Now there is a book about the development of italian playhouses from XVIIIth and XIXth centuries (crucial for contemporary ideas about the theater's architecture) until today, readable by literate people, however not deep in history of architecture.
The book is a great help in understanding the history of this development. It presents the history of modern and contemporary Italian opera houses and implicitly it provides the link between the architectural shape of the theater, the economical life and the concrete requirements of the stage work inside it along two centuries. The architectural solution which is usual today for opera houses is only one of the many which have in the old Italian theaters their own origin.
On the other side, the Italian synthesis is a enlightening point of view for experiences, like the Richard Wagner's theater in Bayreuth, the French theory of "polyvalence" -by André Malraux in the Sixties- and the idea based (so often as wrongly) on the project of the "Totaltheater" by Walther Gropius, of a perfect architectural shape (something like a "building type") or any other which seems build on ideological frames and not to grab the concrete, vital reasons of each element of this architectural shape.
One of the most important conclusions of the book is that the reasons for that are mostly of a technical and economical nature, in their own historical stage of course, due to the increasing width of the audience. The contemporary development of the cinematographic industry and the television networks, and their architectural innovations, are linked--by the point of view of this work-- to the usual theater building. The splitting between the movie-house and the movie-studio, was only the last act of a large historic tale, trough the naturalism and the "fourth wall." The final hypothesis deals with their coming back closer, as it is now made possible by the technical improvement of the reproduceability of performances and of data transmission, which made even more possible an active role for the public, instead of the passive one which was typical of the early experiences of reproduced shows.
The book is also a hystory of the public, from the nominal identifiablity of the notables to the anonymous passivity (ignominy) of the "masses." Today the development of the medias induce the outlining, in the waste land of the "mass," of groups of users with even more identifiables characters and needs, intending to play an active role. The progress and the improvement of the technics of reproduceability are clearly oriented in this direction from the beginning of our century and find in the architecture the clearest mirror.
Theater requires a collaborative effort by professionals in different fields, and the book tries to reflect this heterogeneity. As professor of history of the Italian theater Ferdinando Taviani observed, Italian theater workers "sono specializzati a non essere specializzati" [specialize in not specializing]. The book also deals with the various problems and challenges the theater architect or restorer encounter.The book presents all historical information and data which are necessary for understanding modern theater design, its ideology and link with its society.
The book concerns 12 important Italian cities, in chronological order of building of their theaters, beginning with the S. Carlo theater in Naples, 1737. For each theater, there is an outline of particular architectural problems. My readers will find answers to some questions, for example:
What have to do the realistic trend of illuminations in late Medieval manuscripts to depict Rome with its prominent Coliseum with the origin of the association between a large city and a large theater?
Why eighteenth century visitors to Naples' San Carlo theater deemed the acoustics so bad?
Why the "Pharaon," as was called a rich and mysterious egyptian business man, build a theater in Trieste, at the times the haven of the Austrian-Hungarn Empire?
How is it possible to find the architectural origin of the Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk in the social riots of 1848?
Why is the digging out of orchestra pit linked not so much to Wagner's invention, but rather to the evolving role of the director through Puccini, Boito and Toscanini?
Why is the technical development of lighting and of reproduceablity of the shows crucial for the architecture of the theater in our time, more than ideological debate about the cultural role of the theater in the society? How is it strictly linked to the birth of buildings for reproduceable shows (movie-houses, studios for film and TV making)?
How was the increasing size of opera houses in the past centuries related to the development of musical instruments and of the role of the director?
What does World War I have to do with the first performance of Aida in Verona's Arena?
How was the shape and the stage of Turin's Teatro Regio influenced by modern eclecticism and its architect Carlo Mollino's hobby for sadistic photos?
Why Aldo Rossi built such a stark, stone theater in Genoa? etc. No other book provides to the reader a way to understand the many relationships existing between the architectural shape of the theaters of Italy, the artistic life within them and the cultural and political life of the city around them. The contribution of the book is a large historic and cultural overview, restrict to the crucial moments. Its specific benefits are:
To guide the reader, with a plain and non-specialistic
language,
in the surprising atmosphere of a culture for which the dialogue between
truth and falsehood belongs to the everyday life, warning him to some
dangers hidden behind this fascinating appearance.
To describe in each chapter of the 12 devoted to each theater
(there are 3 for historic outlines) a particular topic, which is time by
time prominent.This is a rhetoric structure similar to the dramatic frame
of medieval plays. This choice was determined by its special convenience
for the subject and for the purposes of the book.
According with the previous point, to propose to the reader the
problems and to fix its limits and terms without suggest any solution; to
show the solutions which were found for these problems in the past, its
reasons, its benefits, its limits and its good and bad cultural
results.
To outline a theme which is crucial for the theater architecture
of our days: the history of the idea of a "perfect architectural
shape."
As the book shows and demonstrates, this idea is related to the practice
of
the "repertorio," current in the late-nineteenth centuries, which is at
least so much important as the ideological debate preparing it at the
XVIIIth century and predicting it at the XIXth, and much more important
than the far origin of this idea, the renaissance's classicism.
I can't pretend to be impartial, since I wrote the book. But it has indisputably plenty of news, pictures, theater plans. A translation of the Italian text should be supplemented for English readers with additional information about Italian history, which is not necessary for Italian readers already familiar with it. Some part of the text must be developed. The book contains a bibliographic appendix which lists and reviews the most important books about Italy's various theaters; these books also have their own bibliographies, each devoted to the theater, which is the topic of the book.