The Stage

The Bayreuth stage is huge; wall-to-wall, it is 28 metres wide and 23 metres deep. It comprises almost half of the building. The ground plan of the theatre shows this clearly. The enormous flytower, necessary for the complicated set-changes of the Wagnerian music drama, is 22 metres high. The picture-frame (or proscenium) is 12 metres high and 13 metres wide.

The stage area was entirely constructed of wood (in fact the whole structure is timber-framed) and the raked stage floor was constructed over a hollow space. The raked stage was common practice required by the perspectival scenery, the flat wings. The raked floor helps to create the sense of distance.

The space under the floor was used for technical equipment and it appeared to contribute greatly to the excellent acoustics of the theatre because of its resonating effect.

The raked floor was flattened in the 1920’s by Friedrich Kranich Jr. to facilitate the use of more elaborate three dimensional scenery.

In the never executed Munich Monumental Theatre design, in many respects Bayreuth’s predecessor, Semper had already introduced a double proscenium but it was Karl Brandt, chief technical engineer at Bayreuth, who brought forward the front proscenium, thus creating an optical illusion that made the scenic features look larger and enhanced the visual distance to the stage. The plainness of the proscenium arch is remarkable and an astonishing contrast to the ostentatiously ornamented proscenium arches of the time. A comparison with the proscenium arch of the other Bayreuth theatre, the Margrave’s Opera house, makes the difference very clear. The absence of decoration is not entirely due to lack of money. Nothing, according to Wagner, was to distract the spectator’s eye from the performance. Being already an obvious eye-catcher (it literally frames the stage), the proscenium had to be as plain as possible. The perspectival arrangement of the triple proscenium actually catches the spectator’s eye and leads it almost automatically towards the stage; this effect was enhanced by Brandt’s insertion of fake receding proscenia in the auditorium.

The stage is enormous – and it had to be: it was designed with the Ring der Nibelungen in mind. The staging of the Ring involves a large amount of scenery, and some very quick and complicated changes.