Stefano Carlucci The Dream in the Shell

Premise “Che cos’è un teatro? Un edificio?.... Il teatro sono gli uomini e le donne che lo fanno. Eppure quando visitiamo i teatri di Drottingholm o di Versailles, il di o l’Olimpico di , sperimentiamo spesso le stesse reazioni cinestetiche che può darci uno spettacolo vivente. Quelle pietre e quei mattoni diventano spazio vivo anche se non vi si rappresenta nulla. Sono anch’essi un modo di pensare e sognare il teatro, materializzarlo e trasmetterlo per secoli”. (E. Barba, La canoa di carta, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993: 153).

View of three-quarters of the interior of the Olympic Theatre in Vicenza

The role played by the in Vicenza in the evolutionary history of Western Theatre has been a core topic at the center of many discussions and analysis since its construction in the end of the Sixteenth Century. Notwithstanding the deepness and complexity of these studies none of them seems to have clarified with certainty the very identity of this particular building: this “peculiar dramatic creature” should be considered the last of the ancient theatres, the first of the modern ones, a unique experiment or what else? "... Although Palladio's building with his scaenae was much admired frons much, it was too impractical to building to be copied. It is not, as said ssually, the first modern but one of the last and the greatest of the academic theaters”.AA. VV., The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll, OU P., 1967: 36. In a multitude of definitions that seamlessly come to consider the Teatro Olimpico a fine dramatic plaything rather than a damp and dusty old shell, only suitable to accommodate swarms of distracted tourists, the only concrete certainty is the amazing longevity of this architectural entity, as a matter of facts after more than four hundred years the theatre survives, intact but fragile, just like a petrified flower. The following work is conceived as a further attempt to explain, through a semiotic approach, the essence of the Teatro Olimpico. The theatre will be esaminde as it were a real actor in some way forced (against his will?) to play an uncomfortable double role: on the one hand the "pampered but coerced host" at the mercy of managers more or less aware of its dramatic potentials, proud of the prestige arising from having such a decidedly flamboyant parlor, on the other a nuisance problem for its own custodians, annoyed by the burden necessary for its complex maintenance.

The prisons become a theatre

“E insomma i teatri vorriano tutti essere come l’Olimpico di Vicenza, nobilissimo testimonio della splendidezza di quella patria e della magnanimità di quei signori Accademici”. A. Ingegneri, Della poesia rappresentativa e del modo di raccontar le favole sceniche, , 1598.

The words of Angelo Ingegneri, the person responsible for direction and lights for the first Oedipus the Tyrant (the hendecasyllables version of Oedipus the King) would have been meaningless if given only a few years before 1585, the year in which the Olympic Theatre was inaugurated. This lavish premiere, which generated a widespread interest in all the major courts of Europe, found its unusual location in an old and ruined medieval castle river, which over the centuries had become a customs post, a monastery and a prison. In 1579 the famous architect was commissioned by the Accademia Olimpica of Vicenza to design a theatre "in the manner of the ancients" in that old castle located on the banks of Bacchiglione, the river that runs through Vicenza. But in this particular case the architect could not in any way give to the theatre an explicit architectural significant (a façade) which could witness its public identity and dramatic features. In accordance with the neoplatonic philosophical theories, so popular in the Renaissance , Palladio used to give an "organic structure" to all his works, an architectonic identity through which interior and exterior, public and private spaces, could prove inextricably connected to each other, all the components of a building should in some way reflect a principle of universal harmony:

"I have made the frontespiece in the main all of the villas and town-houses also in. Some ... Because Such frontespieces show the entrance of the house, and add very much to the grandeur and the magnificence of the work, the front thus being made more eminent than the rest". Palladio 1570.

