient Rome.  His monumental work, De Architectura, was rediscovered in 1414 and printed in 1486 by the Roman Academy, and one of the books in this work dealt with theatre.  From Vitruvius Renaissance theatre practitioners gleaned vital information on the shape of the Roman theatre building.  Vitruvius’ writing left enough room for interpretation, however, that from the Roman scaenae frons was created at first vistas in perspective, and finally a proscenium arch.

      

The Roman Academy staged plays by Terence as early as 1486 and then published them. In the books there are drawings of what

 have become known as Terence stages.  Usually these consist of several curtained openings in front of a wall, which is vaguely reminiscent of the Roman scaenae frons.   But the Renaissance placed great importance on the ancient concept of perspective, so to picture the Renaissance idea for a Roman stage, you have to think scaenae frons PLUS perspective.  Perspective is a technique that offers the illusion of depth on flat canvases, as well as in architecture and ultimately on stage. 

There were several attempts to create perspective on stage, but the best representations were drawn by Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), published in his book Architettura in 1545, based on 

Vitruvius.  In the section on theatre Serlio discussed and drew plans for fitting a smaller version of the outdoor Roman theatre into a rectangular Renaissance hall.  He set up stadium seating around an orchestra, in the center of only the duke or prince sat.  The stage is at eye level of the duke, who has the perfect view of the spectacle, and raked, to increase the illusion of depth via 

perspective.  Serlio thus framed the stage picture, then designed three all purpose settings to place in the picture frame, one for tragedy, one for comedy, and one for pastorals, re-invented from satyr plays.  Each of these scenes required four sets or “nests” of angled wings plus a backdrop or shutter.  On the wings and drop were carefully painted parts of the total view and the audience would get, on a relatively shallow stage, the illusion of a good deal of depth.  Serlio’s sets did not need to be changed, so the wings were “fixed” into position. 

      

In case you're having trouble "reading" this,picture the audience at the bottom of the slide. On the left you see periaktoi in one position, on the right in another, with lines to determine proper perspective drawn as well, with the vanishing point at the top of each side of the  slide.

Intermezzi and early operas featured several different settings, so it soon became necessary to shift scenery within a performance. Several experiments in changing scenes began, the earliest reaching back to the ancient Greek system of triangular periaktoi. 

Again picture the audience at the bottom of the slide

 Next, angled wings were utilized.  You could “nest” more of such wings than you could move periaktoi, as the latter were confined to three sides. So angled wings offered more scene changes than periaktoi could provide.  Moving these angled wings, however, proved clumsy in the execution.  By the early seventeenth century, flat wings replaced angled wings. How did they stand if they were

flat?  They were placed in grooves attached to the stage floor at bottom and another set of grooves at the top.  Like the angled wings they were nested one behind the other.  At the signal (usually a whistle) to change a scene, a man stationed at each nest pulled one wing out of sight, revealing the wing behind it, with of course another scene painted on it--Voila! Scene 2, the forest!  The so-called wing and groove (or wing and shutter) system was a vast improvement on early methods, and was employed universally for a short time. England, Holland and America made use of w ings and grooves into the 19th century. 

     

Then, in the 1640s, designer Giacomo Torelli. aka il gran stregone (the great sorcerer, for his brilliant abilities in design) lived up to his nickname with a clever variation on the wing and groove 

scheme.  At the Teatro Novissimo, one of the new public opera houses in Venice, he cut slots through the stage floor so that upright supports, or poles, could pass through and under the stage to the floor below it.  On this lower level he placed wagons, or chariots, to which the poles were attached.   Picture long poles attached to the rear of flat wings, at the stage level supporting the wings, at the level below attached to the chariots.  The chariots 

Picture the audience seated behind the rectangle
at center (a temporary proscenium)

were all hooked up on a system of pulleys to a large winch at center.  By merely cranking the winch, one man could change an entire scene, and this new “chariot and pole” change could occur much more smoothly than with the wing and groove method.  Soon other winches began to be employed for cloud machines and other scenic devices, and scene changes became some of the most exciting aspects of an evening at the theatre. They were accomplished in plain view of the audiences, whose breaths were taken away by what became known as “a vista” scene shifts.

