Operatic Pyrotechnics in the Eighteenth Century

A pre-publication version of a paper given at the conference “Revaluing Theatrical Heritage: Challenges and Opportunities,” Kortrijk, Belgium, 22–23 January 2013. The paper has been published in Theatrical Heritage: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Bruno Forment and Christel Stalpaert (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015), 23–40.  Publisher's website    Amazon

In Schiller’s Die Räuber (first performed in 1782) Karl von Moor berates the effete, effeminate age in which he lives: “das schlappe Kastraten-Jahrhundert”—the tired century of castrati. That is not his diatribe’s only theatrical allusion: “The blazing spark of Prometheus has burned out, so now we use the flame of lycopodium: theater fire that cannot light a pipe of tobacco.”[1]

    In this essay I will consider “theater fire”—and the lycopodium powder that played an important role in the production of fire on the operatic stage—as something positive: an example not of decadence and weakness, but of the extraordinary creativity and technical sophistication with which the eighteenth-century theater—and more specifically opera—enchanted its audience. I will discuss some pyrotechnic devices and materials used by eighteenth-century theatrical technicians to produce and to simulate fire.[2] 

    The theater has depicted fire for centuries, of course. The representation of fire has been one of opera’s preoccupations since the beginning of the genre. In Act 1 of Landi’s Il Sant’ Alessio (1631) the fires of hell seem to consume a stage filled with demons (Fig. 1). In the prologue of Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione, “a rain of fire spreads over the whole stage.” And Metastasio’s Didone abbandonata (first set to music by Domenico Sarro in 1724) culminates in the destruction of Dido’s palace by fire, into which the heroine throws herself. These were among many seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century operas with stage directions calling for fire. 

Fig. 1 Demons in Act 1 of Stefano Landi’s Il sant’ Alessio, as depicted in the edition of the full score published in Rome in 1634. 

    For evidence of how these stage directions might have been realized in performance, I consulted some of books on fireworks published in the eighteenth century: Amédée-François Frézier’s Traité des feux d’artifice (1706; reprinted in 1741 and revised in 1747); Perrinet d’Orval’s Traité des feux d’artifice pour les spectacles et pour la guerre (1750), Robert Jones’s Artificial Fireworks (1776), and the anonymous La Pyrothecnie pratique (1780). But none of these books mentions operatic fire; their authors seem to have regarded fireworks and the depiction of fire in opera as belonging to two completely separate spheres.

    The silence of these writers on the subject of opera has left us with little practical information about how fire, or the illusion of fire, was produced on the operatic stage before the second half of the eighteenth century. We are forced to speculate—for example, that in the infernal scene in Il Sant’Alessio the fire was simply painted on the wing flats, overhead borders, and backdrop. Perhaps the fire was painted on transparent material that allowed candlelight to shine through it. Lully’s stage designer Jean Bérain likewise seems to have had painted flats in mind in designing a machine that raised demons, surrounded by fire, from below the stage.[3] The wing flats depicted in the frontispiece of Ifigenia, an opera performed in Padua in 1705, suggests that this image corresponds, at least in part, to what audiences actually saw on stage. The priestesses’s proximity to the sacred fire makes it unlikely that its flames were real.[4]

Real fire on the stage

Audiences occasionally saw real fire on stage, as in a 1734 revival of Louis de la Coste's Philomèle (first performed in 1705; libretto by Pierre-Charles Roy). In act 5, Philomèle calls on the palace to burn:

Brûlez, Palais; ne soyez plus que cendre;

Que la foudre du Ciel y puisse encor descendre;

Brûlez, Palais; ce vaste embrâsement

Est un bûcher digne de mon Amant.

Those lines inspired the stage machinist in 1734 to produce a mixture of simulated and real fire, the effect of which was so impressive (and apparently so novel) that it caused some members of the audience to fear for their safety and the Mercure de France to describe in some detail the techniques used to produce the effect of the burning palace:

The palace and the city are on fire. The flames emerge from every side, and the burning timberwork collapses. These flames consist of several pieces of metal twisted into the shape of flames, covered with trasparent fabric painted the color of fire, with a large number of lights in the back. Tow, resin, and fireworks burn with real flames next to the painted ones, creating a mixture of sparks and whirlwinds of fire and smoke. The noise of the big pieces of timberwork falling while thus illuminated increases the surprise and terror, and realistically represents the destructive effects of a fire, so that several members of the audience, horrified by the spectacle, were on the point of fleeing for their lives.

