Chapter IV: Part 4

Craig worked at Moscow for a considerable time, however, and it is probable that from the point of view of staging, Stanislawsky now leads the world. He has adopted some of Craig’s ideas and fitted them to others until he has obtained a formula for staging every play from _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ to _Hedda Gabler_. This theatre is the direct antithesis of the Opéra-Comique in Paris, which has obtained such a false reputation for good staging.

The Opéra-Comique clings stolidly to the Italian method of using flimsy drops, with every detail carefully painted thereon, combined with plastic objects, the whole painted in pastel or primary colors in a manner to suggest a St. Valentine’s gift of the 1850 period. The lighting is usually excellent. There are no innovations to be looked for at the Opéra-Comique at present, which holds as fast to its traditions as if the Russian Ballet had never been seen in Paris.

Max Reinhardt and Leon Bakst have utilized Craig’s ideas in a measure, but they have altered them to a degree where they have become unrecognizable. Reinhardt is known in New York by _Sumurun_, one of his slightest productions. Still, it gives a good idea of his impressionistic use of flat surfaces to create atmosphere and a colorful background to his picture.

Leon Bakst, who has designed many of the famous ballets which the Russians give in Paris and other Continental cities from time to time, proceeds on a more lavish scale. There are no plastic features in a scene by Bakst. Everything is painted on flat canvas, but the barbaric gorgeousness, the impressionistic and suggestive qualities, appeal to the eye as no attempted copy of a real scene could ever do. The number of colors he uses in one scene is almost countless, and yet the combination is always thrilling and effective.

Bakst is better known for his _Sheherazade_ than for any other of his ballets, but he also designed the scenery for _Carnaval_, _Thamar_, _Jeux_, _Daphnis et Chloë_, _Narcisse_, _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_, and _Le Spectre de la Rose_.

He has further utilized his supreme talent for decoration in staging the dramas in which that Russian mime, Ida Rubinstein, has appeared at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris during recent seasons: Oscar Wilde’s _Salome_, Verhaeren’s _Hélène de Sparte_, and d’Annunzio’s _Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien_ and _La Pisanelle, ou la Mort parfumée_.

It was in this last play, produced in Paris in the spring of 1913 for ten special performances, that Bakst expressed himself perhaps more personally than he had hitherto been able to do. Unlimited means were placed at his disposal. He had all the money he wanted and an exactitude in color, in scene and costume, was aimed at which required the dyeing and redyeing of many stuffs, and the searching through countless shops for others.

The scene in the port, with the ship of the blood-red sails painted against a sky of blood-red clouds, in front of which figures garbed in scarlet, vermillion, maroon, rose, mulberry, carnation, and other shades of this brilliant color carried on the drama, will not soon be forgotten by those who saw it. In the final scene Bakst combined black, white, green, orange, rose, and magenta in the most extraordinary manner. In this play, too, he utilized a series of curtains of different colors, according to the scene, which hung half the depth of the stage on either side. And back of the proscenium arch, also on either side, was builded a column of gold, each column divided into numberless small pillars, like the mass which supports the ribs of a vaulted roof of a great Gothic cathedral.

This season Bakst has staged two new ballets for the Russians, Richard Strauss’s _The Legend of Joseph_, in which Paolo Veronese is suggested in the superb Venetian robes, and _Papillons_, which calls into play the same qualities Bakst had already exhibited in his designs for _Carnaval_.

The new school of scene-painting in Russia is said to have been the inspiration of the painter Wronbel, who, however, did not do much himself, as he died before his ideas were fully accepted. Bakst, Alexandre Benois and N. Roerich took up the work. To Roerich we owe the _décors_ of the ballet _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, devised by Nijinsky to carry out the ideas of the cubists, and which aroused storms of hisses whenever it was given in Paris. Alexandre Benois painted the scenes for _Petrouchka_ and also those for _Le Pavilion d’Armide_. Serge Soudeikine is responsible for the decorations used in _La Tragédie de Salomé_, and Theodore Fedorowsky painted the extraordinary scenes for Moussorgsky’s music-drama, _La Khovanchina_. The costumes of the Persian ballet in this opera, of orange, with vivid patches of green and blue, rest in the memory. The art of the Russians, it seems to me, has found nearly complete expression. It is impossible for them to go much further in their violent riots of color, their barbaric impressionism.

It is a style particularly suited to the Russian Ballet performances; the effect makes a complete whole which those who have seen it cannot erase from the memory. Its practical application to other branches of theatrical entertainment is more difficult. Certain plays of Shakespeare could be dressed in this manner. Certainly _The Pirates of Penzance_ and _Patience_ would be superbly fitted by it; so would the music-dramas of Gluck, Wagner, and Richard Strauss.