      

Now that you know how these changes occurred, let’s talk about what it meant for design.  As you start to invent machinery that can move scenery quickly and effectively, and as you create a hunger for it in the audiences, you begin to need people capable of painting these changes, accurately, beautifully, and in perspective – designers.  We start to read names of designers in the seventeenth century, for nearly the first time in theatre history.  Well before the advent of even wing and groove sets, intermezzi had moved dazzlingly from scene to scene.  I’ve already identified Bernardo Buontalenti as one of the designers for Medici intermezzi, active as early as 1586.  In fact famous painters of the day often worked on these courtly entertainments.  For example, Baldessare Peruzzi and Giorgio Vasari (a fine painter in his own right, but more famous on the biographical sketches he wrote of many famous Italian Renaissance painters and sculptors) both worked for the Medici family in Florence. Even Leonardo da Vinci designed costumes, scenes and machines for the Sforza family, rulers of Milan.           

   
Buontalenti’s pupil Giulio Parigi (c 1570-1635) and his family carried on his master’s work, and also disseminated it throughout Europe, showing, among others, Joseph Furttenbach from Germany and Inigo Jones from England, how to create the marvelous changes, and how to paint them.  Along with painted, changeable scenery, many special effects began to be created: flying, trapdoors, wave-machines, and so on.  Nicola Sabbattini published with a detailed manual on these effects and how to accomplish them, complete with drawings, in 1638.  Here are just a few chapter titles from Sabbattini’s book (illustrated in the next four visuals:

    Chapter XXXIX: How to Arrange the Lights on the Stage

    Chapter XLI: How to Light the Lamps

    Chapter V: How to change Scenery

    Chapter VI: How to Change Scenery by Another Method

    Chapter VII: The Third method of Changing Scenery

    Chapter XXXIV: How to Make Dolphins and Other Sea Monsters Appear to Spout Water While Swimming

   

    Chapter XXXV: How to Produce a Constantly Flowing River

    Chapter XXXVII: How to Divide the Sky into Sections

    Chapter XXXVIII: How Gradually to Cover Part of the Sky with

Clouds

   Chapter XLII: How to Cover Part of the Sky, Beginning with a Small Cloud that Becomes Larger and Larger and Continually Changes its Color

   Chapter XLIII: How to Make a Cloud descend Perpendicularly with Persons in It

  Chapter XLV: How to Make a Cloud Descend So That It Will Gradually Move from the Extreme End of the Stage to the Middle of the Stage, a Cloud, Moreover, with Persons in It

   

As theatre moved indoors, artificial light also became a necessity. 

Candlelight was used in the auditorium – it smoked less and

smelled better than oil – and oil lamps and candles were used on stage. The auditorium remained lit by huge multi-candled chandeliers throughout the performance.  At the beginning of the evening these chandeliers could be seen on the auditorium floor. Then all the candles were lit, and just before the play began the chandeliers were hoisted up towards the ceiling – possibly the origin of the phrase, “lights up!” The 

practice of a lit auditorium continued, by the way, into the mid-19th century.  Oil lamps were often used for footlights; and on the sides and overhead on stage, candles or oil lamps were masked by scenic elements – the scene could be made darker by extinguishing some candles, or by the clever device of a sort of light tree which could be turned away from the stage to dim the scene.

  

           

In theatre architecture, the Roman theatre was reinvented, as we’ve already seen to an extent with Serlio’s plans and drawings of scenes.  Two theatres still standing (and easily visited, by the way) will serve as models.  The first is the Teatro Olimpico, in

Compare this with the Roman theatre above

Vicenza, a city very near Venice. Most of the town was designed by Andrea Palladio, one of the great architects of the Italian Renaissance, whose style is actually named after him – Palladian.  One of Palladio’s architectural undertakings at Vicenza was a theatre, built between 1580 and 1584.  Like Serlio’s plan, Palladio’s consisted of a semicircular auditorium backed by stadium seating.  The stage is very like an ancient Roman stage, a long thin platform backed by an elaborate scaenae frons, with three major openings (along with a door on each side of the stage); the central opening is quite large.  So far, so good.