This scenery was painted by Parrosel Fils of Avignon, following designs by the Chevalier Servandoni.[5] 

    Of the "transparent fabric painted the color of fire" we have a rare surviving example among the eighteenth-century scenic materials from the theater at Fontainebleau, recently discovered and identified by Valérie Trémoulet. On the flat (châssis) depicting the forge in François-André Philidor's opéra-comique Le Maréchal-Ferrant (1762), the part of the canvas where the fire was to appear was cut out and replaced with very thin, transparent material, painted to look like fire.[5a] 

    In the second half of the eighteenth century technical breakthroughs led to new ways of representing fire on the operatic stage. Most of the documentation for these innovations has to do with Paris, for at least three reasons. First, Paris, and in especially the Académie Royale de Musique—the Opéra—promoted innovation in pyrotechnic effects. Second, opera in Paris is more fully documented, in such sources as the Mercure de France, than opera in most other cities. And third, two pyrotechnicians active in Paris were among the first to publish books that discuss the use of fire on the stage.

    The two books in question are Traité pratique des feux d’artifice, pour le spectacle et pour la guerre, avec les petits feux de table, et l’artifice à l’usage des Théâtres, by A. M. Th. Morel, published in Paris in 1800, and Élémens de pyrotechnie, by Claude Ruggieri, published in Paris in 1802. Ruggieri was a member of a family of fireworks experts that included his father and uncles. Both books differ from those published earlier in the century in including chapters devoted explicitly to fire and fireworks in the theater. These chapters document a change that occurred earlier (but not early enough to be documented in the books published before 1781): the expansion of the pyrotechnician’s sphere of activity into the opera house. Ruggieri’s book is of particular interest to the historian of opera because it mentions several well known operas in connection with its discussions of particular pyrotechnic effects. 

    One of the techniques recommended by Ruggieri involved the interaction of real fire with elements of traditional scenography: "When it is necessary to depict on stage the flames of a pyre, for a sacrifice of some kind (for example, in the late M. Marmontel’s Didon), place filasse (or rather uncombed hemp fiber) behind a painted flat that depicts a pyre, in a quantity sufficient to burn for the necessary time, which can be ascertained by experiment."[6]

    As set to music by Niccolo Piccinni, Didon was one of the most successful French operas of the 1780s. Like Metastasio’s treatment of the same subject, it ends with Dido, abandoned by Aeneas, throwing herself on a funeral pyre (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Pierre-Adrien Pâris's project for the funeral pyre in Didon, as discussed in Droguet and Jordan 2005, 163

    Elsewhere Ruggieri used the word filasse interchangeably with étoupe, defining both as “the course part of hemp fiber that remains after the fine part has been removed for spinning.”[7] Both filasse and étoupe correspond to the somewhat antiquated English word tow. Tow had burned on the stage of the Opéra already in the 1734 staging of Philomèle, where (in accordance with Ruggieri’s advice) its flames were used in combination with painted ones.

    While burning tow at the Opéra was documented already in the 1730s, Bengal fire had only quite recently arrived in the theater when Ruggieri described it as “a kind of fire whose astonishing brightness illuminates objects to the point of allowing them to be seen almost as well as in full daylight.”[8] Bengal fire, according to Morel, consisted of  saltpeter, sulphur, and antimony. Ruggieri credited his father with introducing Bengal fire to the Parisian theater in 1787:

Bengal fire produces a very fine effect in fires required by theatrical works, such as Armide, Hécube, Astianax, Lodoïska, etc. It was first used at the Théâtre des Italiens in 1787, in Féodor et Lisinka, by M. Desforges. No one knew how to represent on fire the house of a distiller of Novgorod; my father, who was given the task, produced the desired effect.[9]

Ruggieri referred here to a play first performed at the Théâtre Italien in 1786. Lisinka, the daughter of a merchant of Novgorod, believes her lover Féodor to have died. He is, in fact, alive, but has been taken prisoner by serfs who are plotting to win their freedom by burning down the city. Lisinka overhears the plan and sets fire to the house where the conspirators are hiding. To her amazement, Féodor, escaping the flames, suddenly appears and falls into her arms (Fig. 3).

Fig. 4. “Lovzinski sauve Lodoiska des flammes”: one of several nineteenth-century lithographs by Boselman illustrating Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai’s novel Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas, offering an idea of what pyrotechnics might have achieved in the climactic scene of Cherubini’s operatic adaptation of an episode from Louvet’s novel.

