The Dream in the Shell

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 Teatro Farnese di Parma o l’Olimpico di Vicenza, 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 Teatro Olimpico 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 theater but one of the last and the greatest of the Renaissance
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,
Ferrara, 1598.
The words of Angelo Ingegneri, the person responsible for direction and lights for the first Oedipus
the Tyrant (the hendecasyllables version of Sophocles 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 Andrea Palladio 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 Italy,
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 Paolo Veronese. 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... Vitruvius De Architectura 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 Vincenzo Scamozzi, 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 Inigo Jones, 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 Sabbioneta, 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 lifegiving 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: 3951
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.
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