 

note the alleyways in perspective inside the three openings

BUT!  Palladio died before the building was complete, and his associate, Vicenzo Scamozzi, finished the plan, adding, in true Renaissance style, alleyways in perspective from each of the three openings on the scaenae frons.  The effect is of a city square with a number of streets approaching it. In fact some argue that Scamozzi was attempting to present the center of ancient Thebes, 

specifically for the inaugural production of Oedipus Rex.  Theatre historian Bamber Gascoigne described the streets in Scamozzi’s alleyways.  They were:

“extremely steep with a very rapid shortening of the houses along them, and this makes them useless for acting in -- an actor walking the few steps from the far end to the front would start level with the roof tops, and then rapidly shrink to the height of a door.”

(Gascoigne, World Theatre: An Illustrated History)

The scaenae frons and alleyways are built of wood, painted to look like stone and marble. The Teatro Olimpico is a final tribute to ancient theatres, but with a sort of Renaissance teaser (the perspective alleyways) built in.

      

A more revolutionary move occurred in Parma in 1618, when Giovan Battista Aleotti (who has also been credited with inventing wing and groove scene changes) finished the Teatro Farnese.  In effect, Aleotti opened up the central door (like the one on the scaenae frons of the Olimpico) to make it the frame for the entire stage.  The Farnese is the oldest remaining theatre with a 

permanent proscenium arch. It’s hardly the first use of a proscenium.  As we’ve seen, temporary proscenia have been put up for intermezzi and for plays since the mid sixteenth century. But the Farnese is purpose-built with the proscenium arch as the permanent central feature of the stage, framing the picture and at the same time hiding the machinery that allowed for scene changes and special spectacular tricks. As such, it is the historic model for theatres for the next four centuries and probably well into the future.

 

My photo of the auditorium from the stage     

When we talk about the performances at the academies, and at intermezzi commissioned by the Medici, and at evenings in the Olimpico or the Farnese, it must be noted that these entertainments were seen by the courtiers and upper crust only.  None of these special effects and spectacular scene changes was being seen by the common people.  At least, not until Venice began to build 

pit (the standing area on the floor), box, (the
five levels on the sides of the theatre), and
gallery - stadium style seating - the artist who drew
this would be sitting in that section)

PUBLIC opera houses, in 1637 (we mentioned these earlier).  The San Cassiano came first, but in four short years, by 1641, three other Venetian theatres had been built to compete with it, and by 1700 there were at least ten opera houses in Venice!  Each of these theatres featured permanent proscenium arches, elaborate machinery, and perspective sets.  Their auditoriums were built in a style that continued down to the late nineteenth century, in the pit, box and gallery system.  The pit was what we call the orchestra (and the Brits call the stalls); the pit was not considered the best seat. In fact at first there WERE no seats – everyone in the pit stood. Along the sides and back of the pit were anywhere from three to five levels of seating.  Usually the first two levels were for the wealthiest and were divided into small boxes (the most expensive seats) and the upper levels were undivided galleries with stadium-like seating. 

Two different scenes at apublic opera house
(both designed by il gran stregone, Torelli)
note that these are drawings, and that the real
thing might not have looked so perfect, but
it gives an idea of what settings looked like.

Commedia dell’Arte     

The middle classes began to attend the public opera houses, which quickly spread through Europe, but the lower classes stood in town squares and watched groups of traveling players.  These troupes improvised the most popular theatre of the era – the commedia dell’arte.  This Italian term means plays (the word commedia included plays serious or light) by artists, performances given by professionals.   It’s contrasted with the commedia d’erudita (plays by intellectuals – the learned drama, done for and by academies, courts, rich families.

      

Scholars are divided (aren’t they always?) on the origins of this tremendously popular and long-lived form, but commedia’s “roots” come most probably from the tradition of traveling players doing whatever it took to sing for their suppers.

   

Commedia’s characteristics are easily described: it is improvised, highly physical, it features low comedy, and makes extensive use 

My role model

of stock characters. They are “stock” in that there are three major groups repeated over and over in every commedia piece:  young lovers, older, blocking characters, and servants; stock also in that they were not often complex, but exhibited a single, clearly recognizable trait that the audience could “get” and laugh at.

Notice the resemblance?

The written parts of commedias were the scenarios, or soggetti -- paragraphs of basic plot lines tacked up backstage. The actors would read these, and because they always had pretty much the same function from soggetto to soggetto, they’d know what they had to do for a given performance.  Seven hundred soggetti survive, many collected by Flaminio Scala, a commedia performer from the I Confidenti troupe.  