But there is still another source from which one might set the plays of Shakespeare, leaving aside the best way, which would be to give them in front of screens and draperies in the simplest manner possible. It often has occurred to me while wandering through various European galleries that the work of the early Italian painters might easily be adapted to the uses of stage decoration. Florence is full of this sort of thing, but three pictures I remember especially--three pictures of the fifteenth century, by an unknown painter. They are small and they hang, with other pictures between them, in one of the long galleries of the Uffizi. Two of them represent feasts. The simplicity and coloring of the architecture and the costumes would be joyously in keeping with certain plays of Shakespeare. The famous _Marriage of Boccaccio Adimari with Lisa Ricasoli_, in the Ancient and Modern Gallery in Florence, is another example. This train of splendid ladies and gentlemen, with a background of old Italian houses, would make as fine a stage pageant as one could wish for. One of its features is a bench with a cloth thrown over it, which would occupy the entire length of the front of the stage. Over this an awning is spread, under which the procession walks.

Numberless other examples of first aid to a producer who wants to do something new with Shakespeare could be mentioned. I cannot resist a passing reference to the frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Palazzo Riccardi in Florence. The subject of the frescos is The Gifts of the Magi; what the artist has really shown is a Medici hunting party. The paintings, in a perfect state of preservation, depict youths in the most exquisite garments in which any actor could hope to disport himself. The combination of the greens, the purples, the blues, and the mulberries, all intertwined with the most lavish use of gold, would make such a stage-picture as has not been seen since the days when a desire for beauty and not a desire for photographic accuracy--which always defeats itself--governed those who put drama on the stage.

_June, 1914._

Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig

Adolphe Appia and G. Craig

In the first edition of “On the Art of the Theatre” (1911), Gordon Craig distinguishes himself by killing off Adolphe Appia. In the 1912 edition of the book (and the subsequent editions) he apologizes for his carelessness in a footnote in which he refers to Appia as “the foremost stage-decorator of Europe.” “I was told that he was no more with us, so, in the first edition of this book, I included him among the shades. I first saw three examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote to a friend asking, ‘Where is Appia, and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor Appia died some years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s designs in a portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine, and I was told that the designer was still living.” There is no other reference to “the foremost stage-decorator of Europe” in this book. Now, Appia’s book, “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,” translated from his original French text by Princess Elsa Cantacuzène, with eighteen plates from drawings by the author for the settings for the Wagner music-dramas, was issued by F. Bruckmann in Munich in 1899. This is the book which Hiram Kelly Moderwell refers to in “The Theatre of To-day.” Loomis Taylor, last season director of the German works at the Metropolitan Opera House, is also perfectly familiar with it, and he related to me recently how an attempt of his to bring Appia to Germany several years ago failed. There is no mention made by Gordon Craig of _any_ book by Appia; Mr. Taylor has read only the German text; and even Mr. Moderwell seems to have been ignorant of the fact that a previous work in French had been issued by Appia.

I have in my possession a small volume (51 pages) entitled “La Mise-en-scène du Drame Wagnérien,” by Adolphe Appia, published by Léon Chailley in Paris in 1893. The sale was afterwards (1895) continued under the imprint of the well-known publisher, Fischbacher, 33 Rue de Seine. There is no copy of this work in the New York Public Library, nor in any other library that I have yet consulted. (The later German work is comparatively well known among artists of the theatre.) The only reference to it that I have discovered is in a footnote (Appia seems destined to be exiled to footnotes) in a now little read work by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, “Richard Wagner,” issued in 1897, four years after Appia’s pamphlet had first appeared. Appia dedicated “Die Musik und die Inscenierung” to Mr. Chamberlain in this fashion: “_à Houston Stewart Chamberlain qui seul connaît la vie que j’enferme en ces pages_.”

