Atlas Obscura: In 1660, the stage designer Gaspare Vigarani came into an unexpected windfall. The Louvre was expanding, and the Grande Salle du Petit-Bourbon—a massive theater that had housed operas, plays, and ballets for nearly a century—was being destroyed to make room. Vigarani was told to grab everything he could from backstage and move it to his own theater, the Salles de Machines, which was then under construction.
4 comments:
I think it is both funny and sad that some jealous designer would burn all of Torelli's beautiful work. Rather than take advantage of what his brilliant predecessor created, he wanted to destroy it all so that he could be the best stage designer and the beautiful work or Torelli could not overshadow him. I think it is funny that Vigarani could be that petty, yet also it is so that an artist would destroy such beautiful art and technology for his own ego.
The machinery that this man made during this time period are insane. The video of the Drottningholms Slottsteater using that Torelli-style machinery is something of another time. There is something so beautiful about the complicated, well engineered wooden structures. There is something very Da Vinci about the whole set up, and Da Vinci is my idol. It is just to show that a shiny, complicated, computer technology is not necessary to create seamless theatre. Not a single technician in on stage for these transitions and the scenery moves with amazing fluidity. It just blows my mind.
I wish the author would explain why Vigarani wanted to erase the memories of Torelli. A little bit of google search showed me that the Drottningholms slottsteater is a UNESCO world heritage. The scene change effect is indeed fascinating but simple. The backdrop changes, the legs are pulled out and changed to a different set and borders all flip into a different set as well. Instead of raked stage, the singers stand on long bars with different heights to enhance the depth of the stage. Some of the trap door effects on the video is almost comparable to the candelabras coming up from the floor in the Phantom of the Opera. It's amazing that one person thought of all the effects and implemented them on stage. At the same time, it always amazes me what humans can achieve with pure human labor power. In the biggest scale, the pyramid was built with no machines but pure human labor. The stage machinery was certainly in smaller scale than the pyramid, but still, all the effects were achieved solely with manpower.
I never knew that most of Torelli's work got burned down. He was always one of my favorite people in History of Rigging. The Pole and Chariot design is one of the most important inventions in stage machinery design. Well, in my opinion. It revolutionized how scenery was moved on and off stage, it turned into a lot of other machinery as it developed and was used for a long long time because it was a good product. I am so grateful that Vigarani did not succeed in wiping Torelli off the map as he is a fascinating designer and inventor. Some of his stuff is still around in old theaters that have been preserved, so really, Vigarani did a terrible job. I visited Drottingsholm when I was in Stockholm and it was a mazing to see the machines and technology they used to produce shows. So much of the machinery there could easily be related to effects and machinery used nowadays. and those connections were so educational as I made them. I got to see where we came from and a better idea of how we got there.
It absolutely astounds me that any one person could be so childish as to completely destroy another's work solely to establish their own identity. The mantra of my high school's performing arts program was "Leave your ego at the door." Theatre is a team sport: When we as artists engage in our work, we cannot do so in isolation. In doing so, one weakens the art he/she seeks to create, as one person alone cannot engage in dialogue. Theatre as an art form is similar to a tel (an artificial mound formed from the accumulated refuse of people living on the same site for hundreds or thousands of years). In so flagrantly burning Torelli's work, Vigarani also denies the vast heritage of theatre which came before him. As such, I could not be more glad that Torelli's legacy persists in the face of such adversity.
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