    Ruggieri again claimed credit for his family for having introduced the pluie de feu (the rain of fire, envisioned much earlier by the librettist Quinault in Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione) to the French stage. In the introduction to his discussion of theatrical pyrotechnics, he wrote vaguely of a pluie de feu in Pascal Colasse’s Jason, apparently by his father or uncles, and possibly as early as 1741; I have not been able to substantiate this claim. Ruggieri also claims that fear of stage fires spreading to the rest of the theater kept their use restricted even after his family had demonstrated the effect of the rain of fire:

The business of theatrical fire had been neglected for a long time despite the success that my father and uncles achieved in it on their arrival in Paris in 1741. A rain of fire added to the opera Jason ou la Toison d’Or, [on a libretto] by J. B. Rousseau, began to attract attention to this area. It happened at Fontainebleau, before the king. For a long time pyrotechnicians limited themselves to this rain of fire, in works that required flames, because of the audience’s fears for its own safety. But the drama of M. Desforges (see [the discussion of Féodor et Lisinka on] p. 129) caused a sensation in Paris, which reassured the public so completely that since then they have, it appears, especially enjoyed the works that require this spectacle for the eyes.[11]

Ruggieri went on to explain the theatrical context for the rain of fire and some of the technical recommendations for the pyrotechnician who intended to deploy it:

The goal of the rain of fire is to imitate fire that falls from the sky, through the anger of the gods or by magic, as in Quinault’s Armide and M. Hoffmann’s Médée. The choice of jets depends on the size of the theater for which they are intended. For example, for the Opéra, cartridges 9 lignes [2 centimeters] in interior diameter and four inches [11 centimers] long are appropriate; these are filled with the third formula for Chinese fire… Place these cartridges twelve to fifteen inches apart on a rod or batten [above the stage].[12]

For the rain of fire Morel gave two formulas; of the second he said: “This formula is used for grand operas, like Armide, and so forth.”[13] lt closely resembled that of Chinese fire, with which it shares a crucial ingredient, iron filings, together with saltpeter, gunpowder, sulphur, and charcoal.

Lycopodium powder in torches and soufflets

Of les éclairs, Morel wrote of several different ways of producing flashes of light, including powdered resin and inflammable liquids; but he recommended lycopodium, which he said was easy to find in Paris: “Lycopodium is the material most appropriate for the production of lightning.”[14]

    Ruggieri also recommended the use of lycopodium, describing it as “a very fine powder, pale yellow in color…. It grows like a moss, on a plant called ‘Pied de loup’ (wolf's foot). It is used often in theaters to represent lightning, and also to fuel the torches of furies, which makes a fine fire.”

    This is the Bärlappenmehl that Schiller’s Karl von Moor dismissed so disdainfully in Die Räuber. Lycopodium powder consists of the spores of the club moss, a primitive plant of the genus Lycopodium (Fig. 5). The English name “club moss” comes from the club-shaped bodies that produce the spores. Dried, and then suspended in the air, these tiny spores produce a kind of cloud that burns very quickly and brightly, in a brilliant fireball still capable of impressing theater audiences today (Fig. 6). 

Fig. 5.  Lycopodium clavatum 

Fig. 6.  Lycopodium fireballs in the Teatro Piccolo, Milan, arranged by Effetti Speciali di Guerini Flavio & C. SAS 

    Some Europeans have known about the inflammability of lycopodium spores since the middle of the seventeenth century. The German scholar and traveler Adam Olearius, in his Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise (1647), wrote about the use of lycopodium in Russian fireworks. Olearius's book was soon published in English and French translation. Here is his report on lycopodium in the English translation of 1662:

We saw also, at a great distance, in the air, certain flames, which vanish'd as soon in a manner as they appear’d. I conceive these flames proceeded from a certain Drugg, which the Muscovites call Plaun, which is a yellow powder made of a certain herb, commonly found upon the ground, in the Forests that are planted with Pines and Birch, and is properly called in Latin, Acanthus, in French, Branche ursine, in English, Bears-foot, or Bears-britch. Every stalk of this herb hath on it two Buttons, which are ripe in August, and then the Muscovites are very carefull to gather them, dry them in an Oven, beat them, and keep the powder which comes from them in Ox-bladders, to be sold by the pound. It is us’d also in Medicine, as being a drier, and is administered with good successe in Wounds, and the Itch. But the Muscovites use it for the most part in their Divertisements, putting it into a Tin-box made like a Pyramid, into which they thrust that end of a Torch which is not lighted, and by that means make the powder come out, which being very small, immediately fastens on the flame, and is lighted, and disappears almost at the same time; so that continually thrusting in the Torch, a man makes ever and anon a new flame, which is very lively, and makes the nobler shew, in that it is not accompany’d with any smoke. This powder will not take fire, if it be not stirr’d after the foresaid manner: for if it be cast upon burning coals, or if a lighted Candle be thrust into it, it would not take fire.[15]

Thus, already in the middle of the seventeenth century, the properties of lycopodium were clearly stated in German, English, and French, and its potential as a theatrical device clearly evident. So I am surprised not to find any evidence of lycopodium being burned on the European stage until 1765, when the Opéra in Paris used it in torches held by demons in underworld scenes, first in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux and then, shortly thereafter, in Lully’s Thesée.

