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How the Teatro Olimpico and the Drottingholm Slottsteater ‘Perform’ Their Pasts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2023
Abstract
Is it possible for audiences to be transported to the theatrical past? Though the landmark theatres Teatro Olimpico and Drottningholm Slottsteater appear to differ completely, the meanings of their pasts are interpreted through the concepts of historicity versus historicism. After briefly examining the theatres’ histories and the historiography of their place in theatre history, we then analyse the details of the Olimpico's and Slottsteater's ‘performances’ in the following characteristics: how their distinctive features employ motion and space, the presence of their silent ghost audiences, their similarities as one-room theatres and in the ‘democratic nature’ of their auditoriums, and their use of trompe l'oeil in their construction. Through these elements, the Teatro Olimpico and Drottningholm Slottsteater perform their pasts, achieving their status as iconic playhouses that still make an impact on audiences and visitors. Does that impact effectively ‘take us back in time’?
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- Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2023
Footnotes
Thanks to the reviewers and editorial staff of Theatre Research International and Ms Eva Lundgren of Drottningholm's Slottsteater for their kind assistance.
References
NOTES
2 Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion, introduction, Part One, hosted by Al Roker, National Gallery of Art (2014), at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGRrMJ9r3iQ.
3 Lindqvist, Herman, Drottningholm Slottsteater (Stockholm: Reijs and Company, 2014), p. 20Google Scholar.
4 Unfortunately, I did not see a performance in either theatre.
5 Sauter, Wilmar, ‘Drottningholm Court Theatre and the Historicity of Performance’, Nordic Theatre Studies, 23 (2011), pp. 8–18Google Scholar, here pp. 11–12, italics mine.
6 Ibid., p. 12.
7 Hermans, Lex, ‘The Performing Venue: The Visual Play of the Italian Court Theatres in the Sixteenth Century’, Art History, 33, 2 (April 2010), pp. 292–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 293.
8 Brockett, Oscar, A History of the Theatre, 5th edn (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1987), pp. 292–303Google Scholar, here pp. 173, 420.
9 Anna Migliarisi details Ingegneri's achievements as among those of the very first professional directors in Renaissance and Baroque Directors: Theory and Practice of Play Production in Italy (New York: Legas Press, 2003). See also Schiavo, Remo, A Guide to the Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza: Accademia Olimpico, 2008), p. 152Google Scholar, on details of Edipo's opening.
10 Gordon, D. J., ‘Academicians Build a Theatre and Give a Play: The Accademia Olimpica, 1579–1585’, in Gabrieli, Vittorio, ed., Friendship's Garland: Essays Presented to Mario Praz on His Seventieth Birthday, Vol. I (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1966), pp. 105–38Google Scholar, here pp. 136–7.
11 Fernando Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (Milano: Electa, 1989), p. 75.
12 Gustaf Hilleström, The Drottningholm Theatre: Past and Present, photographs by Lennart F. Petersens (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Natur och Kultur, 1956), p. 10.
13 Ove Hidemark, Per Edstrom and Birgitta Schyberg, Drottningholm Court Theatre: Its Advent, Fate, and Preservation (Stockholm: Byggfloraget, 1993), p. 13.
14 Frank Moehler, ‘Survival of the Mechanized Flat Wing Scene Change: Court Theatres of Gripsholm, Cesky, Krumlov and Drottningholm. Mechanization Techniques That Have Endured for Over 200 Years’, Theatre Design & Technology, 35, 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 46–51, 53–6, here p. 53.
15 Hilleström, The Drottningholm Theatre, p. 10.
16 Wilmar Sauter and David Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm – Then and Now: Performance between the 18th and 21st Centuries (Stockholm: Stockholm University, Taberg Media Group, 2014), p. 6.
17 Horst Koegler, ‘The Swedes and Their Theatre King: The Stockholm Symposium on Opera and Dance in the Gustavian Era, 1771–1809’, Dance Chronicle, 10, 2 (1987), pp. 223–9, here p. 224. In fact, Gustav lived on as a protagonist in opera libretti: Eugene Scribe's Gustave III, ou Le Bal Masqué (1833) and Antonio Somma's Ballo in Maschera (1859).
18 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 3.
19 Paul Driscoll, ‘A Visit to Sweden's Eighteenth-Century Jewel: Drottningholm’, Opera News, 73, 11 (May 2009), pp. 18–21, here p. 19.
20 Brockett, History of the Theatre, p. 173.
21 See chaps. 1 and 2 of Tom Oosting, Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981; first published 1970), for detailed analysis of these influences.
22 Massimiliano Ciammaichella, ‘Temporary Theatres and Andrea Palladio as a Set Designer’, Nexus Network Journal, 21 (2019), pp. 209–25, here p. 223. Ciammaichella analyses the productions depicted in frescoes in the Olimpico's Odeon in order to generate computer model drawings of Palladio's designs.
