Theater (building)

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The theater as a structural form in architecture was developed in ancient Greece, with rows of seats in the auditorium , with orchestra and stage (Skene). Orchestra was the gap between the auditorium and the stage. This is where today's word orchestra comes from. The theater was built in such a way that everything in the theater could be heard. In the past, everyone except the slaves was allowed to go to the theater. In the theater of ancient Greece only men were allowed on the stage, later in the theaters of the Romans with a similar design women were also allowed to play.

The first permanent and closed theater building since ancient times was the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza , built by Andrea Palladio from 1580 and completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi in 1585 . The first free-standing theater building in Germany was the Ottoneum in Kassel, completed in 1606 . Another important theater building in Germany was the theater in Ulm in 1641 according to the plans of the city architect Joseph Furttenbach in the local Latin school. In the then free imperial city (and capital of the Swabian Federation), due to the large number of audiences for theatrical performances, a "functional building" was built for the theater, which already had a curtain and orchestra pit and was equipped with technology that is common on Italian stages, including prism-shaped, rotatable scenes (Telari). In this theater there were 600 seats in increasing order and 150 standing seats for the audience. Already in 1650 it was enlarged to 1000 places.

The modern development of theater construction goes in the 19th and 20th centuries via Gottfried Semper and Richard Wagner to Max Littmann , who overcame the box construction customary at the time with an amphitheatrical arrangement of the rows of seats. The auditorium in a design for the First Dresden Court Theater (Semper) is already semicircular, in the designs for a Wagner festival theater in Munich (Semper with Wagner) the two then tried amphitheatrical arrangements. Wagner and his architect Otto Brückwald perfect this design in the Bayreuth Festival Hall .

Walter Gropius enveloped in 1926 with the concept of total theater stage again completely, but not like the Roman amphitheater by a closed row ring, but by two opposite auditoriums.

See also

literature

  • Elisabeth Großegger: theaters. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7001-3046-5 . (on theater construction in Austria)
  • Simone Gojan: Swiss venues / Scènes de Suisse / Luoghi teatrali in Svizzera. Historical manual / manuel historique / manuale storico . Chronos , Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-905312-88-3 (= Theatrum Helveticum , Volume 4 and Swiss Theater Yearbook , No. 58, also a dissertation at the University of Bern ).
  • Carsten Jung: Historical theaters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2010, ISBN 3-422-02185-X .
  • Silke Koneffke: Theater room. Visions and projects by theater people and architects for the other performance location 1900–1980. Reimer, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-496-01193-9 .
  • Oliver Scheytt, Simone Raskob, Gabriele Willems (eds.): The cultural real estate . Plan - build - operate. Examples and concepts for success . transcript, Bielefeld 2016. ISBN 978-3-8376-2981-1 .
  • Birgit Schmolke, Christiane Bartenbach: Stage constructions. Manual and planning aid . DOM, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-938666-62-3 .
  • Hannelore Schubert: Modern theater building. International situation, documentation, projects, stage technology . Stuttgart, Krämer 1971.
  • Manfred Semper : The theater . (= Handbook of Architecture , IV. Part Design, Layout and Equipment of Buildings , 6th Half Volume Buildings for Education and Science , 5th Booklet). Arnold Bergsträsser, Stuttgart 1904 ( digitized version ) - Compendium for architects on theater construction around 1900, with many detailed floor plans and elevations
  • Eberhard Werner, Hans Gussmann: Theater building . 2 volumes. Verlag Technik, Berlin 1954.
  • Yann Rocher: Théâtres en utopie , Actes Sud, Paris, 2014.
  • Harald Zielske : German theaters up to the Second World War. Typological-historical documentation of a building type . (= Writings of the Society for Theater History; Volume 65). Self-published by the Society for Theater History, Berlin 1971.
  • Paul Baumgarten : Theaters and Celebrations , Volume II of the book series of the Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, published in the Prussian Ministry of Finance. Wilhelm Ernst & Son, Berlin 1939.

Web links

Commons : Theater building  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
  • Theater Finder , database of historical theater buildings (English)
  • Carthalia - theater building on postcards
  • KinTheTop - theater and cinema building in Vienna

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Publishing information on the book