Adolphe Appia and G. Craig
Adolphe Appia and G. Craig
IN the first edition of “On the Art of the Theatre” (1911), Gordon Craig distinguishes himself by killing off Adolphe Appia. In the 1912 edition of the book (and the subsequent editions) he apologizes for his carelessness in a footnote in which he refers to Appia as “the foremost stage-decorator of Europe.” “I was told that he was no more with us, so, in the first edition of this book, I included him among the shades. I first saw three examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote to a friend asking, ‘Where is Appia, and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor Appia died some years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s designs in a portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine, and I was told that the designer was still living.” There is no other reference to “the foremost stage-decorator of Europe” in this book. Now, Appia’s book, “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,” translated from his original French text by Princess Elsa Cantacuzène, with eighteen plates from drawings by the author for the settings for the Wagner music-dramas, was issued by F. Bruckmann in Munich in 1899. Thisis the book which Hiram Kelly Moderwell refers to in “The Theatre of To-day.” Loomis Taylor, last season director of the German works at the Metropolitan Opera House, is also perfectly familiar with it, and he related to me recently how an attempt of his to bring Appia to Germany several years ago failed. There is no mention made by Gordon Craig ofanybook by Appia; Mr. Taylor has read only the German text; and even Mr. Moderwell seems to have been ignorant of the fact that a previous work in French had been issued by Appia.
I have in my possession a small volume (51 pages) entitled “La Mise-en-scène du Drame Wagnérien,” by Adolphe Appia, published by Léon Chailley in Paris in 1893. The sale was afterwards (1895) continued under the imprint of the well-known publisher, Fischbacher, 33 Rue de Seine. There is no copy of this work in the New York Public Library, nor in any other library that I have yet consulted. (The later German work is comparatively well known among artists of the theatre.) The only reference to it that I have discovered is in a footnote (Appia seems destined to be exiled to footnotes) in a now little read work by HoustonStewart Chamberlain, “Richard Wagner,” issued in 1897, four years after Appia’s pamphlet had first appeared. Appia dedicated “Die Musik und die Inscenierung” to Mr. Chamberlain in this fashion: “à Houston Stewart Chamberlain qui seul connaît la vie que j’enferme en ces pages.”
There is enough interior evidence, without any reference to chronological evidence, to give one cause to presuppose a knowledge on Gordon Craig’s part of these books, even the German version of which appeared before Craig had developed many of his theories. The chronology, for the most part, is damning, for even in the short French book (there is a reference in this pamphlet to the fact that it is a condensed version of a longer work which Appia feared might never see publication) one may find not only the germs but also a complete analysis of the principles of modern stagecraft. It was Appia’s idea that the stage director should use every effort,by means of the decorationas well as by means of the actor, to bring out the secret of the drama he was producing. Appia was the first to see the inconsistency of placing the actor against scenery with painted perspective. It was Appia who foresaw that lighting should beused for a more important purpose than mere illumination; that it should serve as the element which binds together the decoration and the figure of the actor, a theory which, as Mr. Moderwell points out, was imagined before a lighting system had been devised to make its practical application possible. It was Appia who discovered that although Wagner had invented a new form of drama, he had not the slightest notion of how to produce it. He is very explicit here. He says, for example, that the action of the ordinary opera is determined by convention, that of the spoken drama by life. In other words, the prima donna of opera must sing her airs in conformation with the beat of the conductor, and she may stand as near the footlights as she pleases. No question of art is raised; nor should there be. You cannot improve (beyond a certain very easily discoverable point)The Barber of Sevilleby superior stage management. In a play the actor tries, as best he may, to imitate life. Between his lines he may take what time he likes to add action to best serve this purpose. In Wagner’sWort-Tondrama(the master’s own expression) the music is used for a double new purpose. It illuminates the soul ofthe drama,le drame intérieur, and it defines to a nicety thetimeof the action (“not the duration of time,” says Appia, “but time itself”). In other words, the author-composer wished the illusion of his music-dramas to be as complete as that of the great tragedies of the spoken drama, but he has set a definite limit to his characters’ actions by composing music which it takes a certain time to perform. He takes all liberty away from the actor without telling him precisely what to do. Thus Tristan and Isolde, after they have drunk the love-potion, are given a number of moments, songless, to express their emotion in gesture; just as Brünnhilde, awakened by Siegfried, must continue to greet the sun until the harp stops playing. Appia foresaw that this action must be controlled by one man, who must regulate it to the last detail. He must arrange the scenery and the lights and the action not only to correspond exactly to the demands of the music and the words, but also to bring out to the utmost the underlying meaning of the work.
For this purpose he has gone into detail with which it does not seem to be necessary to encumber this brief account. In the German work thisdetail is, of course, much fuller than in the shorter French version. The German book, besides, is embellished with engravings which give one a very good idea of the intentions of the artist-author. Appia, for instance, is not content with making one drawing for the setting of the third act ofDie Walküre; he makes no less thanseven. These show the varying condition of the lights and position of the characters at different stages in the action. Loomis Taylor has called Appia’s idea for this setting “the most beautiful that one could conceive.” And yet no one, so far as I know, has ever attempted to use it. The Appia case is an extraordinary one. Here we have a man who has not only developed a complete and invaluable theory for the production of a group of dramas, but who has also gone to the pains to outline to the minutest detail the manner in which his ideas may be carried out, and no one has taken the trouble to follow these instructions in the way he intended. Once his work was complete, Appia seemed content. He has now gone on to something else. Before the war began he had identified himself with the Dalcroze school at Hellerau and had gone far beyond practical present-day stage-decorationmethods, evolving still newer theories in cubes. However, may we not consider, with the evidence, that Appia was the innovator of the new movement in the theatre?—may we not assure ourselves that without Appia there would have been no Gordon Craig, perhaps no Stanislawsky? His ideas have most certainly been awarded fruition in a thousand forms.
I cannot resist a quotation or two in pursuit of my comparison. “Das Rheingoldpresents three elements: water (the bottom of the Rhine), air (the summit of a mountain separated from Walhalla by the Rhine), and fire (the subterranean forges of the Nibelungs).” Compare this with Gordon Craig’s now famous description of the decorations forMacbeth: “I see two things. I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist cloud which envelops the head of this rock. That is to say, a place for fierce and warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest in.” But examples in which Appia exacts of the decoration a promise to play a leading rôle are too frequent to be quoted. One other selection will show how this comparatively (to the public) unknown designer went to work twenty-two years ago to evolve a new form of stagecraft:
“The last tableau ofDie Walkürerepresents a mountain-top, the favorite meeting-ground of the Valkyries. It is purely decorative up to the moment when the god (Wotan) surrounds it with a circle of flames to protect the sleep of Brünnhilde, but from that instant it acquires a deep significance. For this sleep is Wotan’s precaution against the workings of his own desire; that is to say, the god, having renounced his power to direct events, has made theconfidanteof his desire impotent. This fact gives the value of a dramatic rôle to the decoration, since the return of the scene inSiegfriedandGötterdämmerungnot only constitutes for the eye a unity between the three parts of the trilogy but also always leads the spectator to the vital point in the drama (Wotan’s will, active or passive).”
Appia’s purpose, in every instance, was, working from the general to the particular, to discover the author’s intention and then to illuminate it. The stage director or decorator, in his opinion, was only the clairvoyant slave in the service of the author’s text. The leaders of the modern movement in the theatre are in complete accord with him on this point as well as others.
August 12, 1915.
August 12, 1915.