While fixated on the singers and the drama, we sometimes take for granted what marvels go on behind stage to make the scenery and effects run smoothly. Opera houses nowadays employ hydraulics and all manner of digital control systems to fly sets in and move pieces around. Even minimal productions like Seattle Opera's Parsifal used giant motors to raise and lower an entire section of the floor in order to create an bounding wall in another scene. A giant tower (Klingsor's castle) was made to plummet into the ground with great speed. Rugged digital landscapes were shone onto the background via a floor-to-ceiling array of projectors.

There was a time, of course, when stunning effects were created by hand. Men turning great wheels and pulleys, ropes being dragged about the catwalks, stagehands running up and down flights of stairs. But the craft was far from crude. In fact, by the time opera was in its infancy, the art of scenery was quite advanced, developed in the spoken-word theatre, naturally. One can get a sense of it in certain films, as in Farinelli: il castrato. The façades, of course, are aesthetically sound, but little has been explained as to how the machinery worked or how advanced it was. It is clear, though, that many of today stage effects owe their heritage to the designs and concepts of a few ingenious men who were pioneers in the engineering of scenery. One of my favorite antique prints does give a rare behind-the-scenes look at an early set for the operatic stage. In the figures below, a cloudscape filled with actors and singers (left) and stripped bare (right), used for Giovanni Legrenzi's Germanico sul reno (from Venice, 1675). The center wheel rotated while the entire machine/set—people and all—moved on the stage, toward the audience. Imagine it—imposing, ecstatic, and glorious in a way that few modern sets even approach. This is essentially a Renaissance acid trip, for me.

[Click each for a larger size]

On this topic there are a couple truly outstanding resources on the internet. First off, The Development of Scenic Spectacle showcases stage machinery from the 16th through the 18th century, distinguising the periods in which particular effects were created and in use. Each section contains a treasure trove of animations and video clips of the machinery's workings and implementation, along with a textual explanation of each. Also, please visit this amazing site on the Castle Theater in Český Krumlov, which documents a surviving Baroque theater in the Czech Republic with all its original (well, reconstructed in 1765 - 1766, refurbished in 1996-1997) interiors and stage mechanisms. There are gorgeous photos and most impressively, a series of 360-degree "tours" of various parts of the theater. Be sure to explore all the links from the main page, as several of the target pages contain more panoramas and info. The color cutaway illustration leads to a new page with a click-sensitive map of the theater.