From this point of view the Teatro Olimpico could be briefly described as a singular exception in the extended list of Palladio's works, the most representative example of which is probably the long and fruitful collaboration cemented over the years with . The frescoes that adorn Villa Volpi near Maser are the perfect blend of architectural space and pictorial space, a special kind of combination through which the rooms inside are able to echo that sense of airy wideness of the country outside. Not focusing now on the reasons that did not allow the theatre to have a face outside it is interesting to note that even today for any unsuspecting tourist would be almost impossible to identify the very presence from the outside. What can be seen even from the inner courtyard of the castle in no way testifies the architectural exuberance of the theatre, the identity of which is perfectly hidden by the sober and solid walls that surround it, a wonderful mimetic skin in line with the medieval center of Vicenza. That same center in which Palladio had focused in the previous years a good part of his innovative works: the Loggia del Capitaniato, the Basilica della Ragione and Palazzo Chiericati. In this socio-historical context a group of humanists, the founders of the Olympic Academy, fascinated by the glories of classical civilization, expressed symbolically their desire for liberation from the hatred Venetian control through the organization of a series of ephemeral installations at special occasions, the logical consequence of which was the decision to build a permanent theatre, which should become at the same time the perfect focus for their exercises but also the dramatic testimony of their enduring prestige. Paradoxically the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Italian court theatres, and especially the Teatro Olimpico, somehow betrayed the spirit of the ancient theatre which they wanted to recreate: the Teatro Olimpico copies the shapes of an ancient theatre, but it is much smaller and it is covered, in a sort of architectural personalization it plays the role of a classical theatre being very different from it: “The italian princes of the Renaissance, seeking to revive in their own domains the departed glories of classical civilization began the staging of classical drama in theatrical spaces based on what were thought to be classical architecture principles... was rediscovered in 1414. Even had the intepretation of these sources totally accurate, however the altered social structure of Renaissance Italy placed theatre in a very different social context from that of ancient times, and the physical configuration of the new theatres not surprisingly reflected this”. M. Carlson 1987: 37. Staying in a strictly semiotic perspective it is useful to remember that the value of a symbol is undeniably associated with its visibility and comprehensibility within a shared communication system, outside which its significance is greatly diminished.

Olympic Theatre, inner courtyard

In this particular case the ambitious plan of the Academicians can be considered flawed since its conception: the demonstration of desired glory is in fact hidden in the eyes of many, to be paid only to the vision of a very restricted circle of people, the mimetic capacity of those walls that Beyer calls “anonymous brick” (1984: 9) is almost absolute. This kind of "infidel revival of the past” (I.e.: neither precious marble nor huge en plain air caveas, but only silver fir wood covered with stucco) shows all its limits: "Although the desire to construct slavish imitations of Classical theaters was clear, the primary obstacle to this dream of illusory was economical restoration. For no prince, town, or Academy had the means to construct huge stone theaters those whose imposing ruins still dominated the surrounding buildings". Remo Schiavo, A guide to the Olympic Theatre, Accademia Olimpica di Vicenza, Vicenza, 1987: 95. The Olympic even if inspired by the ideals of beauty and prestige based on the classical model it is hopelessly conditioned by the actual situation of a city politically and economically subordinate to the fate which can not in any way escape from. The permission obtained from the city of Vicenza which grants that part of the castle Customs (municipal resolution of 24 February 1580) let the work start, with the initial constraint of not affecting in any way the original main building structures. This implementing procedure somehow recalls the artificial insemination, even here in fact the original ovule/signifier is removed to accommodate a new nucleus/meaning, the changing significance of the castle is thus enriched with new paths of interpretation. The exterior walls still have a protective function, comparable to the one of the cocoon for the chrysalis, with the slight difference that in this particular case the symbiosis of architecture, unlikely the biological one, is designed to last and not finalized to the breaking of the shell, without which this genetically modified building could not exist. Just as a direct result of the small space available the Palladian project to build a theatre on the model of the Greeks and Romans ones would have been at least problematic, to answer to this difficulty the architect was forced to call for all his creativity, finding a solution thanks to a smart alternation of empty and full spaces (i.e.: elliptical cavea and upper colonnade). An evolution of this building method is also demonstrated by James Ackerman, who distinguishes two main phases in the theoretical approach to the architecture of Palladio: in the first one the antique models are carefully studied to be copied, in the second, in which the lessons of the past have been thoroughly digested, the mature architect feels confident to "break" the strict classical principles to suit modern needs. Palladio knew very well the main indications about the architectural theatre proportions that Vitruvius displayed in the famous and controversial passage extracted from the Ten Books of Architecture (a volume re-edited by Daniele Barbaro in 1556 with the illustrations of the same Palladio):

