Books NEOCLASSICAL IDEAL

The change from Baroque to Neoclassicism is easier to recognize in architecture than in the other arts, but this does not mean that it was primarily an architectural movement. If it had any specific origin, it was literary. Writers like Shaftesbury in England, Diderot in France, Lessing in Germany, argued for a more serious, moral approach on the part of the poets, painters and architects, and pointed once again to the ancient world as the model to be imitated. The invocation of classical authorities, the formulation of rules, became favourite occupations. In the theatre a precise distinction is harder to draw (though not impossible—are not Handel’s operas, for instance, Baroque, Gluck’s Neoclassical?), and one can hardly claim that the Neoclassical stage took shape in response to the demands of a new drama. Both, however, reflected the same principles.

An age of principles is an age of books. In the history of the theatre, the second half of the eighteenth century parallels the Renaissance in the fertility of its ideas and the way in which these ideas were expressed as criticisms or as ‘ideal’ projects. I begin this chapter, therefore, with a brief survey of critical writings between ijss and the French Revolution, since this gives the background of comment and controversy against which the buildings themselves were judged.

Count Francesco Algarotti, the Italian scientist, author of Neutonianismo per le Dame, published his Saggio sopra VOpera in 1755. The fabric of theatres, he advises, should be of brick or stone as a safeguard against fire, but the auditorium should be of wood, ‘the material from which we make musical instruments’, for reasons of acoustics. His preferred plan is the semi-circle, since this was the shape favoured by the ancients, but he realizes that with modern scenery this would make the proscenium inconveniently wide, and so compromises on the ellipse. He advocates the Sighizzi method of stepping, and urges moderation in the ornament, even to the extent of not using the orders, on the grounds that these could not be

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given their proper dignity.

Algarotti’s views were typical of the cultivated public of his time, and are echoed, with varying emphases, by other writers. Jean-Georges Noverre, in his Observations sur la Construction d’une Nouvelle Salle de 1’Opera of the early 17605, argues for a theatre which would take its place as a civic monument, if possible free-standing on all sides, both for ease of access and to reduce the dangers of fire. He condemns the boxes inside the

proscenium arch because ‘the front of the stage should be regarded as a huge frame, ready to receive the varied pictures which the arts have to offer’. Decoration should not be obtrusive, or the actors and scenery will be ‘crushed by the ornament and richness’.

Count Enea Arnaldi, a gentleman of Vicenza, entered the controversy in 1762 with his Idea di un Teatro. Arnaldi represents the old-school humanist. For him Palladio has said the last word, but his book in fact demonstrates all too clearly the need for a new solution. Retaining as much as possible of Palladio’s scaenae frons and classic semi-circle as he can, he is obliged to extend his auditorium upwards into four tiers of balustraded galleries, with boxes grouped awkwardly by means of pilasters supporting statuary.

Charles-Nicholas Cochin (Projet d’une Salle de Spectacles pour le nouveau Theatre de Comedie, 176^) also looked back to Palladio, but his revisions were far more radical [Pi. 82]. In the conventional horseshoe theatre, he notes, those seats from which one sees best are furthest from the stage, while the nearer ones give a bad view. His solution is to retain the oval, but to place the stage on one of the long sides, not at the end. His auditorium thus becomes wide and shallow, and he is faced by the same problem recognized by Algarotti—how could people at the sides see the stage? By bringing the stage forward, says Cochin, and making the back of it concave. He proposed a fixed scaenae frons of three wide arches, with perspective scenery inside them. Thus every member of the audience would be looking directly into one arch, and as long as the actors remained in front of the concave frons they were easily visible to everyone. The three arches could, in fact, represent different places—e.g. a temple, a palace and a tomb—and characters could, with verisimilitude, seem to be unaware of each other’s presence. Cochin’s ideas were widely known and aroused interest though, as we shall see, only one architect made a serious attempt to put them into practice (Cosimo Morelli at Imola [PL 98]). They seem to have been partly anticipated by Inigo Jones’ Cockpit-in-Court [Pi. ^4], though we know too little of this to be quite sure.

By the 17705 many French cities were erecting public theatres on a large scale, and the theorists’ terms of reference become correspondingly more grandiose. The Description des Arts et Metiers, the rival in many respects of the Encyclopedic, gives a careful review of theatre architecture from ancient Greece onwards and concludes with a project for an ideal theatre drawn up by A. J. Roubo the Younger. The sources of Roubo’s design are easy enough to find (mostly at Versailles, Bordeaux and Lyons) and he adds little in the way of original thought. Circulation is badly worked out, two triangular staircases being squeezed into the spaces left in the corners. By choosing a semi-circular auditorium he is faced with the familiar problem of the width of the proscenium, and only partially solves it by stipulating a fore-stage in the English style. The parterre, however, is steeply raked—something often advocated but hardly ever carried out. Roubo’s intention

PI. 82. A revolutionary theatre design proposed by Charles-Nicolas Cochin in 176$. The back of the stage is concave and divided into three arches by pillars. Every spectator has a good view of the fore-stage and can see into at least one of the arches. was to produce a theatre adaptable to ‘many kinds of spectacle, such as tragedies, comedies, operas, concerts, balls and public festivals’, which has a familiar sound today.

