Thread: Wagner's lighting designer

Adolf Apia is considered a prophet of modern theatre . He wrote of one idea I quite liked and tried out as a stage sound designer . Off to the sides , fore-stage or backstage you have musicians playing with minimalistic ambient little sounds . These are not for the audience , but for the performers . It's to make the stage holistic and homey . The artists relax . The sense of the natural world is created .

Originally Posted by Tikoo Tuba

Adolf Apia is considered a prophet of modern theatre . He wrote of one idea I quite liked and tried out as a stage sound designer . Off to the sides , fore-stage or backstage you have musicians playing with minimalistic ambient little sounds . These are not for the audience , but for the performers . It's to make the stage holistic and homey . The artists relax . The sense of the natural world is created .

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Does this have anything to do with performing Wagner?

Apia meant there are talking squirrels in the forest scene , yet never heard by the audience .

Originally Posted by Tikoo Tuba

Apia meant there are talking squirrels in the forest scene , yet never heard by the audience .

Are you under the influence?

Originally Posted by Byron

I'm aware of some Appia's ideas on staging Wagner and their influence in the 20th century, which are discussed here: http://www.monsalvat.no/appia.htm

But they are nowhere as incoherent as anything you are trying to describe.

What? You don't remember the talking squirrels? I'm sure the forest bird could introduce you to them.

Appia 'rejected painted two-dimensional sets for three-dimensional "living" sets because he believed that shade was as necessary as light to form a connection between the actor and the setting of the performance in time and space. Through the use of control of light intensity, colour and manipulation, Appia created a new perspective of scene design and stage lighting.'
He did of course greatly influence Weiland Wagner.

Wieland Wagner seems in a way to have taken Appia's ideas to their logical conclusion. Understanding that Wagner's dramas inhabit the realm of ideality and symbolism rather than literal reality, Appia felt that stagings representing the world as ordinarily perceived were incongruous with Wagner's aesthetic. His radical stage settings were simple, abstract, and idealized, using light and space to create a realm in which the suggestiveness of myth and music could engage the subconscious mind of the audience without being limited or distracted by mundane surface detail and spectacle. Among opera composers Wagner is unequaled in his ability to evoke the sensuous reality of place and time (or timelessness) in purely musical terms, and to delineate through music a narrative of psychological transformation. Appia's stagings, and Wieland's, get out of the music's way while providing an arena for its rites of magic.

Of course it is a great shame we do not have Weiland's productions in colour - they exist only in grand black and white in excerpt mainly, except for a Tristan. The point was that it was the use of light that made his productions meaningful. Pity Bayreuth cannot resurrect some of them instead of the pointless nonsense they appear to be pursuing.

Incoherency ? Apia did not write exclusively on lighting and physical staging . And his words could be ever so cryptic as a Nostradamus . Likely the big boss never knew all the mischief he was up to .