Richard Wagner (1813-1883) conceived and built an innovative theatre in Bayreuth to stage his ground breaking musical drama. His ideas meant a break with traditional baroque opera and theatre architecture. His insistence on the audience being able to watch the illusionistic world of his operas in an undisturbed and fully concentrated manner resulted in a revolutionary building programme for the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth.
In this theatre (originally thought of as a temporary structure) a number of elements that had been experimented with separately were combined with each other for the first time. Together with the rigorous and unconditional application of Wagner’s conceptual ideas, this led to a venue for opera that deserves to be classified as ‘a truly new medium’ that has greatly influenced theatre architecture from 1876 until the present day.
It took Wagner a long time to transform his revolutionary ideas into the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, and during the building process he struggled to gain supporters and financial backing. Wagner did eventually accomplished his task but it was not an easy journey.
Richard Wagner thoroughly changed the face of theatre and opera. Not only did he promote a new kind of musical drama, but he also designed a new type of theatre. Moreover, he was a prolific writer who, as well as producing many operas, wrote treatises on art and politics.
A new art of theatre
Wagner's innovating ideas partly resulted from a growing dissatisfaction with contemporary stage practice.
Wagner not only formulated a new type of theatre building and staging methods, he also defined the idea of theatre as Total Art or 'Gesamtkunstwerk'. The goal of this new art was to elevate the human soul.
In an earlier stage in his life, Wagner had wanted to restore the theatre to the people. Theatre was to be a true folk art in the tradition of the ancient Greeks.
Later, the composer tended more towards art as a communion of devoted performers and a loyal audience solely interested in the performance and prepared to be spiritually elevated by the experience. This idea differed from the popular attitude, and indeed Wagner did express some contempt at the taste of ordinary people. Still, the original idea of the Festspielhaus included free entrance so no one would be excluded from the performance for financial reasons. This idea soon had to be abandoned however, in order to avoid bankruptcy.
The Festival Theatre
A new opera house was to be built to celebrate Wagner’s new musical drama. It was the only way for Wagner to produce his work exactly the way he wanted to, and for the spectator to experience it like he thought it should be experienced: in an auditorium with a democratic arrangement of seats along with excellent sightlines and acoustics. The performance and the music had to come first; decorative art and visitors’ comfort were of secondary importance to Wagner.
Founders of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was prepared to help Wagner build the new opera house, however, the king felt that the proper location for a ‘temple’ to Wagner’s music was Munich. So, even though Wagner had stated that he would build his opera house far away from metropolitan areas, he acceded to the king's wishes. Gottfried Semper was commissioned with the design and it was decided that a huge monumental theatre would be erected on the high bank of the river Isar (north of the Maximilianeum). The theatre would be connected with the city and the royal gardens by a new bridge and boulevard.
Architects of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The formal architect of the Festspielhaus was Otto Brückwald (1841-1904). The ideas and important decisions however were made by Wagner himself (who twenty years before had already worked with Gottfried Semper on plans for a theatre along more or less the same lines) and by Carl Brandt (1828-1881). The latter was ‘chief stage engineer’ in Darmstadt and had collaborated with Wagner on the world premieres of Rheingold and Die Walküre in Munich. Besides the technical direction of the Ring Cycle, Wagner entrusted him also with the supervision of the design, the building and the technical layout of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In addition to being seriously restricted by Wagner and Brandt, Brückwald also had to deal with a very tight budget.
Influence of Festspielhaus design
In retrospect, we can conclude that the importance of the Festspielhaus lay not so much in the fact that it was imitated exactly (although in some instances this happened), but rather in its unconditional rejection of the baroque tradition. The radical solving of the sight line problem, the sunken orchestra pit and the uncompromising emphasis on the theatre as ‘illusion’ enabled new perspectives on opera.
Soon after the realisation of the Festspielhaus, theatres were built that took over a number of its characteristics - specifically the fan shape (and steep rise) of the auditorium, the possibility to darken the theatre during performances and the sunken orchestra. Some of these theatres where almost exact copies of Bayreuth as for example the Prinzregententheater in Munich that was designed by Max Littmann in 1900.
It is, however, remarkable that the idea of a triple proscenium arch was not imitated. One thought that the illusionistic element of theatre was too much foregrounded by this feature. Further one finds that in a number of cases a compromise with regard to the traditional opera house is sought: trying to fuse the Wagnerian concept with the convention of (private) boxes. In addition, it is apparent that in general much more attention is given to the secondary spaces than was the case in the cheap, temporary structure of the Festspielhaus.
In addition the twentieth century sees an enormous development in the technical aspects of theatre and opera: electronically and/or computer based lighting and sound effects have replaced the hand driven mechanics of the Bayreuth stage. Besides - theatre reform has changed the aesthetics of performance considerably and there is no longer a demand for realistic, natural settings (with the exception of films and in that respect Wagners virtual realities can better be compared with the movie house than with contemporary theatre). |
