Amphitheater

“ Thus, stretched in the shade, at the bottom of this leafy amphitheater, you'll wrap yourself in summer, and forget the world, which, beyond that wall of trees, is still at its old work,—swearing, lying, fretting, loving, hating, and rushing on all the while at steam-engine speed. ”

“ Faded into shadow that white mosaic of flower-crowned faces set in the amphitheater of jet, and vast shadows dropped upon the high-flung tiers and shrouded them. But on the skirts of the rays the fretted stalls in which we sat with the fair-haired ones blazed out, iridescent, like jewels.
I was sensible of an acceleration of every pulse; a wild stimulation of every nerve. I felt myself being lifted above the world—close to the threshold of the high gods—soon their essence and their power would stream out into me! I glanced at Larry. ”

“ The old Amphitheater, a miniature Coliseum, where men fought with wild beasts amid the applauding shouts of ladies and gentlemen of the period, though used no longer for its old-time purposes, is in good condition and may yet stand for a thousand years. ”

“ The principal one is not to be explored without much precaution, and without a safe guide. The entrance, which is low and narrow, leads to a spacious amphitheater, the petrifactions hanging from the roof of which have a most splendid effect by the light of torches. ”

“ An amphitheater some twenty or twenty-five feet deep and about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, where the Columbia loam and the Lafayette sand have washed away down to the Tertiary formation, offers the best single exhibit of the logs. At the mouth of the valley the erosion has extended several feet into the Tertiary. There are at least ten logs exposed in this amphitheater which vary considerably in color and composition. Some of them arc almost pure white and apparently contain nearly pure silica; others are stained with more or less of foreign matter. ”

“ When the amphitheater had cleared I crept stealthily to the top and as the great excavation lay far from the plaza and in an untenanted portion of the great dead city I had little trouble in reaching the hills beyond. ”

“ The major beauty spots of the area are found where forces of erosion have cut back into the plateau, forming amphitheaters or wide canyons filled with pinnacles and grotesque forms.
Most of the park area, with some 30 miles of Pink Cliffs, can be seen from Rainbow Point, at the southern end of the park. Included in this panorama are such beautiful amphitheaters as Black Birch Canyon, Agua Canyon, and Willis Creek. ”

“ They were lined with marble, as the whole amphitheatre appears to have been. To realise the effect of these ruins, it is to be remembered that they are imbedded in solid lava, like rock, near a hundred feet deep, and that the city, which is itself ancient, is built above them. The carriage in which we came, stood high over our heads, in a time-worn street, and ages had passed and many generations of men had lived and died over a splendid city, whose very name had been forgotten! It was discovered in sinking a well, which struck the door of the amphitheatre. ”

“ We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for ritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a rite of practical intent. We further saw that the theatre, the place for the 142spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and dancing; the marble seats are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and give their name theatre to the whole structure; action is swallowed up in contemplation. ”

“ They stopped on their way at the Tragic and Comic Theatres, and at length reached the Amphitheatre itself. This edifice is by far the largest in the city, and is better preserved than any. It is built of large blocks of a dark volcanic stone, and constructed in that massive style which the Romans lived, and of which they have left the best examples in these huge amphitheatres. As this Amphitheatre now stands, it might still serve for one of those displays for which it was built. Tier after tier those seats arise, which once had accommodations for fifteen or twenty thousand human beings. ”

“ Towards two o'clock the great theatre was crowded,—pit, gallery, boxes, stage, all were thronged; thousands of faces,—boys, gentlemen, teachers, working-men, women of the people, babies. There was a moving of heads and hands, a flutter of feathers, ribbons, and curls, and a loud and merry murmur which inspired cheerfulness. The theatre was decorated with festoons of white, red, and green cloth. In the pit two little stairways had been erected: one on the right, which the winners of prizes were to ascend in order to reach the stage ”

“ It is a vast building and unites the conveniences both of the ancient and modern theatres. It has a roof like a modern theatre, and the seats in the parterre are arranged like the seats in an ancient Greek theatre. Above this are what we should call boxes, and above them again what we usually term a gallery. A vast and deep arena lies between the parterre and the orchestra and fills up the space between the audience and the proscenium. It is admirably adapted both for spectators and hearers; when a tragedy, comedy or opera is acted, a scaffolding is erected and seats placed in the arena. ”

“ A great crowd is just leaving the amphitheatre and as the attendants roll back the heavy awnings and unleash the tent-poles, the moon, which has been excluded for the performance, begins to filter in, and presently the stone begins to throw off faint shimmers, and dark shadows fall across the stage. The builded temple, which has been screened, is now revealed, and its colours glow again, albeit in shades not known to the light of day. The porticos of temples look down upon the theatre, and olive trees stand dark and beautiful on the hills. ”

“ The Greek and Roman amphitheatres, having the audiences arranged in semicircles, each circle rising above the one in front of it, and having the auditorium either open at the top or covered with awnings so that the waste sound might easily escape at the top or be absorbed by the audience around the sides, were crude approaches to this plan. The modern theatres, in which the floor slopes upward as it recedes from the stage, and in which the balconies are placed one above the other and are of horseshoe form, conform still more closely to it. ”