      

To help them move from point to point in the soggetto, the actors made regular use of concetti and lazzi. Concetti were stock speeches, lazzi were stock physical bits.  Each actor had at his or her disposale lazzi and concetti carefully honed through practice.

Lazzi

So if the soggetto read, “Capitano enters, makes his ego concetto, then hears a noise and does the sword lazzi,” the actor who always played that braggart soldier entered, talked on and on about his amazing strength and courage eclipsed only by his good looks – then he’d suddenly hear a noise and immediately he’d cringe and race around the stage trying to draw his sword, getting it and himself tangled in his cape, until the sword sticks pathetically out between his legs as he cowers in fear.    Another commedia term, zanni, is a generic name for clowns, and usually refers to comic servants.

      

Troupes of the commedia dell’arte were found as early as 1570 and they remained popular for nearly 200 years, although by the 18th century they’d softened and sentimentalized their original rough and sexy bits.  These troupes traveled through Europe, even up into England, and some of them became famous.  I Confidenti I already mentioned, known largely through the popularity and the saved

soggetti of Flaminio Scala.  I Fideli was another well-known 

group, but the most famous was unquestionably I Gelosi!  The troupe was headed by a married couple, Isabella and Francesco Andreini.  He started out as a young lover, but moved later in his career into Capitano roles.  She was the most renowned Innamorata of her day, beloved everywhere the troupe went.  She was well educated and wrote poetry as well, and even tried her hand at crafting soggetti.  She died young and it is said that her funeral was huge, attracting nobles as well as common folk.

     

Here’s a brief look at the names and descriptions of several of these stock characters.  The innamorati were the male and female lovers, and were usually the only commedia characters who played unmasked.  Next a few blocking characters: Pantalone, a merchant (frequently from Venice) with a large hooked nose mask, a black coat and red pantaloons – the father of one of the lovers, often, or a suitor to one of the young women – unsuccessful, of course.  His

 companion was Dottore, perhaps the father of the other lover. Either a scholar from Bologna, or a man with some knowledge of medicine, Dottore dressed in black academic robe and usually babbled incoherently in pigeon-Latin, or made grotesque diagnoses and treatments of patients.  Capitano, sometimes called 

Scaramuccia, Rinocerente, or Spavento da Vall’Inferno --was the Braggart Soldier Plautus had created, who usually turns out to be a hopeless, cringing coward. Capitano has survived, as have many other of the characters, through the ages: “Have I not in my time heard lions roar?” Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew is a variation on the braggart soldier  “I, Miles Gloriosus, I slaughterer of thousands,” Stephen Sondheim’s braggart in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, is taken right out of ancient Roman comedy, one of the most probable sources for commedia.

       
The servants were the most varied of the characters.  The favorite was Arlecchino, or Harlequin.  He was usually the faithful servant

 of one of the male lovers, and was very clever and resourceful at making sure his young master got what he wanted, which was usually the innamorata. He wore a dog-like mask, and a bright, multicolored suit of diamond patches. Columbina, sometimes Corallina, was the young female lover’s servant --feisty and clever, she was often the object of Harlequin’s hopeless affection. She is

 also the only character other than the innamorati who usually played unmasked. Pulcinella was from Naples, a mixture of foolishness and shrewdness.  He wore a hooked nose, a humpback, dressed in white and sported a long pointed cap, more mean-spirited and nasty than Arlecchino. Like Pulcinella, Scapino and Brighella were servants who were heavy on tricks, and these guys could get very nasty at times!

      
Commedia stages were very similar to the booth or trestle stages of the Medieval era, but became more elaborate in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The players traveled constantly and played outside more often than in, but on many occasions might be invited to play in the house of a rich person. 

Most importantly, commedia remained popular for two centuries, much longer than most theatrical genres, and remains with us in many famous plays. Its stock characters are alive and well today, at times in the theatre, but the form is most at home in TV sitcoms.

The Young Vic adapted this play from commedia sketches, and it proved very
popular back in the 1970s

You can see Commedia daily in Copenhagen,
at Tivoli Gardens - alum Julie Starr sent me this photo

A musical based on the form - it moved to Lincoln Center, but never got to Broadway

Next time...Elizabethan theatre!