23 Eugene Johnson traces the development of early proscenium theatres in chap. 4 of Inventing the Opera House: Theatre Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
24 See chap. 6 of A. M. Nagler, Theatre Festivals of the Medici 1539–1637 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964).
25 Bruce Boucher, Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time (New York: Abbeville Press, 1994), p. 282.
26 Palladio scholar Lionel Puppi believes Scamozzi's vistas ‘tend to unsettle the building rather than unify it’. See Oosting, Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, p. 19.
27 Magagnato, Licisco, ‘The Genesis of the Teatro Olimpico’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes, 14, 3–4 (1951), pp. 209–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 219.
28 Allardyce Nicoll, The Development of the Theatre: A Study of Theatrical Art from the Beginnings to the Present Day (London: George Harrap and Company Limited, 1927), p. 45.
29 George Kernodle, From Art to Theatre: Form and Convention in the Renaissance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1944), pp. 160, 171.
30 Simon Tidworth, Theatres: An Illustrated History (London: Pall Mall Press, 1973), p. 51.
31 Oscar Brockett, Margaret Mitchell and Linda Hardberger, Making the Scene: A History of Stage Design & Technology in Europe and the United States (San Antonio: Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, 2010), p. 14. Additionally, Magagnato identifies Scamozzi's Teatro Sabbioneta and Aleotti's Teatro Farnese as ‘descendants’ of the Teatro Olimpico in the use of a U-shaped auditorium and the ‘juxtaposition of contradictory elements: proscenio with proscenium-arch or proscenium-arch with auditorium’. Magagnato, ‘The Genesis of the Teatro Olimpico’, p. 219.
32 Magagnato, ‘The Genesis of the Teatro Olimpico’, pp. 216, 218.
33 Oosting, Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, p. 148.
34 George R. Havens, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Royal Theater in Sweden’, Modern Language Notes, 44, 1 (1929), pp. 22–3. Havens presciently concludes ‘that it may soon be possible to witness at Drottningholm an occasional revival of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century plays with their original settings, costumes, and scenic effects’.
35 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 119.
36 Moehler, ‘Survival of the Mechanized Flat Wing Scene Change’, p. 49.
37 Göran Alm, Walter Bauer, Stig Fogelmarck and Barbro Stribolt, Pictures from Drottningholm, ed. Göran Alm, trans. Roger G. Tanner (Katrineholm: Kurir-tryck, 1987), p. 19.
38 Daniel McReynolds superbly details the intricate and convoluted history of the Teatro Olimpico's ceiling in ‘Restoring the Teatro Olimpico: Palladio's Contested Legacy’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 54 (2008), pp. 153–212.
39 What is truly remarkable about the Gripsholm Theatre is how the theatre was engineered in the small circular space of a tower. See Donnelly, Marian, ‘Theaters in the Courts of Denmark and Sweden from Frederik II to Gustav III’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 43, 4 (December 1984), pp. 328–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Boucher, Andrea Palladio, p. 282.
41 Sauter, ‘Drottningholm Court Theatre and the Historicity of Performance’, p. 12.
42 Alm et al., Pictures from Drottningholm, p. 17.
43 Denis Cosgrove, The Palladian Landscape: Geographic Change and Its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), p. 87.
44 Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, p. 81.
45 Michael Anderson, ‘The Changing Scene: Plays and Playhouses in the Italian Renaissance’, in J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewing, eds., Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance (New York: St Martin's Press, 1991), pp. 3–20, here p. 15.
46 Wiles insightfully compares Drottningholm and Shakespeare's Globe in Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, pp. 202–13.
47 Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), pp. 141–2.
48 Olivia Dawson, ‘Speaking Theatres: the “Olimpico” theatre of Vicenza and Sabbioneta, and Camillo's Theatre of Memory’, in Christopher Cairns, ed., The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance, Design, Vol. II, Design, Image and Acting (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 85–92, here p. 90.
49 Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 164.
50 Menta, Ed, ‘I Finally Saw the Italian Renaissance Theatres and their Silent Ghost Audiences’, New England Theatre Journal, 31 (2020), pp. 121–39Google Scholar, here p. 134. It is possible that the presence of the silent ghost audience may not feel quite as strong with an audience in the seats at a contemporary Olimpico performance.
51 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 120.
52 Hilleström, The Drottningholm Theatre, p. 36.
53 This section is adapted from my essay ‘The Two-Room Concept vs. the One-Room Concept’ in Anjalee Deshpande Hutchinson's Acting Exercises for Non-traditional Staging (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 83–6. I am indebted to Professor John Herr for introducing me to the two-room concept in his graduate directing seminar at the University of Connecticut.