    Even before the introduction of the lycopodium torch, the infernal scene in Castor et Pollux probably used spectacular special effects. Bérain’s seventeenth-century design for a machine that lifted several demons simultaneously from below the stage, surrounded by flats depicting flames, could have inspired the set designers of Castor et Pollux. But torches spurting bursts of real fire raised the scene to a new level of visual excitement.

    The chemist Antoine Baumé claimed for himself a role in the invention of the lycopodium torch, by informing the fireworks expert Giovanni Battista Torré of lycopodium’s remarkable properties. Baumé boasted: “Around 1763 I informed the pyrotechnician Torré of lycopodium’s [fire-generating] characteristics. He immediately designed these torches of which he made the first use in fireworks that he gave on the Boulevards in Paris; he was soon imitated everywhere in the spectacles of Europe.”[16]

    An account in the Mercure de France of a revival of Thésée in 1766 contains an early description of the lycopodium torch, and attributes its invention not to Torré but to the dancer and choreographer Jacques Bandieri de Laval, who was probably responsible for introducing it to the Opéra:

The terror and grief of the young Eglé and the rage of her cruel rival produce, in concert with this whole grand ensemble, a spectacular tableau, as interesting for the heart as it is for the eyes. The torches with which the denizens of the underworld arm themselves increase the terror. Shaking these torches makes the fire increase so remarkably that it seems to envelop those who use it in a flood of fire, and even to come close to consuming the victim of their fury. This effect, so amazing to see, is produced by a powder enclosed in a compartment within the torch. This powder burns so easily that it makes no smoke and no odor, and there is no risk of being burned, even slightly, in the lively explosion. The discovery of this technique is due to the diligence of M. De Laval, choreographer of this part of the ballet as well as the one in act 1, and to his commitment to everything that can give truth to the spectacle.[17]

The lycopodium torch was evidently still a novelty in 1770, when the Mercure to France reported its use in a revival of Rameau’s Zoroastre: "The ballet of the wicked spirits in act 4 struck the audience with the terrible effect of the torches that spew torrents of flame. It is a new invention that, we believe, involves lycopodium or vegetable sulphur, of which the powder is set alight, extinguished, and suddenly rekindled as it passes near a flame of burning brandy."[18]

    This report mentions the second essential element of the lycopodium torch: an open flame fed by a reservoir of alcohol within the torch ignited the cloud of lycopodium spores.

    Both Morel and Ruggieri provided pictures of the lycopodium torch. Morel depicted its exterior (Fig. 7a), Ruggieri its interior (Fig. 7b). 

a                             b

Fig. 7.  Lycopodium torch with an alcohol-fueled pilot light. a) Exterior illustrated in Morel 1800; b) interior illustrated in Ruggieri 1802 

    In the 1770s the lycopodium torch became a standard element in underworld scenes at the Opéra, and with it a second larger device, the soufflet: a pair of bellows that generated a large cloud of lycopodium powder, likewise ignited by a flame of burning alcohol. Ruggieri illustrated the bellows (Fig. 8) and described them as follows: "These bellows are filled with the powder known as lycopodium. The opening must have small holes, like a watering can. In the middle of the holes, there must be one or more indentations with sponges soaked in alcohol, which are lit and which cause the powder to burst into flame when ejects it by pumping the bellows."[19] 

Fig. 8 Lycopodium bellows with an alcohol-fueled pilot light, as illustrated in Ruggieri 1802 

    The regularity with which lycopodium was used at the Opéra by the late 1770s is demonstrated by the depense des feux for operas by Rameau, Gluck, Philidor, and Floquet performed in 1778 (Appendix). This document records payments for four materials: lycopodium, alcohol, tow (filasse), and jets d’artifice (for Gluck’s Armide, presumably for its rain of fire). By far the largest expense was for the forty torches used in Castor et Pollux, which, together with two pairs of bellows, cost 3,688 livres for 36 performances of Rameau’s opera. This document also gives us valuable information about the fire-making devices. Each pair of bellows used 2.5 two and a half pounds of lycopodium (1.1 kilos) and 3 poissons of alcohol (3.5 deciliters); each torch used three quarters of a pound of lycopodium (340 grams) and one and a half poissons of alcohol (1.5 deciliters).

