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A Theatre Inventory of the First Empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
Administrative records of the French theatre during the First Empire are fairly abundant, but the researcher interested in documents concerning the physical side of production at this time faces a difficult and frequently unrewarding search. The documents preserved in Paris are few, and political vicissitudes, inadequate storage, and fire have combined to leave still fewer documents in the provinces. Particularly important, therefore, is a collection of dossiers preserved in the Archives départementales de l'Herault which include both mises en scène and information on settings at the Montpellier Comédie during the Empire period. No similar records have survived from any of the other great provincial theatres of this period–Bordeaux, Rouen, Marseilles, Nancy, Toulouse, and Strasbourg.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1970
References
NOTES
1. Mahoudeau, J. and Fabre de Morlhon, J., Montpellier révélé (Montpellier, 1966), pp. 84–85.Google Scholar The 1755 Montpellier theatre's floor plan is reproduced in the Encyclopédie (see Plate I). Its general form was probably retained in 1786, but the Fleury inventory indicates a few clear changes. In the house, the number of benches behind the parterre has been reduced from six on each side to three. More importantly, the benches for audience members on stage (on the Avantscène) have disappeared (they were removed from the Comédie in 1755), and the number of sets of traps on stage has been reduced from seven sets on each side to six.
2. Quoted in Fuchs, , La Vie Théâtrale en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1933), p. 80.Google Scholar
3. For an extensive discussion of this development in Paris, see Allevy, M. A., La Mise en scène en France dans la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 1938).Google Scholar
4. De l'Opéra en l'An XII (Paris, 1803), p. 64.
5. Quoted in Allevy, , Mise en scène, p. 36.Google Scholar
6. The châssis were similar in placement and function to what we commonly call wings–flat pieces of scenery mounted in pairs parallel to the footlights at the sides of the stage. Instead of resting on the floor, however, they were hung on structures allowing them a free lateral movement. Note 14 below outlines the working of this machinery.
7. A ferme, like a châssis, was an upright, flat piece of decoration, but was not supported on the same machinery, and was usually an isolated unit, while the châssis came in pairs. An individual house, tree, or shrub in the middle of the stage would be a ferme. During the romantic period, the ferme was more commonly a dimensional set-piece, the common use of the term in the French theatre today.
8. Bandes de mer were long, low masking pieces reaching across the rear of the stage, similar to modern ground rows, but like the châssis hung on supports coming up through the stage floor.
9. The terre was a masking piece like the bande de mer, but representing land instead of water.
10. A char could refer to a triumphal wagon, but in stage usage more often meant a platform which carried a standing or seated actor through the air. It should not be confused with the chariot, an important part of the machinery for shifting scenes.
11. For the sections of this inventory dealing with the areas above and below the stage proper, the reader may find useful Plates II and III, taken from the Encyclopédie. Most scene shifting and effects were based on a rope counterweight system, at the center of which was a rotating shaft with drums on it of varying sizes to receive the ropes from scenery or counterweights (D in Plate II).
12. It should be noted that the Encyclopédie plans depict three basements, while the theatre at Montpellier possessed only two, combining the functions of the first and second.
13. The construction mentioned here is essentially that of a modern simple frame building, as we may see in Plate IV from the Encyclopédie. A represents stone or masonary foundations, B a well between them, C the wooden platform which supports the upright beams or struts (D) called the montons des fermes.
14. The area below the stage contained most of the scene-shifting machinery, so this section of the inventory contains the greatest concentration of technical terms. The chariots (B, Plate II) formed the basis of this machinery. These were small wagons mounted beneath the stage in pairs on iron tracks running parallel to the footlights. On the chariots were braces supporting upright beams, the montants. Up one side of each montant ran a track, the cassette, in which was mounted a smaller upright piece, variously called a sablière, âme, or mât. These final upright beams could be extended through iron-edged slots in the stage floor, the costières (O, Plate V) to support the châssis.
Not only were the chariots mounted in pairs (and rigged so that pairs normally moved toward the center of the stage and back simultaneously, as shown in Plate II), but the pair in each plane had another pair just upstage of it, so that a new set of wings could appear in almost the same area at the same time the old set was being drawn offstage. Therefore at regular intervals going upstage the stage floor was broken by pairs of costières (see Plate V). When not in use the costières could be closed by small pieces of flooring, the petits trapillions (D, Plate V). The area between the downstage and upstage slot of each set was also divided into traps, called the grand trapillons (E, Plate V). The traps proper, which could be opened to bring actors onto the stage from below, were found in the much larger areas between the sets of costières, called the rues (N, Plate V). Traps and trapillons alike were supported from beneath by metal pieces called entre-toises which also helped to keep square the floor's supporting beams.
15. See Plate II for an Encyclopédie illustration of the working of such a trap.
16. In some cases a wooden frame, called a faux châssis, projected through the costière instead of a mât for the hanging of scenery. Like the mât, however, it traveled across the stage on a chariot.
17. The use of these flat blocks may be easily seen in Plate II. They were placed at the side walls of the stage where they received lines from the drums below and sent them on to the chariots. These were the lines which pulled the chariots off stage. Those to pull the chariots on stage went from the drums to blocks just under the center stage (A, Plate II), then across to the chariots.