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13 November 2013

The Romantic Movement III: Theatre Architecture, Staging & Acting

A Shakespeare comedy, with a wrestling match...As You Like It!
Throughout Europe in the early nineteenth century, audiences began to attend theatre in increasing numbers, especially in the growing cities – one of the effects of the industrial revolution. So it makes sense that the trend in the early nineteenth century was towards more spectacle in larger theatre auditoriums. Emphasis was placed on historical accuracy in design, both in scenery and costumes.  Archeological digs undertaken at this time yielded much new information on the ancient past, and as a result historically accurate sets and costumes were regularly seen on the nineteenth century stage.

      
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.
 
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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