One of the most ambitious of such ideal schemes was that proposed by Francesco Milizia in his Tratiato complete, Jormale e materiale del Teatro, of 1794 [Pi. 83]. Here the theatre forms the climax of a huge cultural complex containing academies of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature, halls for music, dancing, gymnastics and tennis, and even an arena for ballooning. The theatre itself was largely conceived by his colleague Vincenzo Ferrarese. It is contained in a monumental colonnaded building covered with a dome. Circulation is well managed—a porte cochere, two large staircases, two entrances to the stalls (each with a ticket office) and extra exits for emergencies—and there was to be a ballroom over the entrance court and two cafes. Utilizing Cochin’s idea of the concave scaenae frons, Milizia proposes a single circle divided almost equally into stage and auditorium, and united by the use of a giant order in both. In the auditorium the columns would hold boxes; on the stage they would form three openings ‘according to the ancients and according to the best taste which deserves to be revived’. Behind the central arch Milizia’s plan shows perspective scenery, but the whole concept is so beautifully geometrical

that one feels he did not really want to spoil it with real actors and sets. The same might be said of G. P. M. Dumont and J. N. L. Durand, both of whom included theatres in their schemes for ideal cities, but who approached the matter entirely from the point of view of public effect. Soufflot’s project for a circular Comedie Fran9aise surrounded by colonnades belongs to the same family.

Another French architect, however, named Damun, makes a commendable attempt to return to the dramatic roots of the theatre. In his Prospectus pour un nouveau Theatre trace sur les Principes des Grecs et des Remains (1776) he tries to reconstruct the beginnings of theatres, rather as Laugier was doing in a wider context with his ‘primitive hut’. Look, he says, at travelling performers doing a play in the street. ‘These actors deliberately stand with their backs to a wall, and the people naturally form a semi-circle round them. Those at the back stand on tiptoe so as to see as well as those in front. This was how the ancients arrived at the plans of their theatres, and this is how modern architects ought to begin. What he proposes is a simple raked semi-circle ending in a colonnade. No place here for elaborate perspective scenery, which, in any case, only gets in the actors’ way. Why ask for more than the Greek periaktoil

Most fantastic of all such ideal schemes was E-L. Boullee’s plan for an opera house, put forward (though never published) after the Opera fire of 1781 [PI. 84]. Boullee saw the theatre as ‘un monument consacre au plaisir’. From outside, his building was a huge domed peristyle of Corinthian columns on a stepped base with four square plinths for statues. It was to stand in the midst of a garden. The public should converge from all directions, attracted by the prospect of a play. The interior was to be divided into stage and auditorium by a single complete semi-circular arch (the auditorium could thus receive a semi-dome contained within the xterior hemispherical vault rather like the double dome of St. Paul’s). The parterre rose in a gentle slope and behind it was the inevitable semi-circle of giant columns. In spite of the grandeur of his conception, Boullee was a severely practical man. He had interesting ideas on scenery and stage lighting, and was particularly concerned with fire precautions. ‘Most of our theatres’, he wrote, ‘are frightful funeral pyres.’ His opera house staircases led by self-contained circulation systems (to prevent panic) to four main vestibules. Everything except the stage and its furniture was to be made of stone or brick. Finally, he proposed a huge basin of water underneath the whole theatre, into which any burning substance could be made to drop.

In 1782 a book appeared which surveyed the whole scene of theatre architecture, actual and ideal, summing up the issues involved with a clarity which remained relevant at least until 1-900 and is in some ways still
are scientific
—his sub-title is:
De 1’ordonnance la plus avantageuse a une salle de spectacles, relativement aux principesdel’optiqueetde Vacoustique.
He considers all
the proposed plan types—circular, semi-circular, oval, semi-oval, bell-shaped,
racket-shaped, horseshoe-shaped, octagonal and rectangular—before decid
ing finally on the ellipse. Decoration, in particular the orders, is to be
avoided. ‘A theatre, in order to fulfil its function, must be made up of
purely
optical and acoustic forms.’
Of all existing theatres, the Teatro Regio
at Turin comes nearest to his ideal. Patte, with his acoustic diagrams,
sight-lines, angles of reflection and so on, seems at first rather remote from
the realities of drama, but he was sensitive enough not to be a slave to theory. He dislikes Sighizzi’s ‘steps’, for instance, though he admits they
‘do indeed aid the view of the spectator’, because they ‘break up the
surface so that the sound is dispersed’ and also because they ‘present a very
disagreeable appearance’. He insists that rows of boxes should be visually
tied together, not left as ‘a multitude of little holes’. Even more remark
able is his insight into theatre psychology. English theatres, he notes, tend to have deep galleries all facing forward, rather than circles of boxes. ‘Most of
the audience, it is true, find themselves placed in a position facing the
stage, but nothing is less agreeable or less in conformity with good taste
than this arrangement. It divides the house into separate parts and does

away with contact between members of the audience. Each one sees only those at his own level.’ (As we shall see later, this actually seems not to have been true.) His purpose, however, is not
closer contact between
actors and audience. He criticizes schemes like those of Cochin and Roubo with pronounced fore-stages: ‘The actors would find themselves isolated in the middle of the audience and too far away from the scenery. There would no longer be any illusion, and the dramatic action would seem reduced and ineffective.’

