A Staging Revolution through Light and Music: Adolphe Appia, Wagner and Hugo Bähr

A staging revolution through light and music: Adolphe Appia, Wagner and Hugo Bähr.

This chapter considers a new practice and theory of light and staging that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and was to have a profound affect on future audiences’ experience of performance. The radical new scenographic sensibility was realised through light but triggered by two key elements; an experience of Wagner’s music and the advent of key developments in stage lighting technology. These two elements were brought together through the vision of Adolphe Appia (1862-1928) who recognised the power and potential of light as both a unifying and expressive force that could be modulated like music and expressed as a ‘score’. In establishing the fundamental principles of modern stage lighting, Appia drew attention to the materiality of light, the critical role of darkness and shadow and their direct effect upon the perception of stage space. The theoretical writings of Appia are well-known to scholars of performance. What is not acknowledged however is the critical role that theatre practice played in the emergence of this new scenographic sensibility and how a number of key factors became aligned during a period of study in the city of Dresden. This chapter considers the aesthetic issues of the late nineteenth century stage, and key developments in lighting technology and practice. It demonstrates how Appia’s unique personal experience of Hugo Bähr’s lighting innovations, from the auditorium at Bayreuth and at first hand, backstage at the Dresden Hoftheater, represent a critical moment in the evolution and communication of a new approach to theatre practice.