Theaters: Ancient to Modern Construction

To all the theater-buffs in our lives, this one’s for you!

Long before YouTube and television, LIVE theater was the entertainment of choice. The Greeks and Romans hosted a variety of shows in their ancient Amphitheaters. In our travels so far, we visited several towns where the elegant theater was the star of the town once upon a time. Here you will see a theater in Apolonia, Barcelona, Vlore, another Barcelona, and Metaponto. But, as unique as each of these are, it was the one made of all wood that seemed most dramatic to us.

Though it wasn't a stone in our Followingthestones journey, we were delighted when visiting the Farnese Theater in Parma. The beautiful craftsmanship with simple wood and plaster took our breath away. We even saw the original architectural drawings in the local museum which was also delightful for us. In 1617 Ranuccio I, fourth Duke of Parma and Piacenza, demanded a theater for Parma be built to impress the Medici family. The Ferrarese architect Giovan Battista Aleotti was able to create for Ranuccio a wood and plaster theater. The stage measures 40 meters, with an opening of 12 meters which allowed for the first mobile scenery to be used within the “contemporary” theatrical culture of it’s time. Flat scenes were organized with three layers of fabric scenery sliding on tracks. The upper galleries were used for movement while the space below the stage area hid the complex machinery.

Due to a variety of circumstances, the Farnese Theater was not used right away. However, it was finally inaugurated in 1628 when Margherita de’ Medici married Duke Odoardo Farnese, and a production of “Mercury and Mars” was performed. With grandiose, the production included “Naumachea” an ancient type of Roman entertainment which involved flooding the area of the platea with great quantities of water pumped from a series of tanks placed under the stage. Thank you, Cirque di Sole and others, for allowing us to still observe water techniques in theater.

Sadly, the Theatre was only used 9 times between 1628 and 1732 on special occasions. When World War II ignited, Parma and the Farnese theater were badly damaged. From 1953-1962 restoration was able to re-make the Farnese theater into our current wooden wonderment. Now it is under the care of La Nuova Pilotta where you can read more about it.

We started our travel adventures by seeing Hadestown in a Broadway theater. Several of our destinations have and will have ancient stone amphitheaters. While in Parma we got to see another type of ancient theater.