“ Upon entering the theatre, the spectators found themselves in a land of enchantment—a vast hall encircled with tubes of crystal, bent in every possible way, meeting at top in order to form the ceiling, united by silver threads of imperceptible fineness, behind which hung 10,000 colored lamps, whose light, reflected and refracted by these transparent columns, illuminated the gardens, groves, flowers, cascades, and fountains, like an enchanted landscape, which seen across this veil of light resembled the poetical phantasm of a dream. ”

“ One old lady felt the quality of our robes, another admired our trinkets, and a third was in raptures with our veils. In short, as a Frenchwoman would say, we had un grand succès; and so, our hostess assured us.
We went over the Amphitheatre, the dimensions of which exceed those of the Amphitheatre at Nismes. Three orders of architecture are also introduced in it, and it has no less than sixty arcades, with four large doors; that on the north side has a very imposing effect. ”

“ I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an open-air place for the audience—a large upward-sloping glade walled by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to look part of it by a green groundcloth. ”

“ It is even possible to change the nature of the sky during the action of the play or opera.
Another very important feature of the “Asphaleia” stage is the system of lighting; gas battens and footlights are dispensed with. In the “Asphaleia” theater there is a special arrangement of the proscenium; all the lighting is done from the side. There are many other interesting features of the “Asphaleia” stage, which is almost entirely fireproof, and tends not only to minimize the danger of fire, but also to insure the safety of the workmen and artists. ”

“ The ship-builder, in planning his craft, must know what depths of water—be it river, lake, or ocean—she will have to ply in, what conditions of wind and weather she may reckon upon encountering, and what speed will be demanded of her if she is to fulfil the purpose for which she is destined.... The theater—the actual building, with its dimensions, structure, and scenic appliances—is the dramatist's sea. And the audience provides the weather. ”

“ The agitated sea is composed of long angular lanterns of cloth and blue pasteboard, strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart, rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument heard at our opera. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame, and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fuse. The theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square traps, which opening at the end, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. ”

“ The theater is nervous, horrific, clangorous, glowering. There is nothing fountain-like. No spirit wells up in beauty. There is no dignity and no glory.
The fault may not be Poelzig’s, but the lighting of the stage and orchestra seems unfortunately handled. Some of the lights for the inner stage are placed in front of the arch of the proscenium instead of behind it, and thus they illuminate it, and emphasize something that ought not to be there at all, let alone pointed out. The lights for the orchestra originally came wholly from the lower edge of the dome. ”

“ One such spot I have, and from it many a lesson I have learned.—It is a great amphitheatre, Nature-made, vast and open. It slopes to the north and west, and all about it and about are green trees—green trees and shrubs and lowly plants. In the whole space I am the one spectator—save for little grasses that stand on tiptoe to look and listen; save for little weeds that nod their heads; and a beetle crawling heedless over dry and shining grains of sand. In the orchestral centre, where, in ancient Greece, should stand the lighted altar, there chances to be a little crimson maple ”

“ Our eyes having grown accustomed to the dim light of candles in passages where absolute darkness, unrelieved by the stars of midnight, always reigns, the great Auditorium appeared before us softly flooded with daylight diffused from a broad white beam slanting down in long straight lines from the entrance as from a rift in heavy clouds; only this rift displayed around its edges a brilliant border of vegetation that the rough rocks cherish with tender care. ”

“ The theatre is opposite the celebrated Roman amphitheatre, and the wish to visit it by moonlight was expressed spontaneously by the whole party. The custode was roused, and we entered the vast arena and stood in the midst, with the gigantic ranges of stone seats towering up in a receding circle, as if to the very sky, and the lofty arches and echoing dens lying black and silent in the dead shadows of the moon. A hundred thousand people could sit here ”

“ And again, the half fantastic repetitions of musical forms in the principal outlines—the lyre-like shape of the bases of the great towers, the harp-like figure of the connecting wings, the clustering reeds of the columns—fill the mind with musical suggestions, and dispose the wondering spectator to become the entranced listener.
The great organ would be but half known, if it were not played in a place fitted for it in dimensions. In the open air the sound would be diluted and lost; in an ordinary hall the atmosphere would be churned into a mere tumult by the vibrations. ”

“ In accordance with the foregoing investigations on mathe­matical principles, let bronze vessels be made, proportionate to the size of the theatre, and let them be so fashioned that, when touched, they may produce with one another the notes of the fourth, the fifth, and so on up to the double octave. Then, having constructed niches in between the seats of the theatre, let the vessels be arranged in them, in accordance with musical laws, in such a way that they nowhere touch the wall, but have a clear space all round them and room over their tops. ”

“ The truth of which will be manifest, if we observe those who sing to the harp; who, whenever they wish to sing in a higher tone, turn themselves to the leaves of the scene; from which they receive the assistance of corresponding sounds. But when theatres are not sonorous, in consequence of their being built with solid materials, such as stone or marble, whether wrought or unhewn, it then becomes necessary to have recourse to the expedient just explained. ”

“ Bang went the young cannons in the rear. The stage shook, and the theatre seemed ready to fall about our ears; the females shrieked; the "supers" rushed on and shouted; then came the leaping flames from below and from the sides, until, finally, the whole picture was one burning glow and whirl of smoke, and the curtain came down in time, I suppose, to prevent a panic, for women shrieked, and men got up from their seats to flee from the theatre. Act three brought the grandest illusion of all—the great raft scene. ”