54 I use the term ‘apparent’ for the Olimpico because the actual physical intersection of the side or transverse walls of the cavea and the outer edges of the stage and frons-scenae are often considered to be the theatre's weakest design aspect. Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, p. 49, calls it a ‘stylistic lapse’, while Oosting, Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, p. 136, points to the poor sightlines it creates.
55 Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, p. 70.
56 Ibid., p. 70.
57 Cosgrove, The Palladian Landscape, p. 87.
58 Daniela Sirbu, ‘Virtual Exploration of the Teatro Olimpico’, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (2005), at www.uleth.ca/ffa, pp. 23–4.
59 Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, p. 145.
60 Driscoll, ‘A Visit to Sweden's Eighteenth-Century Jewel’, p. 19.
61 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 121.
62 Hilleström, The Drottningholm Theatre, p. 9.
63 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 121.
64 Ibid., p. 121.
65 Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, pp. 76–7.
66 Schiavo, A Guide to the Teatro Olimpico, p. 151.
67 Hidemark et al., Drottningholm Court Theatre, p. 13.
68 Ibid., p. 116.
69 Harvey, Anne-Charlotte Hanes, ‘“Vacker som faux”: The Drottningholm Theatre Aesthetic’, TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, 27, 2 (2006), pp. 27–53Google Scholar, here p. 32.
70 Schiavo, A Guide to the Teatro Olimpico, p. 137.
71 See Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, chaps. 6, 7.
72 Quoted in Hidemark et al., Drottningholm Court Theatre, p. 6.
73 Barnard Hewitt, ed., The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbatini and Furttenbach (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1958), pp. 23–4.
74 Kernodle, From Art to Theater, p. 170.
75 Sauter states, ‘Through creating direct sightlines upon the stage, the theatre anticipated the ideals of modernists like Wagner and Antoine, and cinematic mode of viewing, while inhibiting social encounter’. Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 122. (In other words, in this aspect, Drottningholm anticipates the two-room concept!)
76 Oosting, Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, pp. 132–3.
77 I sat in the one-room Olimpico for two hours, surrounding by the statues of its silent ghost audience: ‘I felt the theatre was watching me.’ Menta, ‘I Finally Saw the Italian Renaissance Theatres’, p. 135.
78 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 123.
79 Ibid., p. 123.
80 Harvey, ‘Vacker som faux’, p. 31.
81 In addition to Adelcrantz's thrift in building materials, he incurred some of the costs himself. Ibid., p. 31.
82 Hidemark et al., Drottningholm Court Theatre, p. 37.
83 Oosting, Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, p. 134. Oosting provides great detail regarding the construction of the Olimpico and how Palladio adapted his original plans to fit a more cramped space. See chap. 4 also for how Palladio creates the impression of greater space in the peristyle, which Oosting calls the ‘portico’.
84 Boucher, Andrea Palladio, p. 282.
85 Hidemark et al., Drottningholm Court Theatre, p. 30.
86 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 38.
87 John Edward Young, ‘A Tiny Stage Fit for a King’, Christian Science Monitor, 13 May 1988, p. 18.
88 Harvey, ‘Vacker som faux’, p. 36.
89 Ibid., p. 36.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., p. 38.
92 Ibid., p. 44.
93 The official theatre museum at Drottningholm was relocated to Duke Karl's pavilion in the early 1980s. Hidemark et al., Drottningholm Court Theatre, p. 20.
94 Schiavo, A Guide to the Teatro Olimpico, p. 73.
95 The Teatro Olimpico reopened to the public on 27 April 2021. See www.teatrolimpicovicenza.it/en.
96 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, pp. 222, 279–80; and Drottningholm Slottsteater 2017 Brochure. As of this writing, operating under new COVID guidelines, the Slottsteater presented Handel's opera Agrippina for a number of performances in 2021, and public tours have been resumed.
97 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 223.
99 According to a 1980 survey and a 1991 follow-up of the wear and tear in the theatre conducted by the National Board of Public Buildings, the tours were much more responsible for the physical deterioration of the theatre than productions. New tour restrictions included limiting the number of participants in a tour group to twenty-five, discontinuing access to backstage and the machinery, and standardizing a one-way, counterclockwise tour route (previously tour groups had been running into each other because of opposing directions in simultaneous tours). See Hidemark et al., Drottningholm Court Theatre, ‘Survey of the Wear and Tear’, pp. 127–35.
100 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 226.
101 Brook observed that ‘it is accepted that scenery, costumes, music are fair game for directors and designers … When it comes to attitudes and behavior we are much more confused.’ Brook, Peter, The Empty Space (New York: Atheneum, 1987, 1968), p. 16Google Scholar.
102 Munslow, Alun, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. ix.
103 Sauter and Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm, p. 139.
104 Rigon, The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, p. 82.