Ludwigsburg Palace Theater
The baroque palace theater in Ludwigsburg is part of the residence of the dukes and later kings of Württemberg . Much of the original furnishings have been preserved to this day after the residence was relocated in the 19th century. It was only around 1930 that the rooms were used again for performances, mainly Mozart productions.
The theater as part of court life
The theater was built as a comedy house under Duke Eberhard Ludwig . It is suspected that the orangery and halls of the castle used to be the venue . Even before its completion, engagements by French and German companies have been proven. The entire palace complex grew over decades into one of the largest baroque palaces in Germany. West next to the city of Ludwigsburg, formerly a small village when tailored to the residence was planned city expanded. At times, Ludwigsburg was the capital and residence of the Duchy of Württemberg instead of Stuttgart .
The theater was set up by Philippe de La Guêpière from 1758 during the reign of Duke Carl Eugen . On May 23, 1758 the first performance took place on the stage. The Duke also played the main role himself in plays that were designed to make his fame alluding to ancient gods and heroes (see court theater ). The family or court members enjoyed themselves in living pictures that they had thought up and put up .
From 1802, Duke Friedrich II (later as King Friedrich I) had the auditorium redesigned by Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret in the classicist style of the fashion of the time (later named after Napoléon Empire style). With the royal box, the theater received a second stage, so to speak. The audience in the parquet (without seats) was free to choose which spectacle they wanted to turn to while strolling around.
The 18th century saw young absolutist rulers in Württemberg several times who had been brought up at foreign courts and now wanted to set up and use such “luxury buildings” at their courts. Versailles Palace became the benchmark for a German regional prince. The dukes Eberhard Ludwig and Carl Eugen loved court festivals lasting several days, hunts with banquets, evening balls and theater performances. In 1803 there were celebrations on the occasion of the appointment of Duke Friedrich II as elector and in 1806 as the first king of Württemberg.
In 1840, with the relocation of the residence, the Wilhelma-Theater in Stuttgart opened as a successor building . Ludwigsburg fell into a deep slumber.
Building history
Donato Giuseppe Frisoni , who was trained as a plasterer, planned additional wing structures, the castle church and an order hall, as a court builder from 1715, the fixed structure in the west and the theater in the east. The latter two are outside of the square grid but strictly mirror-symmetrical. Its model was possibly the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth . The opera house there was inaugurated on the occasion of the marriage of the daughter of the margrave couple Elisabeth Frederike Sophie to Carl Eugen in 1748. Both new buildings frame the courtyard and emphasize it.
Finally , a new main building was built opposite the previous main building, the “Old Corps de Logis ”. This created one of the most splendid European courtyards in the form of a closed square around the main courtyard, which encompassed around 400 rooms. The castle is surrounded on three sides by a large park with a French and English garden and the transition to various hunting grounds.
Today a busy four-lane main road leads past the fourth side.
building
It is a free-standing three-story building with an attic with a double hipped roof . In terms of height and floor division, it matches the transverse structure in front of it exactly. A two-story connecting corridor with a passage at floor level connects it to the palace complex.
The dormer windows of the 6 m high mansard roof do not indicate a residential function. The Thunder Shaft , a chimney-like resonance chamber, almost became the starting point of a major fire in 1945 during an air raid. An incendiary device had fallen into it. At the last moment, the fire that had already spread to the roof structure could be extinguished. The house itself is not heated.
Under the stage and audience boxes there are two low floors with technology and cloakrooms.
Underneath is the Burgundy cellar .
It has been a listed building since 1928 and is now a cultural monument as a whole .
Stage technology
The theater machinist Johann Christian Keim constructed the stage machinery . This still allows open transformations within seconds (11 seconds). There were also technical-sensual effects from rain and wind machines, a thunder shaft and delightful surprises from recesses and sliders ( deus ex machina effects).