Patte’s book was not the end of controversy on these matters (one of his opponents, an architect named Poyet, was inspired to suggest a trapezoidal auditorium which surprisingly prefigures Wagner’s Bayreuth), but it is time now to study the theatres that were actually going up during this period.

The Berlin Opera House, of 1741, by Knobelsdorf seems to have been the earliest free-standing theatre building in Europe [Pi. 8^]. It had a portico at one end and two other state entrances at the sides. Over the main entrance was the ‘Apollo Hall’, a large saloon whose windows formed part of the fafade. All these features were to become standard in the great opera houses of a hundred years later.

The influence of Berlin can be traced in eastern France during the following decade, when many of the larger towns erected public theatres as part of a general movement towards prestige civic architecture. That of Metz (17^1) adjoined the river Moselle on one side and the customs house at the back, but its other two sides were given monumental facades of porticos and columns [PI. 86]. Here, too, a grand staircase occupied mosf
of the vestibule, beginning as a single flight and dividing at right ang
half-way up, the prototype of Bordeaux. Montpellier followed, adding
concert hall over the vestibule. Front-of-the-house services often fur
tioned independently of the theatre, and one bought one’s ticket as o
actually entered the auditorium. Nancy and Brest are other good example Grandest of all was Lyons (17^4), designed by Soufflot, the architect of the
Pantheon [Pi. 87]. Soufflot was a friend of Cochin and had travelled with
him in Italy. His theatre stood on an isolated site, part of an ambitious pie
of town planning, facing the Hotel de Ville. Its huge stage was surrounding
by rooms for the actors and theatre staff, while the audience were provided with a long gallery for promenading, three staircases to the different gallery
levels and two cafes. It must have been a sober building, for Soufflot denied himself the use of the classical orders, both within or without. The auditorium, which was an almost complete oval, had three tiers of galleries and a panelled ceiling.

The authority of Soufflot and the theorists might have discouraged the use of classical orders in theatre interiors had it not been for a formui invented by Luigi Vanvitelli for the court theatre at Caserta, near Naples of 172—9 [Pi. 88].

Here, on a relatively small scale, Vanvitelli showed how use of classical orders could be used with a new grandeur. The lowest level of boxes is treated as a series of pedestals, on which stand giant Corinthian column embracing three more rows of boxes. The theatre has that odd feeling o frigidity which often affects Italian Neoclassicism, but it was a brilliant ide; handled with undeniable confidence. Its influence in Italy can be seen in thi Teatro Comunale (1788) at Faenza by Pistocchi, and continued as late a: 1863 in the rebuilt Teatro della Fortuna at Fano by Poletti.

Germany could never free itself entirely from the charms of Baroque. At Stuttgart the court architect to the Duke of Wurttemberg, Philippe de ie Guepiere, produced in 1759 plans for an opera house as monumental as any project by Durand [PI. 89]. In front and behind the central block, which contained stage and auditorium, were vast halls serving as foyers, cafes and reception rooms, including one octagonal room behind the stage almost as big as the auditorium. The interior elevation, however, was almost frivolously Rococo, with boxes held up on thin spindly supports and a top gallery supported on caryatids. Yet De la Guepiere evidently knew the literature; another design of his, made probably between 1765- and 1768 for the same patron, is a serious attempt to adapt Cochin’s theatre to court use. The three wide concave arches face a shallow auditorium rising in stages through the ‘amphitheatre des princes’ and the ‘amphitheatre des seigneurs’ to the ‘loge du prince’. There was to be a row of boxes level with the prince’s and above that a gallery also supported on caryatids. It would have been an odd mixture of the sublime and (one suspects) the ridiculous.

The Baroque spirit, though not necessarily Baroque forms, lingered on in Germany after it had been superseded in France by a purer Neoclassicism. A Frenchman, for instance, could hardly have taken completely seriously the theatre built in the Neue Palast at Potsdam (1763-9), with its extraordinary palms and lattice patterns (one of the architects, J. G. During, had built Frederick II’s Chinese Pavilion). The one added in 1766 to the palace of Schonbrunn by Nikolaus Pacazzi has more dignity and its classicism is in detail perfectly correct. Yet even here the numerous projecting balconies give it a rhythm which a Frenchman would have found too nervous.

By 1770 we have reached the beginning of one of the most important decades in the history of theatre architecture. Interest moves emphatically to France and in particular to three men, who between them almost sum up the achievements of Neoclassicism: Jacques-Ange Gabriel, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Victor Louis. Appropriately, we begin at the centre of European culture, Versailles.