"The plan of the theatre itself is to be constructed as follows. Having fixed upon the main centers draw a line of circumference equivalent to what is to be the perimeter at the bottom, and then inscribe it into four equivalent triangles, equal at the short distances apart and touching the boundary line of the circle ... That taking of these triangles Whose side is nearest to the scaena, let the front of the scaena be Determined by the side line where that cuts off a segment of the circle, and draw, through the center, a parallel line set off from that position, to separate the plat from the space of the stage from the orchestra". Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture, Dover Publications, New York, 1960: 146, translated by into English by H. Morgan. Starting from his own interpretation of these rules Palladio skillfully managed to create a sensation of illusive vastness in a limited space: the auditorium is deformed to become an arc of ellipse.

Floor Plan of the Olympic Theatre Roman Theatre Floor according to Vitruvius

Whether and to what extent the Teatro Olimpico is actually faithful to the original Palladian project is an issue that caused several analysis and generated conflicting conclusions, but what seems to be commonly shared is that the subsequent intervention of , necessary for the unforeseen death of Palladio in 1580, without doubt altered the original structural equilibrium, giving a great emphasis on props, probably much more than it is likely that Palladio had imagined. In this regard, some critics tend to emphasize a kind of "rupture" in the interaction of architectural and dramatic elements of the building, caused by a possible contrast between the scenes and the rest of the theatre:

“Scamozzi allargò le porte della frons scaenae per intensificare l’illusione spaziale a scapito del principio di proporzionalità, di quell’armoniosa corrispondenza delle diverse parti fra loro e con il tutto, che era stato rigidamente seguito da Palladio. Quindi la tribuna degli spettatori, il proscenio e la frons scaenae non mantenevano più fra di loro un rapporto di equilibrio”. A. Beyer.: 42. An important evidence of the “uncomfortable relationship” between the two famous Italian architects and the consequent diversity of views on some key issues, can be deducted directly from the testimony of , who described the attitude of Scamozzi, met in 1613 during a his short stay in Italy, towards Palladio characterized by "malice and prejudice" (Zorzi 1965: 302). Regarding the original project of Palladio about the stage set, it is reasonable to think that he would have used some kind of "flexible device", possibly a modern reinterpretation of the ancient peryaktoi, those revolving prisms that in the Greek theatre were placed at the sides of the stage and served to accompany visually the changes in place. In this way Palladio would have created a very flexible dramatic complex, the perfect counterpart to the immobility of the impressive scaena frons, that would have allowed the theatre to move easily from classical tragedy to the other different dramatic categories:

"They may have been either designed originally to be permanent or temporary. Since the deliberations speak at one point of performing in both ministry and a tragedy in the same theatre, they may have been in perspective generalized types of which could be used for all types of theatrical performances". H. G. Myers: 138.

But since 1585 the wooden perspective that three-dimensionally reproduce a fictional city ideally placed between a mythological Thebes, with its famous seven roads converging in one place, and the idea of a completely new Vicenza, the materialization of a classical ideal/dream, are still there. Time seems to have miraculously stopped at 1585 and those that should have been ephemeral structures to remove after the glittering premiere, still lie behind the scaena frons still waiting for the verses of Sophocles to re-echo: “I teatri non furono mai costruiti per una sola epoca, ma per vivere nel tempo”. P. E. Poesio, Un uomo in ogni stagione, La Nazione, Firenze 1961. In the end the theatre seems to have found what can be defined its Kunstwollen (will/artistic destiny), which will for ever be a mixed blessing for a building intended to embody a beautiful but tragically impossible dream. Bur it is precisely because of its unchanging nature that the Teatro Olimpico, while frantically chasing the glories of bygone days, ends up hopelessly to withdraw from the everyday reality that surrounds it, to live in another time (I.e. Great Time definition of Bakhtin) as the perfect sublimation of a unique historic moment, outside which it is fatally doomed to be outdated:

“Palladio accetta e fa propria la scelta, ormai anacronistica , della restituzione del teatro vitruviano, trascurando di proposito i risultati conseguiti dalla più evoluta tecnica teatrale contemporanea; inoltre forza spregiudicatamente fino all’iperbole i termini stessi di quella scelta, valutando appieno le ragioni profonde che l’avevano motivata. Senza ombra di dubbio l’organismo che ne risulta rivela, specie ne proscenio, il suo significato di retorica parata glorificante di una classe e di un potere”. C. Molinari, Bollettino del Centro Internazionale di Studi Andrea Palladio, n. 16 1974: 318.

Further evidence of this uniqueness is the fact that, despite many statements of admiration, the Teatro Olimpico remains until now a model of theatre architecture almost inimitated. Even Vincenzo Scamozzi some years after having finished the building of the scenes in the Teatro Olimpico, will give life to a very different dramatic creature, the Theatre of , the symbol of the power of the Gonzaga family in Italy and perhaps the first germ of a new way of conceiving the theatre buildings all over Europe. In the theatre of Sabbioneta it is possible to notice the transition from an organization of interior space that reflects an oligarchical idea of power-sharing peculiar of the Olympic Academy (seven roads = equal division of power among its members, often called "a club of equals"), to a dramatic space that has a unique focal point, a sort of "royal box" ante litteram placed at the center of an auditorium that is very different from the one of the Olimpico. From this privileged position of the Lord of the Sabbioneta theatre has a total control over everything that happens both on stage and among the spectators, the dramatic litmus paper of what would have become the forthcoming political absolutism. However the fixed three dimensional scenery of the Olympic Theatre could not satisfy the necessity of setting variation typical of the just following baroque theatres, characterized by two dimensional and changeable painted scenery. The seven streets of the Teatro Olimpico could be considered the visibly scars of an incurable but life- giving malady, since 1585 they keep on repeating the identity of the theatre and if they are perfect to recreate the ancient Thebes, they are also inepti labores, not suitable for representing anything different from a classic tragedy: “Egli è il vero che quello è un apparato più tragico che comico e in niuna guisa pastorale; tuttavia con mutazioni e aggiunte a proposito potrebbe tornare bene a tutte le cose. Ma per le tragedie io vi scorgo una convenevolenza grandissima che quella fronte, la quale secondo l’uso degli antichi, non vuole figurare altro che un qualche illustre edificio fatto per ornamento di quella città che si piglia a rappresentare...”. Angelo Ingegneri, Della poesia rappresentativa e del modo di rappresentare le favole sceniche: 38.

Sabbioneta Theatre

From grandeur to oblivion

”The hour of lowering the courtain having arrived, first there was a sweet odor of perfumes… Then, in a twinkle of the eye, the taut curtain fell before the stage. Here it would be difficult to express in words, or even to imagine, the great joy and immensurable pleasure which came upon the spectators at the sight”. (F. Pigafetta, letter dated 1585, published in Milan Collection, 1756-57, copy from the Yale-Rockefeller Theatre Collection, translated into English by G. R. Kernodle).