There is enough interior evidence, without any reference to chronological evidence, to give one cause to presuppose a knowledge on Gordon Craig’s part of these books, even the German version of which appeared before Craig had developed many of his theories. The chronology, for the most part, is damning, for even in the short French book (there is a reference in this pamphlet to the fact that it is a condensed version of a longer work which Appia feared might never see publication) one may find not only the germs but also a complete analysis of the principles of modern stagecraft. It was Appia’s idea that the stage director should use every effort, _by means of the decoration_ as well as by means of the actor, to bring out the secret of the drama he was producing. Appia was the first to see the inconsistency of placing the actor against scenery with painted perspective. It was Appia who foresaw that lighting should be used for a more important purpose than mere illumination; that it should serve as the element which binds together the decoration and the figure of the actor, a theory which, as Mr. Moderwell points out, was imagined before a lighting system had been devised to make its practical application possible. It was Appia who discovered that although Wagner had invented a new form of drama, he had not the slightest notion of how to produce it. He is very explicit here. He says, for example, that the action of the ordinary opera is determined by convention, that of the spoken drama by life. In other words, the prima donna of opera must sing her airs in conformation with the beat of the conductor, and she may stand as near the footlights as she pleases. No question of art is raised; nor should there be. You cannot improve (beyond a certain very easily discoverable point) _The Barber of Seville_ by superior stage management. In a play the actor tries, as best he may, to imitate life. Between his lines he may take what time he likes to add action to best serve this purpose. In Wagner’s _Wort-Tondrama_ (the master’s own expression) the music is used for a double new purpose. It illuminates the soul of the drama, _le drame intérieur_, and it defines to a nicety the _time_ of the action (“not the duration of time,” says Appia, “but time itself”). In other words, the author-composer wished the illusion of his music-dramas to be as complete as that of the great tragedies of the spoken drama, but he has set a definite limit to his characters’ actions by composing music which it takes a certain time to perform. He takes all liberty away from the actor without telling him precisely what to do. Thus Tristan and Isolde, after they have drunk the love-potion, are given a number of moments, songless, to express their emotion in gesture; just as Brünnhilde, awakened by Siegfried, must continue to greet the sun until the harp stops playing. Appia foresaw that this action must be controlled by one man, who must regulate it to the last detail. He must arrange the scenery and the lights and the action not only to correspond exactly to the demands of the music and the words, but also to bring out to the utmost the underlying meaning of the work.

For this purpose he has gone into detail with which it does not seem to be necessary to encumber this brief account. In the German work this detail is, of course, much fuller than in the shorter French version. The German book, besides, is embellished with engravings which give one a very good idea of the intentions of the artist-author. Appia, for instance, is not content with making one drawing for the setting of the third act of _Die Walküre_; he makes no less than _seven_. These show the varying condition of the lights and position of the characters at different stages in the action. Loomis Taylor has called Appia’s idea for this setting “the most beautiful that one could conceive.” And yet no one, so far as I know, has ever attempted to use it. The Appia case is an extraordinary one. Here we have a man who has not only developed a complete and invaluable theory for the production of a group of dramas, but who has also gone to the pains to outline to the minutest detail the manner in which his ideas may be carried out, and no one has taken the trouble to follow these instructions in the way he intended. Once his work was complete, Appia seemed content. He has now gone on to something else. Before the war began he had identified himself with the Dalcroze school at Hellerau and had gone far beyond practical present-day stage-decoration methods, evolving still newer theories in cubes. However, may we not consider, with the evidence, that Appia was the innovator of the new movement in the theatre?--may we not assure ourselves that without Appia there would have been no Gordon Craig, perhaps no Stanislawsky? His ideas have most certainly been awarded fruition in a thousand forms.

I cannot resist a quotation or two in pursuit of my comparison. “_Das Rheingold_ presents three elements: water (the bottom of the Rhine), air (the summit of a mountain separated from Walhalla by the Rhine), and fire (the subterranean forges of the Nibelungs).” Compare this with Gordon Craig’s now famous description of the decorations for _Macbeth_: “I see two things. I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist cloud which envelops the head of this rock. That is to say, a place for fierce and warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest in.” But examples in which Appia exacts of the decoration a promise to play a leading rôle are too frequent to be quoted. One other selection will show how this comparatively (to the public) unknown designer went to work twenty-two years ago to evolve a new form of stagecraft:

“The last tableau of _Die Walküre_ represents a mountain-top, the favorite meeting-ground of the Valkyries. It is purely decorative up to the moment when the god (Wotan) surrounds it with a circle of flames to protect the sleep of Brünnhilde, but from that instant it acquires a deep significance. For this sleep is Wotan’s precaution against the workings of his own desire; that is to say, the god, having renounced his power to direct events, has made the _confidante_ of his desire impotent. This fact gives the value of a dramatic rôle to the decoration, since the return of the scene in _Siegfried_ and _Götterdämmerung_ not only constitutes for the eye a unity between the three parts of the trilogy but also always leads the spectator to the vital point in the drama (Wotan’s will, active or passive).”

Appia’s purpose, in every instance, was, working from the general to the particular, to discover the author’s intention and then to illuminate it. The stage director or decorator, in his opinion, was only the clairvoyant slave in the service of the author’s text. The leaders of the modern movement in the theatre are in complete accord with him on this point as well as others.

_August 12, 1915._

FOOTNOTE:

[A] See end of article for list of works.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.