International studio (30.1906/1907(1907))

Modern Stage Mounting in Germany

to suppose that you can impress an educated man
with an elaborate display of facsimile sunset under
conditions when his intellect is especially alert, as
it is while sitting in a theatre, and when recollec-
tions of pasteboard, gauze, coloured screens and
wires rise uppermost in his mind, in spite of him-
self, as soon as anything lasts above a few seconds.
Wisdom askew, of this kind, when the task of
representing Oberon’s fairyland is set before it, will
cover drop and wings with thousands of painted
roses, clustering another thousand of artificial paper
ones into bowers scattered here and there over the
stage. The artist, on the other hand, will
perhaps paint a setting of azure, with maybe a
symmetrical arrangement of fantastic trees, just to
awaken the feeling for distance and dimension,
leaving the real task of realising a vision to the
imagination of the audience, which the artist only
stimulates.
For on the stage, as on the easel-picture, the
trend of the real artist to-day lies in the direction
of suggestion, of enlisting the beholders’ own
powers of fancy, and not merely in placing some-
thing hard and fast, something immobile before
them, to which their intellect may not add any-
thing and from which it may not detract.
The ideal system would of course be to let the
whole matter of mounting a play rest in the hands
of one man. This is not feasible in the case of
our great royal and municipal theatres with their
immense repertory. The fact that on these
stages no play or opera is repeated more than
five or at the most ten times a year, and that
all in all every year a hundred (to state a low
figure) different things are represented, enforces a
strict division of labour. Each head of the many
departments must try to acquire routine, and will
be glad enough if he manages to pull through all
right with the limited task set before him.
The “Generaldirection” of the Dresden royal
theatres has during the last decade made notable
efforts to gain the leading position among German
stages. Many works of importance have been
performed here for the first time, Richard Strauss’s
“Salome” being the latest; and there is an un-
deniable tendency to bring out plays and operas
in a worthy and novel manner, regardless of
business considerations. It was a stroke of good
policy on the part of the Generaldirection to
secure the services of Mr. L. Fanto, who has
made a special study of costume.
There are two points, by the observance of
which an artist-costumier can distinguish himself
to-day. The first and easier one is an attention

to historical fidelity. It is simply appalling what
ridiculous stuff is exposed to the gaze of an
undiscriminating public to this day in the matter
of costuming, although, in all other regards, the
slightest anachronism excites our opposition. All
our classical plays, Shakspere, Schiller, Goethe, are
fitted out with a sort of romantic olla podrida of
plumes, slashed doublets, looped up dresses, plate
armour, an incongruous medley of items chosen
from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which
are made to serve one evening for a representation
of, say, “ King John” (ca. a.d. 1190), and the next
for “Richard III.” (ca a.d. 1490). This kind of
costuming, although variations and even slight
improvements have occurred from time to time,
may still be traced to an age which indulged
most fondly in its love of everything romantic,
an age which did so like to attempt more than it
could achieve. The ludicrous notions of historic
costume, as embodied in the tamous Boydell’s
Shakspere Gallery, even if the passing of many
generations has modified them a little, are really
still rampant in most of the costuming of classical
plays that we see to-day.
We have grown rather nice as to gross errors
with regard to times not greatly removed from
our own. Such operas as “ La Boheme,”and even
such as “Manon Lescaut,” are excellently mounted
nowadays, all out of comparison with what the
corresponding pieces were twenty years ago. But
this is comparatively easy. For they date from
epochs which produced a wealth of cheap pictorial
matter, and a good deal of this is more or less
widely disseminated to this day. As soon as some
piece takes us into the seventeenth century there
is a marked falling off. And even where the
attempt is made to be true to the seventeenth
century, it does not go far enough to discriminate
between the Frenchman, the Dutchman, the
Spaniard, the Venetian or Roman, not to hint at
the peculiarities of dress proper to individual cities
or circumscribed districts in which the scenes
of a play are supposed to take place. When,
however, we proceed down further than the year
1600 everything is confusion, and beyond 1500
all is chaos.
Mr. Fanto’s attempt to fit out Schiller’s “ Maid
of Orleans ” in the proper costumes of the day was,
I believe, the first of its kind—upon such a scale,
at least—and it was attended with signal success.
The picture unfolded was one such as our playgoers
had never beheld, and it was dazzling in many re-
spects. He has followed this feat up with his
“ Agnes Bernauer,” pleasing everybody again and
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