Misplaced Pages

#103896

33-509: The theatre was rebuilt in 1985 after severe flooding in August 1983 destroyed it . 43°15′34″N 2°55′30″W  /  43.25944°N 2.92500°W  / 43.25944; -2.92500 This article about a Spanish building or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about an opera house or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Opera house An opera house

66-676: A New Testament cycle acted at Coventry . Additionally, a fifteenth-century play of the life of Mary Magdalene , The Brome Abraham and Isaac and a sixteenth-century play of the Conversion of Saint Paul exist. Besides the Middle English drama, there are a few surviving plays in Cornish : namely, the Ordinalia (which is a cycle of three plays) and Pascon Agan Aruth which both tell biblical stories, and Bewnans Ke and Bewnans Meriasek , which tell

99-492: A number of days. Taken as a whole, these are referred to as Corpus Christi cycles . These cycles were often performed during the Feast of Corpus Christi . The plays were performed by a combination of clerics and amateurs and were written in highly elaborate stanza forms; they were often marked by extravagant sets and special effects, but could also be stark and intimate. There was a wide variety of theatrical and poetic styles, even in

132-796: A part of the theatre's millennium celebration in 2000. The productions won Bill Bryden the Best Director title in both the 1985 Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the 1985 Laurence Olivier Awards , the year the three plays first appeared together in performance at the Lyceum Theatre . In 2001, the Isango Ensemble produced an African version of the Chester Cycle at the Garrick Theatre in London as The Mysteries – Yiimimangaliso , performing in

165-521: A public stage. This had the effect of transferring the organization of the dramas to town guilds, after which several changes followed. Vernacular texts replaced Latin, and non-Biblical passages were added along with comic scenes, for example in the Secunda Pastorum of the Wakefield Cycle . Acting and characterization became more elaborate. These vernacular religious performances were, in some of

198-405: A religious nature found a special place in the mystery plays performed on cathedral squares. As before, they dealt with sacred subjects, but they were not about worship per se. Secular musical theater also existed, but had a more popular and intimate aspect (see, for example, Adam de la Halle 's Jeu de Robin et Marion ("Play of Robin and Marion"), in the 13th century). At the beginning of

231-618: A series of plays dealing with major events in the Christian calendar, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. By the end of the 15th century, the practice of acting these plays in cycles on festival days was established in several parts of Europe. Sometimes, each play was performed on a decorated pageant cart that moved about the city to allow different crowds to watch each play. The entire cycle could take up to twenty hours to perform and could be spread over

264-634: A single cycle of plays. There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays. A collection is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants; there are also the Towneley plays of thirty-two pageants, the Ludus Coventriae , and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older medieval traditions. Also extant are two pageants from

297-414: Is a theater building used for performances of opera . Like many theaters, it usually includes a stage , an orchestra pit , audience seating, backstage facilities for costumes and building sets, as well as offices for the institution's administration. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other opera houses are part of larger performing arts centers. Indeed, the term opera house

330-457: Is often used as a term of prestige for any large performing arts center. Based on Aristoxenus 's musical system, and paying homage to the architects of ancient Greek theater , Vitruvius described, in the 1st century BC, in his treatise De architectura , the ideal acoustics of theaters. He explained the use of brazen vases that Mummius had brought to Rome after having had the theater of Corinth demolished, and as they were probably used in

363-516: The Opernhaus vorm Salztor in Naumburg in 1701. With the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, and vaudeville shows as well as operas and other musical events. In

SECTION 10

#1732873361104

396-655: The Elx Mystery Play or Mystery Play of Elx ) is a liturgical drama dating from the 13th century which has been enacted and celebrated every year without any known interruptions. Commemorating the Assumption of Mary, it is played on every 14 and 15 August in the Basilica de Santa María in the city of Elx (also known as Elche ). The prohibition of theatrical plays in churches by the Council of Trent eventually threatened to interrupt

429-649: The Festival of Britain , and are still performed by the local guilds. The N-Town cycle was revived in 1978 as the Lincoln mystery plays , and in 1994 the Lichfield Mysteries were revived. In 1977 the National Theatre commissioned Tony Harrison to create The Mysteries , a re-working of the Wakefield Cycle and others. It was again revived in 1985 (the production was filmed for Channel 4 Television ), and as

462-703: The Temptation in the Wilderness , and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin . In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emerging Medieval craft guilds . The York mercers , for example, sponsored the Doomsday pageant. Other guilds presented scenes appropriate to their trade: the building of the Ark from the carpenters' guild; the five loaves and fishes miracle from

495-556: The Theater of Dionysus in Athens was, according to the Suda , intended for the rehearsal of music that was to be sung in the grand theater or, according to Plutarch , for the jury to audition musicians competing for a prize. Ancient theaters provided the ideal conditions, but it was not yet time for opera: the aim was to worship the deities, not to venerate the muses . The subject was religious, it

528-488: The Theater of Pompey . As wooden theaters were naturally sonorous, these vases, placed between the seats on the stands, served as resonators in the stone buildings: "By means of this arrangement, the voice, which will come from the stage as from a center, will extend in circles, will strike in the cavities of the vases, and will be made stronger and clearer, according to the relationship of consonance that it will have with one of these vases." The odeon built by Pericles near

561-607: The 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambition and social position. There was no opera house in London when Henry Purcell was composing and the first opera house in Germany, the Oper am Gänsemarkt , was built in Hamburg in 1678, followed by the Oper am Brühl in Leipzig in 1693, and