The scenery is exchanged by moving two series of six scenery carriages in parallel on both sides of the stage. They are moved by an amazingly simple mechanism. The twisted corrugated tree , hidden at a right angle under the stage, winds up ropes which, via a pulley, pull the group of scenery wagons out of the field of vision and at the same time move the new scenery into the field of vision. For the spectator it looks like the stage frame is being replaced in exactly the same place from above and from the side. The carriages run on a floor below the stage level between guide rails. This means that the stage remains largely free of any visible mechanics. A weight that has been drawn up separately in advance makes this conversion easier. Like clockwork, it runs downwards and does the rotating movement of the corrugated tree.
Backdrops and other equipment
The backdrops are painted on fabric. They could be stored on a large drum in a depot in the attic to save space. To this end, 16 sets of different original backdrops (garden / wing, halls, village) are still available today. Originally, people swapped back and forth between the court theaters ( Grafeneck , Stuttgart, Teinach ).
In 1933, 14 prospectuses (10 × 11 m), 1 curtain and 140 parts of the backdrop were found during a listed building , which were restored from 1987 to 1995.
Auditorium
The auditorium has a bell shape with three tiers standing vertically one above the other. The royal box extends over two floors and offers space for around 15–20 people. The entire room is about as deep as the stage. No seating was planned on the ground floor.
Friedrich I already had warm air heating installed in his box. Today, measuring sensors control the humidity and temperatures, since strong fluctuations must be avoided. Only the cloakroom today have radiators . Part of the remaining rooms are exhaust air systems.
A central chandelier (95 kg) in the attic could be moved out of view of the audience at the beginning of each performance through a large opening in the ceiling. A separate pedal was used for this . This is a running bike in which a rope is wound up using human power. This device has been renovated and the hemp rope has been replaced by a steel rope for safety reasons. Probably (because otherwise clearly oversized with a maximum load of 3 t) the cloud car , which is common in games , was moved in the past , be it for Her Majesty or for the leading actress. (We still know that today from the three boys in the Magic Flute ).
Performances with Europe-wide broadcast
The dukes had achieved their advertising purpose with the expenditure for the theater, because the performances attracted viewers from all over Germany and the neighboring states as far as Paris in the Württemberg region.
From 1976, however, massive changes were made to the fabric of the building for the performances at that time. The fore stage was sawed off and the ramp lighting torn out. In winter, the entire building was exposed to temperature shocks from hot air devices, which led to deformation of the wood substance. The externally visible result was the flaking of paint and stucco. In 1985 a similar hot air experiment followed with the installation of oversized lighting. In 1986 the set wagons were demolished for a production. In 1990 , again in winter, enormous fluctuations in temperature and humidity were accepted for a television recording of the kidnapping . After that, parts of the damage were visible to everyone.
Renovation 1992–1998
In 1998 the palace theater was reopened after six years of restoration. Since then, the architectural and theater-historical monument has offered space for up to 350 spectators for various events.
inventory
In 1990/1991, various reports on the importance of theater history, the building, the interior fittings and possible use were drawn up by Babro Stribolt, Wolfgang Stopfel, Harald Zielske , Mechthild Stratmann and Emmanouil. The regional council of ministers (Prime Minister Erwin Teufel ) joined in 1992 and commissioned extensive restorations.
Building
Some of the building needed to be dismantled later, but some of it also required the installation of new artists' cloakrooms, an emergency staircase, technical and sanitary rooms. The facades had to be renovated.
The installation of a heater was deliberately avoided. In future, the display should only take place in the summer months.
Drainage had to be created to protect the infill masonry . Ashes on the doors and windows had to be strengthened or replaced by an injection process. Most of the plastered surfaces could be preserved in the original. Only a few cement plaster surfaces that had been touched up earlier had to be replaced with matching lime. Painted false windows could partly be strengthened, otherwise they could be repainted. Parts of the facade were painted again with lime paint in the damp plaster, but large parts with a two-component mineral paint.
All wooden windows could be repaired and some still have the original fittings. Hand-blown glass with its typical reflection is now used as a substitute for glass damage.