“The spectacles of Europe”

Theatrical producers outside of Paris took notice of the Opéra’s success with pyrotechnics. Within a year of the use of lyocopodium torches in Castor et Pollux David Garrick, manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, had asked for a model of the torch, presumably with the intention of using a similar device in London. Jean Monnet, his counterpart at the Opéra-Comique, responded: "My friend, Mr. Foley … has delivered to me your letter in which you request a model and an explanation of the torches used by the devils in the opera Castor et Pollux. M. Boquet, custodian of all such devilries, is having this model made, and I will send it to you at the first opportunity."[20]

    Schiller’s Karl von Moor refers to lycopodium as if it were a normal part of theatrical life in Germany by the time Die Raüber reached the stage in 1782; Baumé gave a similar impression by stating (in reference to the invention of the lycopodium torch in the mid 1760s) that it was “soon imitated everywhere in the spectacles of Europe.” Although those who wrote about opera outside of Paris very rarely mentioned lycopodium, that does not mean that its flames did not enliven such operas as Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte.

    Of a performance of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the Theater an der Wien in 1807 or 1808 Karl Theodor von Uklanski has left us a description suggesting that pyrotechnic innovations from Paris, including the lycopodium bellows, played an important role. After praising the beauty of the theater and some fine singing, he wrote: "The sceneries were also beautiful, especially the conflagration of the capitol, which exceeded all expectation; the flames rose gradually on high, volumes of smoke often enveloped them, till the wings burned crackling to their frames and collapsed with a shower of sparks."[21]

“The most horrifying tableau”: Fire in Salieri’s Les Danaïdes

Descriptions such as Uklanski’s of theatrical pyrotechnics in cities other than Paris are exceedingly rare. For more detailed accounts, and a final example of fire on the operatic stage, we must return to Paris. Eyewitness descriptions of the first production of Salieri’s Les Danaïdes (1784), an opera whose concluding underworld scene must have been conceived with the aim of exploiting the thrilling sight of lycopodium fireballs and other pyrotechnic devices, testifiy to the importance of fire on the late eighteenth-century operatic stage, and give us some sense of the effect of theatrical pyrotechnics on an audience that included visitors from abroad. 

    Les Danaïdes is based on a particularly gruesome Greek myth. The Danaids of the title are the 50 daughters of King Danaus. To seal a reconciliation with the family of Egyptus, Danaus’ archenemy, the Danaids are to be married to the 50 sons of Egyptus, who to celebrate the wedding. Hypermnestre, one of the Danaids, loves Lyncée, one of the sons of Egyptus. Danaus reveals to his daughters that the reconciliation is a trick; he orders them to kill their husbands on their wedding night. All the daughters except Hypermnestre agree to do so. After much hesitation she tells Lyncée about the plot, but too late to save his brothers. Lyncée attacks the palace of Danaus, slaughtering the king and his daughters, but saving Hypermnestre.

    Danaus’s death is followed by a few moments of thanksgiving by Lyncée and his soldiers—but the celebration is interrupted by an earthquake, lightning and thunder, as Danaus’s palace falls into ruin. A change of scene, accompanied by tumultuous instrumental music, reveals the underworld, where Danaus and his daughters suffer eternal punishment. Danaus is chained to a rock, his entrails pecked at by a vulture, while demons torment his daughters.

    That final scene made a great impression on the Englishman William Bennet, visiting Paris in 1785: "Our opera ended with a representation of Hell, in which the fifty Danaides were hauled and pulled about as if the Devils had been going to ravish them. Several of them in the violence of the French action being literally thrown flat upon their backs; and they were all at last buried in such a shower of fire, that I wonder the Playhouse was not burned to the ground."[22]

    How did the stagehands of the Opéra create these effects? Graf von Bentheim-Steinfurt, a German nobleman, was given a backstage tour of the Opéra during a performance of Les Danaïdes. His account of this visit mentions lycopodium torches only in passing.[23] Much more informative about the pyrotechnic effects was Monsieur Hivart (also spelled Hyvart) a cellist in the orchestra of the Opéra who, during the 1780s, acted as an agent for an opera-loving Russian nobleman, Nicholas Sheremetev.[24]

    Shortly after the premiere of Salieri’s opera Hivart sent a score to Sheremetev with a strong endorsement: “La musique des Danaides est superbe.”[25] Intrigued, Sheremetev asked Hivart repeatedly for information on how the opera was staged in Paris: “I need precise details about the scenery, and, having received them, I will do everything possible to present the opera in our theater. The music is so beautiful that I’ve fallen completely in love with it.”[26] Hivart responded, in several letters, with information—most of it available nowhere else—about costumes, props, gestures, sets, and the pyrotechnics used in the spectacular underworld scene with which the opera ends. 