This admired description made by Filippo Pigafetta summarizes some of the most likely feelings the lucky spectators of the premiere of 1585, the selected witnesses of an extraordinary and unrepeatable event, could have experienced. After years of ephemeral performances the dramatic creature so strongly desired by the members of the Olympic Academy, a civic/private repertory theatre, is finally ready to welcome its illustrious guests. One of the most important factor which certainly contributed to the success of this opening was the wise use of lights: the blanket nature of the structure, combined with the continuous alternation of pillars, niches and statues, required a complex study to ensure that any sort of illumination did not cause unwanted contrasts of light and shadow. To overcome this problem Angelo Ingegneri and Vincenzo Scamozzi shared the assignments: the first dealt with the lighting of the cavea and the orchestra while the second with the lights inside the scenes. The final result should have been more than satisfactory, as stated in a letter to Giacomo Dolfin, in which Ingegneri enhanced the beauty of the entire setting. During the entire performance there were only nine actors reciting, about eighty appearances and the choir was composed of fifteen members. Another important factor in the description of the real impact of the premiere is the number of spectators that crowded the Theatre. Here again Pigafetta shows his “kindly disposed” attitude towards the Theatre: according to his words three thousand people attended the event, a doubtful statement considering the real dimensions of the interior space. But not all the guests exhibited the same admiration, for instance Antonio Riccoboni did not lack to underline the explicit contrast between the display of pomp which he watched represented (interior space/ dramatic reality) and the actual situation of Vicenza (outer space/ contingent reality): “Mi parve strano che in un tempo calamitosissimo di peste si adoperassero quelli vesti tanto pompose… E se bene alcuni dicono che ciò si può fare per dare maggiore speranza al popolo, mi pare che si deve dare speranza con altro che con le vesti e che in tempo tanto misero et calamitoso non si doveva andare nello estremo di pompa così solenne…Ma concediamo loro questo modo pomposo di vestire, corrispondente forse maggiormente alla magnificenza de Signori Accademici che a un tempo di peste”. A. Riccoboni, lettera raccolta in, A. Gallo, La prima rappresentazione al Teatro Olimpico: con i progetti e le relazioni dei contemporanei, Il Polifilo, Milano, 1973: 39- 51 In a kind of reformulation of the “Profanum vulgus et arceo” inspired by the Horatian ode, this opening could be described as the dazzling explosion of a sparkling universe, the vainglorius display of a “biosphere” completely artificial and alienated from the reality that surrounds it. From this point of view the Olympic Theatre was nothing more than the sterile result of a forced self taxation operated by its own builders, an immense effort necessary to erect a small secluded jewel, a delicate dramatic toy, fragile to the point of not being able to relate directly to the outer reality. The magnificence shown in this first night clashed markedly with the situation of a community that had just passed a very serious epidemic of pestilence, the marks of which were still visible, and that despite everything was politically still under the bulky shadow of the Serenissima. But it is perhaps precisely because of this almost non-existent and indeterminate relationship with reality, the lack of a substrate on which a socially relevant ruling class can grow, that this event was celebrated in this way: “The way an audience experiences and interprets a play is by no means governed solely by what happens on the stage. The entire theatre, its audience arrangements, its other public spaces, its physical appearance, even its location within a city, are all important elements of the process by which an audience makes meaning of its experience”. M. Carlson 1987: 2. After more than four hours, at five in the morning, the curtain fell on this event and a brief but significant season of the Western Theatre was symbolically closed. In a few years the interest in classical tragedy would have weakened, replaced by the unstoppable achievement of new theatrical conventions, all equally united by a different level of "uneasiness" inside the hardly manageable Palladian Shell. It is surely no coincidence that at the beginning of the following century in Vicenza new theatres were built, the Teatro delle Garzerie and Eretenio for example. All these new structures were without doubt more suitable to the modified necessities of the current dramatic manners: the practical needs of many, the expanding commercial middle class, became gradually socially more relevant than the fine taste of an enlightened intellighenzia, socially and numerically more and more insignificant. These dedicated new buildings with a specific dramatic identity, not like the Olimpic chimaera, progressively tended to become integrated and visible in the social context, whereas the Olimpico remains perhaps the most significant example of the "anti-social" attitude of a subjugated elite. Adopting an hazard similarity the Olympic Theatre has been compared to the old servant of Don Rodrigo in I Promessi Sposi, a minor character in the variegated plot of the famous novel by Alessandro Manzoni. This strange man used to spend the majority of his life alone and neglected in a room, to be episodically shown, almost like a trophy, with all his old refined elegance only to celebrate important guests. In the end this was the destiny of the Teatro Olimpico for more than three centuries: a costly and problematical dramatic machine to lead, but also an infallible weapon to amaze dignitaries and noblemen. A dramatic container which can perform even without living actors, provisionally substituted by the 95 statues its “Arc de Triomphe” houses.

