Existing comment:
Setting the Stage for Opera and Ballet:
With the dawning of the Baroque in late sixteenth-century Italy, the introduction of the proscenium arch allowed for the manipulation of the scenery from unseen recesses off-stage. Among the most astonishing uses of the new device were those in seventeenth-century Vienna. Ludovico Burnacini, working in the court of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, is responsible for some of the most legendary productions on the Baroque stage.
The opulence of the Baroque continued to influence theatrical designers throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries, perhaps most famously in the work of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the early twentieth century. Based primarily in Paris, Diaghilev's presentations embraced contemporary trends in fashion as well as the eastern exoticism seen in designs by Léon Bakst for Le Dieu Bleu (1912). Bronislava Nijinska, one of Diaghilev's dancers, established her own studio that emulated the Ballets Russes aesthetic with its strong affinity for the avant-garde as expressed in Russian Cubist/Constructivist painter Vadim Meller's costume designs for Fear (1919). |