    Hivart explained the destruction of Danaus’s palace, for which Salieri provided thrilling music, in several separate statements. First, in May 1786, he wrote:

It is enough that the back of the stage consist of individual parts that allow it, at the sound of the whistle, to fall apart and turn into ruins. Both side walls of the palace, consisting of columns, may not crumble, because it is necessary for fire to be produced from the wings immediately after lightning hits the palace two or three times. Tongues of flame behind the wings are produced by burning tow attached to poles. Stagehands holding the poles are hidden behind the wings so that the audience cannot see anything except the burning tow. At that moment the side wings are removed on their chassis, and replaced by those depicting the underworld. At the same time the backdrop collapses at the sound of the whistle, and the flames appear behind the ruins. It is done with the help of the bellows for lightning.[27]

The destruction of the palace left the stage free for the underworld scene, which Hivart described vividly:

Chained to a rock in the underworld is not Danaus, but a man dressed like him. He is accompanied by two or three demons who relentlessly torment him, the furies ceaselessly shaking their torches, while lightning burns him repeatedly. At the second representation of this work the vulture was omitted, not without reason: the man who played this role could not portray a bird persuasively. In the ballet, the dancers, dressed as demons or furies, torment the Danaids, but without torches, each of them chasing one of the Danaids. He then grabs her by the arm and forcefully throws her on her knees and then raises her. All this sublime horror culminates in the rain of fire. The Danaids, completely overwhelmed by their agony, are grouped into different poses with the furies. Some lie on the floor, others on their knees, others stretch their hands out to heaven. All of that must form the most horrifying tableau at the moment when the curtain falls.[28]

Sheremetev never did stage Les Danaïdes in Russia, but that does not lessen the value of Hivart’s advice on how the opera should be performed. As a member of the orchestra of the Opéra, he wrote from a perspective quite different from that of the journalists and opera-lovers whose voices dominate the printed discussions of tragédie lyrique. He thus helps us understand how fire, interacting with scenery, gestures, and music, contributed to eighteenth-century opera.

Appendix

Expenses for Fire at the Opéra, 1778, in the productions of Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Orphée, and Armide, Philidor’s Ernelinde, and Etienne-Joseph Floquet’s Héllé

Paris, Archives Nationales, AJ13 3, transcribed in Angermüller 1982, 298–300.

Dépense des feux 

Pour Castor

Deux soufflets employant chacun 2 liv. ½ de poudre

de Licopode, fait 5 liv. à 2l 2s, cy                                          10 livres 10 sols

Les mêmes soufflets consummant chacun trois poissons

d’esprit de vin fin à 3 la bouteille, fait 3 demi-septiers                   2 5 –

40 flambeaux compris ceux qui servent aux cintres pour

les éclairs contiennent chacun trois quarterons de

Licopode fait 30 livres, cy                                                                  63 – –

Pour les dits 40 flambeaux un poisson 1/2 d'esprit de vin

fait 7 pintes 1/2, cy                                                                          22 10 –

Six flambeaux autour du tombeau, une pinte                                  3 – – 

Deux livres de filasse pour la trappe par où sort Mlle Allard

à 12s la livre                                                                                         1 4 –

                                                                                                            102 9 –

Pour Iphigénie [en Aulide]

Un demi septier d'esprit de vin pour le sacrifice                              15 –

Pour Ernelinde

4 soufflets consommant chacun 2 liv. 1/2 de poudre de

licopode fait en tout 10£ à 2£ 2s cy                                                  21 – –

Les mêmes employent chacun 3 poissons d'esprit de

vin fait en tout pinte 1/2 à 3£ cy                                                          4 – –

25 livres de filasse à 12s cy                                                                  15 – –

                                                                                                                40 10 –

Pour Orphée

Trois soufflets consommant chacun 2 liv. 1/2 de

licopode fait 7 liv. 1/2 pour tout à 2l 2s                                              15 15 –

Trois poisson d'esprit de vin pour chacun des

mêmes soufflets fait en tout pinte et poisson                                      3 7 –

                                                                                                               19 2 –

Pour Hellé

Douze livres de filasse à 12s cy 7 4 –

Cinq soufflets 3 dans le dessous et 2 au ceintre employant

chacun 2 livres 1/2 de licopode fait en tout douze livres

et demie                                                                                               26 5 –

