it was often under Parisian influence that composers of Italian operas became more attentive to act curtains. For example, Donizetti composed out his curtain-opening space in his last work written for the Opéra, Dom Sébastien, roi du Portugal (1843). For its final act, the curtain precedes the prelude’s concluding pause by two measures, rising on a sudden fortissimo tonic chord that is then followed by a seventh chord and fermatas. This curtain postpones the harmonic suspense into the opened stage, thus shifting expectations from the scene’s revelation to the beginning of the dramatic action proper.66 Similarly, although Verdi’s overtures or preludes were usually tonally closed and followed by the curtain, in Don Carlos, his 1867 magnum opus for the French capital, he musically integrated no fewer than four opening curtains. Rather than interpolating transitional passages, though, Verdi aligned these curtains with structural shifts in thematic material. The first-act curtain coincides with the sudden turn from a miniature atmospheric prelude to the more energetic lead into the choral introduction. And for the last two acts, the curtain opens at the repeat (with heightened melodic urge) of each act’s opening orchestral motif, thus visually intensifying the already expressive—and oppressive—musical scene-painting while leaving audiences free to take in this setting before tending to the soloists’ heartaches.67 The shockingly immediate beginning of Otello (Milan, La Scala, 1887) would barely have been possible without such a concise coordination of graphic music and timed curtain.
In addition to the more widespread use of act curtains, the generally slowed-down scene changes also encouraged curtains to transcend the outer edges of an act by descending in its midst. A traditional method for transformations within acts had been to alternate between “short” and “long” sets: an intimate (often interior) scene was played at the front of the stage while the next set was being prepared behind a painted backdrop whose removal would quickly disclose the subsequent, grander scene.68 Hence the longstanding equation, in French and Italian parlance, of toile or tela—meaning “canvas”—with theatrical curtains of all sorts, even after the more materially or functionally appropriate terms rideau (in reference to the folded texture) and sipario (linking to ancient Roman practice) began to be applied to the heavy proscenium curtain.69 Swift transformations via midstage drops continued to be practiced in the nineteenth century, especially among Italian composers (French production books for Donizetti operas detail them copiously). But after around 1830, the number of sets and changes per opera decreased dramatically in French works, which instead emphasized the finesse, originality, and splendor of each individual set. Various opera houses therefore started to employ curtains for transformations within acts as well—a procedure already common in spoken theater and popular shows across Europe.70
As the notion of the curtain as theatrical frame suggests, the introduction of such intermediary curtains was no small disruption of operatic habits. In the absence of interludes, an intermediary curtain could mislead spectators into believing that an intermission was afoot. Within acts, theaters therefore usually moved not the main (proscenium) curtain but a second curtain, hung behind the first. This so-called drop scene (Zwischenvorhang or rideau de manœuvre) was lighter and could veil scene changes faster, while the main curtain maintained the spatiotemporal frame of the performance.71 True, practices and nomenclatures varied widely; just like tela and toile, the simple terms rideau, sipario, Vorhang, or curtain were often used interchangeably for both proscenium and act curtains, while Zwischenvorhang and drop scene sometimes specifically referred to painted canvases lowered in the middle of the stage (rather than in front of it) to veil a long set.72 But, clearly, different kinds of curtains marked various structural places within an opera, thereby helping along appropriate audience behavior.
Aesthetically, however, the introduction of drop scenes within acts remained contested, even beyond opera. In 1837, the Prussian actor, playwright, and theatrical director August Lewald observed of transformations on Parisian stages that “a curtain is always lowered for a few moments, which conceals the stage from sight.” And he recommended this method to German theaters, since their frequent open changes within acts, with their “jumps from the forest into the living room, from the church into the garden etc.,” did not foster theatrical illusion.73 But not everyone agreed. As early as 1802, the French architect Louis Catel had suggested darkening the theater during transformations in spoken drama instead of lowering curtains, since the former procedure was more stimulating to the human imagination, which conjures images from darkness. Two years later, an anonymous Parisian reviewer praised the performance of a pantomime for not having been “unpleasantly interrupted by a drop which comes down and destroys the illusion by leaving the spectator to himself for too long.” Similarly, in 1877 the Dresden theater historian Robert Prölß maintained that open transformations, for all their clumsy expediency, were more inspiring to watch than was a curtain, which inappropriately interrupted the drama and usually prolonged the pause between scenes as well.74 In other words, Prölß pointed out that any attempt at veiling stage machineries was itself an act of technology—and inevitably prone to be recognized as such.
At stake, then, was the issue of how best to preserve the theatrical illusion, both during individual performances and regarding the artistic nature of theater in general: directors had to decide whether the exposure of the theater’s internal mechanical workings was less disruptive than the use of a drop scene. That this question was raised at all epitomizes the changes in theatrical aesthetics since the Baroque era, when—as we recall from this book’s introduction—the open play with machines was very much part of the spectacle’s attraction. Individual drops (often in the shape of a cloud) might therefore conceal parts of the scene but never the full stage at once.75 Given the growing emphasis, during the long nineteenth century, on a show’s seamless artistic surface, it is not surprising that drop scenes soon carried the day. By the 1840s, German theater manuals mentioned them as customary in London, Paris, Berlin, and other “reasonably important” theaters; and in 1851, for instance, Verdi explicitly demanded one in Rigoletto for the first-act transformation from a “magnificent room in the ducal palace” to the “deserted end of a street”—that is, for a change between two elaborate long sets.76
The novel technique was aided by the expanding material diversification of curtains themselves. Just as their movements began to be integrated into the musical flow, so drop scenes could be tailor-made to match specific productions or dramatic situations. In 1829, the Opéra mitigated the (then) unusual curtain after act 1 of Guillaume Tell by having it depict a suitable historical scene.77 Two years later, the infamous nocturnal cemetery scene in act 3 of Robert le diable was to be prepared—that is, the transformation from mountainscape around the cloister to cloister graveyard was to be accomplished—behind a lowered drop painted with clouds to sustain the gloomy supernatural atmosphere during a short orchestral postlude: the Parisian production team cunningly dubbed this drop a “magic curtain” (rideau de magie). Its merely auxiliary purpose was emphasized in the published score: theaters that could pull off a quick, open transformation were permitted to dispense not only with the curtain but also with its accompanying music (which mostly recycled motifs from the preceding duet before petering out into lower-string rumblings befitting the ensuing necromancy).78 Cloud pieces had been a staple of opera since its very beginnings, not least because they offered suitably celestial vehicles for dei ex machina. But expanding them into full-size stage curtains was aesthetically and pragmatically different—so much so that “cloud curtain” became a synonym for all manner of locally colored drop scenes. The Opéra’s midcentury inventory of machines and decorations listed a sizeable collection of “rideaux de nuages”; and by 1885, Pougin devoted an entire entry of his theatrical dictionary to specific procedures whereby such curtains could efficiently veil a transformation without interrupting either action or illusion.79 In addition, gauzes, scrims, or transparencies that had long been used in popular shows were also deployed to veil the stage to various degrees; Meyerbeer himself, for instance, mentioned black gauzes for the end of Robert’s act 3.80 (The diaphanous curtains mocked in Böhm’s Ring parody, then, had roots in reality.)
Towards