594-857: The 17th century, in Italy, singing underwent yet another renewal, with the emergence of Baroque art at the height of the Renaissance . Italy continues to have many working opera houses, such as the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (the biggest in the country), the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan . The Teatro San Cassiano in Venice was the world's first public opera house, inaugurated as such in 1637. In

627-612: The 19th century, notes that "especially in England, miracle [came] to stand for religious play in general". Cornish language miracle plays, particularly the Ordinalia trilogy, the Beunans Meriasek , and the Bewnans Ke , were traditionally performed at the plain-an-gwarrys . To capture the attention of the audience, "the plays were often noisy, bawdy and entertaining." Attention to

660-483: The 2000s, most opera and theatre companies are supported by funds from a combination of government and institutional grants , ticket sales, and private donations. In the 19th-century United States, many theaters were given the name "opera house", even ones where opera was seldom if ever performed. Opera was viewed as a more respectable art form than theater ; calling a local theater an "opera house" therefore served to elevate it and overcome objections from those who found

693-655: The Creation, Adam and Eve , the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment . Often they were performed together in cycles which could last for days. The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle , but an occasionally quoted derivation is from ministerium , meaning craft , and so the 'mysteries' or plays performed by the craft guilds . As early as the fifth century, living tableaux were introduced into sacred services. The plays originated as simple tropes , verbal embellishments of liturgical texts, and slowly became more elaborate. At an early period chants from

SECTION 20

#1732873361104

726-553: The Medieval Mystery plays began to grow during the early 1800s, after their reference and publication by William Hone and James Heywood Markland . Notably, poet Lord Byron wrote the plays Cain and Heaven and Earth: A Mystery as modern version of medieval dramas on similar subjects. Mystery plays are produced regularly throughout the United Kingdom . The local cycles were revived in both York and Chester in 1951 as part of

759-559: The bakers; and the visit of the Magi , with their offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh, from the goldsmiths. The guild associations are not, however, to be understood as the method of production for all towns. While the Chester pageants are associated with guilds, there is no indication that the N-Town plays are either associated with guilds or performed on pageant wagons . Perhaps the most famous of

792-629: The larger cities in England such as York , performed and produced by guilds , with each guild taking responsibility for a particular piece of scriptural history. From the guild control originated the term mystery play or mysteries, from the Latin ministerium meaning "occupation" (i.e. that of the guilds). The genre was again banned as a result of the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England in 1534. The mystery play developed, in some places, into

825-633: The mystery plays, at least to modern readers and audiences, are those of Wakefield. Unfortunately, we cannot know whether the plays of the Towneley manuscript are actually the plays performed at Wakefield but a reference in the Second Shepherds' Play to Horbery Shrogys is strongly suggestive. In "The London Burial Grounds" by Mrs Basil Holmes (1897), the author claims that the Holy Priory Church, next to St Katherine Cree on Leadenhall Street, London

858-432: The responsorium were later elaborated with dialogue and dramatic action. Early performances were given in Latin, and were preceded by a vernacular prologue spoken by a herald who gave a synopsis of the events. The writers and directors of the earliest plays were probably monks or clerics. In 1210, suspicious of the growing popularity of miracle plays, Pope Innocent III issued a papal edict forbidding clergy from acting on

891-433: The service of the day were added to the prose dialogue. As these liturgical plays increased in popularity, vernacular forms emerged, and travelling companies of actors and theatrical productions became common in the later Middle Ages. The Quem quaeritis? is the best known early form of the dramas. It is a schematic dialogue between the angel at the tomb of Christ and the women who are seeking his dead body. Early forms of

924-859: The stories of the lives of saints. These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer , the Creation and Fall of Man , Cain and Abel , Noah and the Flood , Abraham and Isaac , the Nativity , the Raising of Lazarus , the Passion , and the Resurrection . Other pageants included the story of Moses , the Procession of the Prophets , Christ's Baptism ,

957-459: The theater morally objectionable. Notes Sources Mystery play Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably ) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe . Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They told of subjects such as

990-620: The yearly performance of the Misteri, but in 1632 Pope Urban VIII issued a special permit for its continuation. In 2001, UNESCO declared it one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Miracle plays, or Saint's plays, are now distinguished from mystery plays as they specifically re-enacted miraculous interventions by the saints , particularly St. Nicholas or St. Mary , rather than biblical events. Robert Chambers , writing in

1023-646: Was accompanied by singing and instrumental music. Worship was public, and the audience was made up of citizens as well as other categories of the population. Four centuries later, the Church abandoned spectacles as practiced in Antiquity. Histrions , representative of Greco-Roman civilization , gradually disappeared. The Middle Ages saw the abandonment of ancient theaters, which were transformed into gigantic stone quarries , like many other ancient buildings, both public or private. Music still had its place in worship. It continued to bring audiences together, but its content

Teatro Arriaga - Misplaced Pages Continue

1056-510: Was completely renewed. The Jeu de Daniel ("Play of Daniel") was a sung play, characteristic of the medieval Renaissance of the 12th century . The subject, taken from the biblical Book of Daniel , deals with Israel's captivity in Babylon . The play was written and performed by students of the Episcopal School of Beauvais , located in northern France. In the 15th century, sung theater of

1089-848: Was the location of miracle plays from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Edmund Bonner , Bishop of London (c 1500 - 1569) stopped this in 1542. The oldest liturgical drama in Spain is from the 12th century and kept today in Toledo Cathedral . It is a play about the Biblical Magi , three wise men from the East who followed a star and visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem . It is believed to have been based on an earlier play written in France. The Misteri d'Elx (in English,

#103896