Les mêmes employent trois poissons d'esprit de vin ce qui

fait pour les cinq deux pintes moins poisson                                   5 12 –

                                                                                                            39 1 –

Pour Armide

33 jets d'artifice à 15s                                                                      24 15 –

30 livres de filasse à 12s                                                                  18  –  –

6 soufflets employant au total 15 liv. de licopode                          31 10 –

et deux pintes et demi septier d'esprit de vin                                  6 15 –

16 flambeaux employant en tout douze liv. de licopode                  25 4 –

Et deux pintes et demie d'esprit de vin                                              7 10 – 

                                                                                                           113 14 – 

36 représentations ou repetitions Generales de Castor

à 102£ 9s chacune cy                                                                         3688 4  –

17 idem d'Iphigénie à 19s                                                                    12 15 –

15 idem d'Ernelinde à 40£ 10s chacune                                            607 10 –

17 idem d'Orphée et Euridice à 19£ 2s 6d chaque                           325 11 –

9 idem d'Hellé à 39£ 1s 6d                                                                  351 13 –

7 idem d'Armide depuis la reprise jusqu'au vendredi

12 fev. inclusivement à 113£ 14s cy                                                  795 18 –

Total de la Dépense des feux                                                          5781 11 – 

Bibliography

ANGERMÜLLER, Rudolph (1982). W. A. Mozarts musikalische Umwelt in Paris (1778): Eine Dokumentation. Munich: Katzbichler

BAUMÉ, Antoine (1797). Eléments de Pharmacie théorique et pratique, 8th edition. Paris: Les Libraires Associés

BLACK, Jeremy (1992). The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century. New York: St. Martins Press

BURNIM, Kalman A. (1961). David Garrick, Director. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 

DROGUET, Vincent and JORDAN, Marc-Henri (2005). Théâtre de Cour: Les Spectacles à Fontainebleau au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux

ELIZAROVA, N. A. (1944). Teatry Sheremetevykh. Moscow: Ostankinsky Dvorets-Muzey

GARRICK, David (1832). The Private Correspondence of David Garrick. 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley 

GUEST, Ivor (1996). The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet d'Action in France, 1770–1793. London: Dance Books

KRUTTGE, Eigel (1923–24). Aus den Reisetagebüchern des Grafen Ludwig von Bentheim-Steinfurt, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 6, 16-53.

MOREL, A. M. Th. (1800). Traité pratique des feux d’artifice, pour le spectacle et pour la guerre, avec les petits feux de table, et l’artifice à l’usage des Théâtres. Paris: Firmin Didot

OLEARIUS, Adam (1662). The Voyages & Travels of the Ambassadors from the Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia. Begun in the Year M.DC.XXXIII. and finish'd in M.DC.XXXIX, translated into English by John Davies. London: Thomas Dring

RICE, John A. (2014). The staging of Salieri's Les Danaïdes as Seen by a Cellist in the Orchestra, Cambridge Opera Journal 26, 65–82 

RUGGIERI, Claude F. (1802). Élémens de pyrotechnie, divisés en cinq parties. Paris: Barba

STALPAERT, Christel (1999). Towards a contextual and extratextual interpretation of 18th century theatre: The pictorial representation of fireworks on the occasion of the passage of Duke Charles Alexander de Lorraine – de Baar through Aalst in May 1749. In Jaak van Schoor, Christel Stalpaert, and Bram van Oostveldt (Eds.), Performing Arts in the Austrian 18th Century: New Directions in Historical and Methodological Research (pp. 67–88). Ghent: University of Ghent

UKLANSKI, Carl Theodor von (1808). Briefe über Polen, Österreich, Sachsen, Bayern, Italien, Etrurien, den Kirchenstaat und Neapel… geschrieben auf einer Reise von Monat Mai 1807. bis zum Monat Februar 1808, I. Theil. Nürnberg: Friedrich Campe

UKLANSKI, Carl Theodor von (s.d.). Travels in Poland, Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and the Tyrol, in the Years 1807 and 1808. London: J. Souter

Notes

[1] Der lohe Lichtfunke Prometheus ist ausgebrannt, dafür nimmt man jetzt die Flamme von Bärlappenmehl – Theaterfeuer, das keine Pfeife Taback anzündet.

[2] I use the word “theater” in a literal sense. For a study of fireworks as part of theater understood metaphorically—“a vast theatrical ritual that transformed the city into a stage and involved king and people alike as actors in a cosmic drama”—see Stalpaert 1999.

