Frontiers of Architectural Research >
From Wagner to Wagner: reminiscences of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in the reconstruction of the Carlo Felice Opera House in Genoa
Received date: 31 Oct 2021
Revised date: 09 Mar 2022
Accepted date: 01 Apr 2022
Published date: 31 Oct 2022
Copyright
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the context of an extensive project to reform opera, German composer Richard Wagner began to envision a new kind of theater building that finally saw the light in 1876 in Bayreuth as the Festspielhaus. In the following century, Italian architect Aldo Rossi evoked its characteristic features in his reconstruction project of the Carlo Felice Opera House in Genoa, a building that had been partially destroyed during World War II and was reopened to the public in 1991. At the same time, he restored the relationship between architecture and the city that Wagnerian precepts had more or less consciously eliminated. By revisiting the time that separates the two buildings, and specifically the changes that the most important playhouses underwent, this essay attempts to capture the distinctive elements of the Wagnerian playhouse in order to evaluate what remains of them, what was omitted, and what was subtracted from later buildings that either exist only as projects or that were in fact actualized.
Key words: Theater; Richard Wagner; Aldo Rossi; Bayreuth; Genoa
Nicola Delledonne . From Wagner to Wagner: reminiscences of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in the reconstruction of the Carlo Felice Opera House in Genoa[J]. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2022 , 11(5) : 917 -933 . DOI: 10.1016/j.foar.2022.04.001
1 |
Anderson, S., 1990. Peter Behrens’s highest Kultursymbol, The Theater. Perspecta: Theater, Theatricality, and Architecture 26, 103–134.
|
2 |
Bowman, N.A., 1966. Investing a theatrical ideal: Wagner’s Bayreuth „Festspielhaus”. Educational Theatre Journal: Special International Theater Issue 18 (4), 429–438.
|
3 |
De Negri, E., 1986. L’architettura del teatro, in: Il teatro Carlo Felice di Genova. Storia e progetti. Sagep Editrice, Genova, pp. 47–85.
|
4 |
Ferlenga, A., 2012. L’ossessione teatrale in Aldo Rossi. In: Aldo Rossi. Teatri, Germano Celant. Ginevra-Milano: Skira, pp. 21–25.
|
5 |
Forsyth, M., 1985. Buildings for Music: the Architect, the Musician, and the Listener from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
|
6 |
Gobran, S., 1990. The Munich festival theater letters. Perspecta: Theater, Theatricality, and Architecture 26, 47–68.
|
7 |
Leclerc, H., 1958. Au théâtre de Besançon (1775-1784). Claude-Nicolas Ledoux; réformateur des moeurs et précurseur de Richard Wagner. Revue de la Société d’Histoire du Théâtre 10, 103–127.
|
8 |
Rabreau, D., 1984. Physiognomy of French theaters: City and the theatre in 18th and 19th centuries. Lotus International 43, 48–63.
|
9 |
Rittaud-Hutinet, J., 1982. La vision d’un futur. Ledoux et ses thé-âtres. Presses Universitaires, Lyon.
|
10 |
Rossi, A., et al., 1984. From history to imagination: Design for Genoa’s teatro Carlo Felice. Lotus International 42, 12–25.
|
11 |
Vidler, A., 1990. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Social Reformat the End of Ancien Régime. The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. - London.
|
12 |
Wan, Q., Blas, S.M., 2022. Architecture as devise: estrangement theory from literature to architecture. Frontiers of Architectural Research 11, 1–12.
|
13 |
Wilhelm, K., 1988. Stefan Sebök – l’idea di „Totaltheater”. Casabella 551, 34–45.
|
14 |
Wyss, B., Bratton, D., 1990. Ragnarök of illusion: Richard Wagner’s „Mystical Abyss” at Bayreuth. October 54, 57–78.
|
/
〈 | 〉 |