PLAN OF CURIO’S PIVOTED THEATER.
It is rather extraordinary that the Romans should have allowed themselves to be carried around in this unstable machine. The theater, of course, was only for temporary use, but during the last day of the celebration, Curio was obliged to change the order of his magnificent entertainments, since the pivots became strained and out of true. The amphitheater form was therefore preserved. The mode in which these theaters were constructed has occupied the attention of several learned persons. The architects in the first century before Christ were accustomed to build wooden theaters; the first stone one was built in Rome by Pompey. It will be seen that the transformation due to Curio’s imagination might have been effected, as Pliny indicates, by a rotation around the pivots, P and Q, of the two great theaters, whose framework rested upon a series of small wheels movable on circular tracks. The stages, C and D, of the theaters were constructed of light framework, and were so arranged that they could be taken down and pushed back at C′ and D′, and thus allow the two theaters to revolve on their own axes so as to come face to face, while leaving between them only the space necessary for rotary motion. This space was then filled with light and movable pieces of framework, A and B, which formed on the ground floor vast doors for the entrance of the gladiators, and, in the story above, boxes for the magistrates.
THE OLYMPIAN THEATER OF PALLADIO AT VICENZA.[14]
[14] By Albert A. Hopkins.
The oldest permanent theater in Europe, at least of those built since the time of the Romans, is the Olympian Theater at Vicenza, Italy, and it is the last of its race. Before considering this curious theater it would, perhaps, be well to glance for a moment at the history of the theater in ancient and modern times. In the old Greek Theatre the spectators were seated in a semicircle in front of a raised platform on which a fixed architectural screen was provided. The action took place upon this stage. The dramas of the Greeks and Romans were of the simplest kind, the dialogue being simple, rhythmical, and often intoned. The amphitheater, in which the seats rose in tiers, could accommodate a large number of spectators. A theater with a radius of three hundred feet could seat twenty thousand spectators. The best counterparts of the Greek theater are some of the concert halls which were built specially for oratorios and concerts. The Greeks fully understood that the facial expression of the actors was lost, the spectators being so far away from the scene of the action of the drama. They attempted to overcome these difficulties by requiring the actors to wear masks with strongly marked features, and to increase their height they were provided with high-heeled shoes. The opera glass in the modern theater has, of course, done away with all objections of this kind.
The modern theater is the result of the blending of the old circular theater of the Greeks with the rectangular theater (so-called) of the Middle Ages. The earliest mediæval theaters in Italy and Spain consisted of courtyards with balconies which were impressed into the service, and plays were often performed in churches; but in France the climate was so bad that the tennis courts were used. The trouble with the tennis court was that, owing to the difficulty of roofing a large open space, the room could be only forty or fifty feet wide, and only six hundred to one thousand persons could see and hear to advantage. The accommodations had to be increased by tiers of boxes. The conch-like arrangement of classical times was soon found to be unfit for a spoken dialogue, which cannot be well heard more than seventy-five or eighty feet away, or the expression of the actors’ faces appreciated at a greater distance, so that the next improvement was the rounding off of the corners of the room and the multiplication of boxes, which were placed tier upon tier in the same manner as high office buildings are erected, to give increased accommodation, owing to the smallness and great value of some of our city blocks. In 1675 Fontana invented the horseshoe form of theater, which has not been departed from. In opera houses and lyric theaters the curve is elongated into an ellipse with the major axis towards the stage. In theaters for the spoken drama, where people must see and hear, the contrary process was necessary and the front boxes were brought near the stage. The introduction of painted movable scenery seems to have been due to Baldassare Peruzzi, who used it in 1508 in the production of “La Calandra,” which was played before Leo X. Further improvements led to the necessity of a recessed stage with a framing like that of a picture. Such is in brief the development of the modern theater.
Palladio (1518-1580) was a native of Vicenza, a town in northern Italy, forty-two miles west of Venice. He was an architect of the first order, and it is difficult to mention any architect who exercised a greater influence on the men of his time as well as on those who succeeded him. He was an enthusiastic student of antiquity, and, fascinated by the stateliness and charm of the buildings of ancient Rome, he did not reflect that reproductions of these, even when they possessed great archæological accuracy, were often lifeless and unsuited to the uses of the sixteenth century. His writings and architectural work rendered it easy for those who came after him to reproduce buildings which were faultless in their details, but which were cramped, formal, and cold. The Certosa of Pavia would have been impossible in London, yet under the inspiration of Palladio, Sir Christopher Wren was enabled to construct in London the Cathedral of St. Paul, which would have done honor to the great Italian master himself.
Palladio died before the theater at Vicenza was completed, and it was finished, though not altogether after the original design, by his pupil and fellow-citizen, Scamozzi. It was an attempt to reproduce the classic theaters of Greece and Rome, and his friends assisted him by sending designs of antique buildings to help him. It consists of an auditorium under an awning in the form of a semi-ellipse, it not being possible, from the narrowness of the situation, to use a semicircle. Its greater diameter is ninety-seven and one-half feet, and its lesser as far as the stage is fifty-seven and one-half feet. Fourteen ranges of seats for the spectators follow the curve of the ellipse. At the summit of these receding steps, or seats, is a corridor of the Corinthian order, which, from the narrowness of the ground, could not be detached from the outer wall at all places. Palladio therefore filled up the nine center and the three external columnations, where the statues touch the external wall, with pieces of statuary. The orchestra is five feet below the seats. The scene, which is sixty feet broad, is an architectural composition of two orders of the Corinthian style superimposed, which are surmounted in turn with a light and well-proportioned attic. On the stylobate of the second story are placed statues, and the inter-columnations are enriched with niches and statues. The panels of the attic are ornamented with reliefs of the “Labors of Hercules,” and the center panel over the largest of the three openings in the proscenium, which is arched, with a representation of an ancient hippodrome. Over the arch is the following inscription: “Virtvti ac Genio Olympicorvm Academia Theatrvm hoc a Fvndamentis Erexit Anno MDLXXXIIII. Palladio Archit.”