The lofty attic, which is stable in principle, had mainly moisture damage at the support and articulation points, which had to be repaired by a carpenter.
Interior work
The auditorium, originally from 1758, was redesigned in 1812. Parts of the Reithaus theater, which had been demolished in Stuttgart, were reused. These different materials made the current restoration difficult. The aim, however, was to come as close as possible to this design. Old paint residues were systematically evaluated for the new color scheme. This became a little easier because many surfaces appear uniform thanks to the canvas covering that was already in use at the time and has now been replaced. The stage portal is a wooden construction with three layers of canvas, primer and glued-on paper or cardboard layers. Genii, masks and medallions with figures of poets were painted on it. Many of the pictures could be preserved in the original.
Of course, the original candle lights have not been reinstalled. The wiring for the electricity was placed in cavities as invisibly as possible. Communication means, fire and hazard alarms according to the current state of the art have been installed.
Careful modernization of the stage technology
The stage technology with the central corrugated tree (the year rings could be used to determine the felling date 1756) under the stage, which is largely true to the original , has been carefully modernized, for example the slide bearings of the scenery wagons.
Much earlier, the oil lamp lighting in the individual alleys and the ramp, which had their own unique effects on the scenery with their flickering light, had been replaced by the much cheaper and safer electricity. The electrical lighting over 120 circuits can now be controlled electronically. Only today the original posts have been used again as lamp holders for low-voltage halogen lighting.
The machinery above the stage has been modernized (low lacing floor ). Some of the work is done by modern hand winches on the left side of the stage. The festoon (ceiling scenes) were faithfully reproduces pairs alternately lifted by a centrally mounted shaft and lowered. A fire protection curtain was newly installed behind the restored main curtain .
The brochures as a stage background can now be rolled up and down gently with three modern storage rollers.
Todays use
Even today - after a hundred years of rest in the 19th century - you can experience events in the castle theater of the Ludwigsburg Palace as part of the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival .
museum
The restoration and the existence of the theater are documented in a separate small palace theater museum in one of the eastern wing buildings. The most important exhibit is Martin Bohle's wooden model (1:15 scale; approx. 1 m × 1 m × 1.5 m depth). The old lighting concept and fragments of the scenery are presented alongside texts, videos, material samples and music examples.
literature
- Johann Christian Keim, theater machinist at the Württemberg court in the 18th century , In: Bühnentechnische Rundschau, 1993, pp. 27–31 (also in schloesser-magazin.de: Quarterly magazine 3/93)
- Rudolf Krauss: The Stuttgart court theater from the oldest times to the present . Stuttgart, Metzler, 1908 (WLB, WG oct 1693)
- Hans Joachim Scholderer: The Ludwigsburg Castle Theater. Stuttgart, 1991, dissertation
- Hans Joachim Scholderer: Palace Theater Ludwigsburg. Ed. Ministry of Finance Baden-Württemberg. 1998, 95 pp.
- Iris Ch. Visosky-Antrack: Materno and Augustin Bossi. Stucco workers and outfitters at the Würzburger Hof in early classicism , Munich / Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag 2000, in: Kunstform 1 (2000), No. 02 (on Frisoni as an architect; a review )
- Judith Breuer , Saskia Esser, Hans-Joachim Scholderer: The castle theater in Ludwigsburg has been restored. On the building history, monument value and monument preservation concept. In: Monument Preservation in Baden-Württemberg , 27th year 1998, issue 3, pp. 167–176. ( PDF )
Web links
- Website of the Ludwigsburg Palace Theater
- Ludwigsburg Palace Festival
- Carthalia - Theaters on Postcards (With some images of the Ludwigsburg Castle Theater)
- Trailer on the mechanics of the set of castles in Europe , English but self-explanatory.
Individual evidence
- ^ Castle Theater: State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg. In: www.schloss-ludwigsburg.de. Retrieved November 29, 2016 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 53 '52 " N , 9 ° 11' 46" E