Chapter Two Where The actors’ three spaces / In the beginning was the circle / Actors, acrobats and charlatans / From open-air to enclosed space, from selling wares to selling performances / The mountebanks’ hut / The bare stage / The first theatres / The ac- tors’ theatre and the spectators’ theatre / The first theatres in France, Spain, England, Italy, India, Japan, China, United States, Latin America / The invention of the Italian-style theatre, or theatre for the spectator / The first theatres in Italy / La Scala in Milan / Typical elements of the Italian-style theatre: stalls, boxes, galleries, lights, curtain, dressing rooms and foyer / Applause, flowers and whistles / Theatres and exorbitant spectacles / A theatre not made of stones and bricks. 1. Bouvard and Pécuchet fantasise PÉCUCHET – And yet theatre has survived every social, about the actors’ small homes economic and technological earthquake of the past hun- dred years. BOUVARD – Audiences desert a play and the theatre BOUVARD – Perhaps because, sometimes, a performance company goes bankrupt. A government minister signs a has the power to reveal a truth that cannot be revealed by decree and ten theatres close down. All it takes is an eco- reality. nomic crisis, a new fashion or a technological discovery PÉCUCHET – Do you think that’s the reason why one and lots of actors find themselves unemployed. generation after another of actors has abandoned the ii 1 Chapter Two. Where 89 1. Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, Italy: the view from the royal box. Founded in 1737, the San Carlo is the oldest opera theatre still in operation. Destroyed by fire in 1816, it was re- built in a single year and expanded to 2,500 seats. The list of opera debuts presented during the 18th and 19th cen- turies is impressive, featuring names such as Gluck, Scarlatti, Piccinni, Pai- siello, Cimarosa, Rossini, Mercadante, Bellini and Donizetti. 2. The Teatro Experimental de Alta Floresta, founded in 1988 in Alta Floresta in Mato Grosso, Brazil. 3. Amazon Theatre, Manaus, Brazil: the hall stalls seen from the stage. Inaugurated in 1896 in the mid- dle of the Amazonian forest, its exist- ence is due to the riches accumulated by the extraction of rubber from the forest’s trees. The provenance of the construction materials is remarkable: roof tiles are from Alsace; steel frame- work is from England; seats and fabrics from Paris; the marble of the stairways, columns, and statues are from Italy, which also furnished the 198 candela- bra, with 32 of them in Murano glass. 2 3.