Animals on the stage

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Performance of the opera Aida in 1908 with elephants on the stage

Animals on the stage are an attraction mainly of popular theater with a high point in the 19th century.

18th and early 19th centuries

In the 18th and early 19th centuries there was no strict separation between circus and theater. Horses were also preferred for performances of Friedrich Schiller's dramas , especially Die Räuber (1782) and Wilhelm Tell (1804). Last but not least, this celebrated the overcoming of the strict theater rules of French classical music , according to which nothing creatures should take place on the stage. The Parisian fair theater became the model for the European theater metropolis. In the London and Paris theater buildings by Philip Astley , for example, simulated battles with horses were shown, the so-called horse theater . It was not until the Napoleonic theater decree in 1807 that a separation between circus and theater performances was prescribed.

In the petty-bourgeois and proletarian theater ( melodrama ) from around 1800 animals were very common on the stage. The horses were the most common. The spectacle plays, for example in the Theater an der Wien , were performed with the help of dragoons or cavalrymen who had the appropriate experience. Horses were also part of representative performances in the opera . Most of the horses on the stage of the world's leading Paris Opera were seen in Le triomphe de Trajan (1807) to glorify Napoleon Bonaparte . The choreography was done by Pierre Gardel . At the Paris premiere of Gaspare Spontini's Fernand Cortez (1809) there were at least 12 horses on stage, and at his opera Olimpie (1819) there were also two elephants.

The writer and theater man Karl von Holtei describes a relationship between the traveling theater and traveling menagerie in the early 19th century in his novel Die Vagabunden (1852). In addition to the animals acting in groups or as extras in the Tableaux vivants , there were also animals in leading roles: A play with a dog in a leading role was the melodrama Der Hund des Aubry (1814). The title character of the play La pie voleuse (1815) by Louis-Charles Caigniez , which premiered at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin , was a speaking magpie who steals silver spoons. The opera Dinorah (1859) by Giacomo Meyerbeer could not be performed without a trained goat.

Competition between theater and circus

Since the intensified competition between theater and circus around 1850, the animals disappeared more and more from the theater stages. The circuses on the other hand (such as Circus Renz ) performed great so-called pantomimes , in which they let their entire animal population appear. Even with the enlarged traveling menageries, the theaters could not keep up.

As before, however, there were plays that were at least partially set in a circus environment, had female riders perform and used this for an animal show on the stage, such as the farce Robert and Bertram (1856) by Gustav Raeder. This tradition can be followed up approximately until the Second World War. In the musical Jumbo (1935) by Richard Rodgers , among others, an elephant occurs. The Circuspolka (1942) by Igor Stravinsky was staged by a number of elephants.

Reduction of animal appearances in the "cultural theater"

In the cultural theater, on the other hand, the opinion was formed that children and animals had no place on the stage (a rule which, however , is broken again and again by well-known directors ). An animal, from which undisguised behavior is expected, always attracts greater attention than human acting, which is confirmed even in small art to this day. According to a popular legend, the unplanned appearance of a cat in 1816 prevented the success of the first performance of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia . In Basel, for example, in 1885 the loss of the city ​​theater due to the guest performance of the Wulff circus was lamented and there were discussions about how to avoid “damaging the art institute subsidized by the state”. Since the end of the 19th century, a decoupling of circus and vaudeville shows on the one hand and literary drama on the other has been increasing . Horses and camels ( Aida in Sydney Harbor 2015) can still be seen at open-air events, especially in the opera . The animals as main characters in dramas have shifted to film and television series since the mid-20th century.

Today animals are only allowed to appear if a supervisor who is familiar with them is present and they can be accommodated in suitable rooms or containers (in Germany: Accident prevention regulation for event and production facilities for scenic representation (GUV-V C 1) , Section 31) . In the Vienna Burgtheater , the caregivers of animals belong to the extras .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert de Lasalle: Les treize salles de l'Opéra , Paris: Sartorius 1875, p. 210
  2. ↑ Ricky Jay: Sauschlau & feuerfest , Edition Volker Huber, Offenbach 1987. S. ????. ISBN 3-921785-50-2
  3. ^ Burton D. Fisher: Rossini's the Barber of Seville, Miami, Opera Journeys Publishing 2005, p. 23.
  4. ^ Stefan Koslowski: City theater versus show booths. On the history of theater in Basel in the 19th century, Zurich: Chronos 1998, p. 191. ISBN 3905312549
  5. ^ The Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 25, 2014 , accessed Sept. 15, 2015.