Sic stant rebus the Olympic Theatre, because of its inescapable architectural personality, must resign to be long-forgotten, left in a sort of pharmacologic coma, from which it is occasionally revived, but always with the absolute awareness that magic night in 1585 is not repeatable:

“After the triumphant representation of Oedipus the Tyrant, a silice lasting for nearly three centuries descended upon the Olympic. The Academy had to meet expanses that sorely tried its finances. Still, the construction of the Olympic Theatre had marked the close of a rich experimental period in which the theatre of the Classical Antiquity had been restored to life, just as its inaugural performance of Oedipus the Tyrant could be considered both the climax and the end of two centuries of theatrical experimentation”. R. Schiavo, A Guide to the Olympic Theatre.

Whether we want to consider the Teatro Olimpico “un luogo a cui si addice solo il silenzio” (Barbieri 1974: 313), “il più eloquente monumento funebre del Rinascimento” (E. Flaiano 1967), “un grande teatro della morte” Mazzoni 1998), the Teatro Olimpico is still there despite wars, natural disasters and several restorations, not always adequate, perhaps because: “Ainsi, la scéne du Théatre Olympique devient véritablement comme l’Olympe, siège d’humanistes vicentin aspirant, tel les dieux, à une glorie éternelle. L’apothéose de cette société qui, portéè par une architecture triomphale classique, tendait à l’immortalité, exigeait un théatre dont le principe serait aussi l’immuabilité“. Beyer : 51.

List of Reference

AA.VV. (2003). Merriam-Webster'Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

AA. VV. (1987). The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll, OU P.

Ackermann. James (1980). Palladio, trans. com. G. Scattone, Einaudi, Torino 1982.

Barba, Eugenio. (1993). La canoa di carta, Il Mulino, Bologna.

Barthes, Roland (1982). Right in the eye, in Essais critiques III. The Obvi et l'obtusa, trans. com., Einaudi. Bernheimer, R. (1956). Theatrum Mundi, Art Bulletin, XXXVIII.

Beyer, Andreas (1984). Le Théatre Olympique. Architecture Triumphal pour une société Humanite, Francfort-sur-le-Main, trans. fr. Claire de Oliveira, Adam Biro, Paris 1989.

Carlson, Marvin (1987). Places of Performance. The Semiotic of Theatre Architecture, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London.

Ingegneri, Angelo (1598), Della poesia rappresentativa e del modo di raffigurare le favole sceniche, Panini, 1989.

Kernodle, G. (1944). From Art to Theatre, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Myers, H. G. (1978). Andrea Palladio: Activities with the Olympic Academy, Kent State University.

Molinari, C. (1974). Bulletin of the International Centre for the Study Andrea Palladio, Vicenza.

Palladio, Andrea (1570). Four Books of Architecture, .

Pavis, Patrice (1989). Dictionnaire du Théâtre, Social Messidor Editions, Paris.

Poetry, P. E. (1961). A man in every season, La Nazione, , September 9, 1961.

Riccoboni, A. (1973) Letter in the collection, A. Gallo, first performed at the Teatro Olimpico: with projects and reports of their contemporaries, Il Polifilo, Milano.

Schiavo, Remo (1987). A guide to the Olympic Theatre in Vicenza Accademia Olimpica Publishing, Vicenza.

Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture, Dover Publications, New York, 1960, translated by M. Into English by H. Morgan.

Yates, F. (1969). Theatre of the World, Routledge & Kegan, London.

Zorzi, G. (1965). Public works and buildings of Andrea Palladio, Blacks Pozza Editore, Vicenza.