Towards Italian Opera Houses: A Review of Acoustic Design in Pre-Sabine Scholars

Abstract

The foundation of architectural acoustics as an independent science is generally referred to Sabine’s early studies and their application. Nevertheless, since the 16th Century, a great number of authors wrote essays and treatises on the design of acoustic spaces, with a growing attention to the newborn typology of the Opera house, whose evolution is strongly connected to the cultural background of the Italian peninsula. With roots in the Renaissance rediscovery of Vitruvius’s treatise and his acoustic theory, 16th- to 19th-Century Italian authors tackled several issues concerning the construction of theatres—among them, architectural and structural features, the choice of the materials, the social meanings of performances. Thanks to this literature, the consolidation of this body of knowledge led to a standardisation of the forms of the Italian Opera house throughout the 19th Century. Therefore, the scope of this review paper is to focus on the treatises, essays and publications regarding theatre design, written by pre-Sabinian Italian scholars. The analysis of such literature aims at highlighting the consistencies in some 19th-Century minor Italian Opera houses, in order to understand to what extent this scientific and experimental background was part of the building tradition during the golden age of the Italian Opera.

A History of Audio Effects

“…Over the 18th century, a number of theatres were designed with specific instructions and guidelines aiming at making them more functional for their purpose [57]. The horse-shaped theatre optimised for opera developed around this time [58]. The Roman "Odeon" was rediscovered by Wagner in his Bayreuther Festspielhaus in order to improve listener envelopment [59].…”

Italian-Style Opera Houses: A Historical Review

“…The development of the opera house building was closely related to the development of the opera and the society. In Italy, between the late 17th and the 19th Century, there was a debate on the form of the opera house [27]. The first essay dealing with the so-called "Italian theatre" was written by the architect F. Carini Motta (death 1699) [28].…”

The Proscenium of Opera Houses as a Disappeared Intangible Heritage: A Virtual Reconstruction of the 1840s Original Design of the Alighieri Theatre in Ravenna

“…In an HOH, the stage was typically made of light wooden fir, in order to fix the scenes during operas. Any acoustic reason was taken into account by pre-Sabinian scholars regarding the stage design [18]. Previous works related to wooden stage-air cavity are purely numerical [51,52], or related to the fork-effect of cellos and double-bass only [53] or the early work of Beranek, which showed an increment of radiation in the 125 Hz octave band [54].…”

“…The proscenium was introduced in the 17th-Century theatre in order to improve the singer intelligibility during the recitativo and to bring the singer close to cembalist-or other keyboardist-who played the continuo (see Table 1 for the meaning of Italian musical terms). Moreover, the shapes of the proscenium were optimised by pre-Sabine designers in order to make the voice of soloist louder during the aria [18].…”

“…A second shell was added in a second time, in order to decrease further the sound strength of the orchestra. The plan for a covered pit was not a Wagner original idea: the concealment of the orchestra was proposed in essays in 1775 and 1817 [18], and achieved in the Theatre of Besançon, designed by Claude-Nicholas Ledoux (1736Ledoux ( -1806 [20], now demolished.…”