[3] Bérain’s design is illustrated in Mary Cyr, "The dramatic role of the chorus in French opera: evidence for the use of gesture, 1670–1770,” in Opera and the Enlightenment, ed. Thomas Bauman and Marita Petzoldt McClymonds, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 105–18 (114).

[4] The frontispiece is reproduced in Reinhard Strohm, “Iphigenia’s curious ménage à trois in myth, drama, and opera,” in (Dis)embodying Myths in Ancien Règime Opera, ed. Bruno Forment, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012, 117–38.

[5] Le Palais et la Ville sont en feu, on voit sortir les flammes de toutes parts, et la charpente tomber embrazée; ces flammes sont faites par le moyen de plusieurs fers contournés en forme de flammes, recouverts de toilles transparentes peintes en feu, et par une quantité de lumieres derrière; des étoupes, de l’arcanson, et des artifices brûlans en flammes réelles à côté de celles qui sont peintes, mêlées de plusieurs étincelles et de tourbillons de feu et de fumée; le bruit que ces grosses pieces de charpente font en tombant ainsi allumées, augmentent l’étonnement et la terreur, et représentent au vrai la destruction et les effets d’un incendie; ensorte que plusieurs spectateurs effrayez par le spectacle, ont été sur le point de se sauver.

    Cette décoration a été peinte sur les desseins du Chevalier Servandony, par le sieur Parrosel le fils, d’Avignon (Mercure de France, December 1734, p. 2705–7). 

[5a] Droguet and Jordan 2005, 87.

[6] Quand il s’agit de représenter au théâtre le feu d’un bûcher, pour un sacrifice quelquonque: par example, comme dans Didon, de feu M. Marmontel, on met derrière le chassis peint qui représente le bûcher, de la filasse ou plutôt du chanvre non peigné, en assez grande quantité pour qu’il brûle le temps nécessaire: ce qu’un essai peut indiquer (Ruggieri 1802, 272). 

[7] L'étoupe ou filasse est la partie grossière du chanvre, qui demeure après qu'on en a tiré le meilleur pour le filer (Ruggieri 1802, 51).

[8] une espèce de feu, dont la clarté surprenante éclaire les objets au point de les faire distinguer presque aussi bien qu'en plein jour (Ruggieri 1802, 128).

[9] Les flammes de bengale produisent un très-bel effet dans les incendies qu’exigent les pièces de théâtre, telles que Armide, Hécube, Astianax, Lodoïska, etc. C’est au théatre des Italiens, qu’on en fit usage pour la première fois en 1787, dans Féodor et Lisinka, de M. Desforges. On était embarrassé comment on représenterait en feu la maison d’un distillateur de Novogorod; mon père, qui s’en chargea, rendit l’effet desiré (Ruggieri 1802, 129).

[10] M. Boulet, machiniste de l’Opéra, dont les talens sont assez connus, fut chargé en 1791, d’établir au théâtre de la rue Feydeau, les machines pour l’opéra de Lodoïska, dans lequel il fit briller encore mieux les effets des flammes de bengale et de l’Artifice du théâtre (Ruggieri 1802, 129–30).

[11] La partie des feux de théâtre, avait été long-temps négligée malgré les succès que mon père et mes oncles y obtinrent à leur arrivée à Paris, en 1741. Une pluie de feu qu'on adapta à l'opéra de Jason ou la Toison d'Or, de J. B. Rousseau, commença à porter l'attention de ce côté. Ce fut à Fontainebleau, devant le roi. On se borna long-temps à cette pluie de feu, dans les pièces qui exigeaient des incendies, à cause des craintes que concevait le public pour sa propre sûreté; mais la pièce de M. Desforges (Voyez pag. 129) fit une sensation dans Paris, qui tranquillisa tellement le public, qu'il parut se plaire principalment depuis, aux ouvrages qui exigeaient ce spectacle des yeux (Ruggieri 1802, 271).

[12] Le but de la pluie de feu, est d'imiter le feu qui tombe du ciel, par la colère des Dieux, ou par magie, comme dans Armide, de Quinault, ou Médée, de M. Hoffman. On choisit les jets, suivant la grandeur du théâtre pour lequel ils sont destinés. Par example, pour l'Opéra, on prend des cartouches de neuf lignes de diamètre intérieur, et de quatorze pouces de long: on les charge de la troisième composition de feu chinois… On place ces cartouches à douze ou quinze pouces de distance, sur une tringle ou herse (Ruggieri 1802, 276).

[13] Cette composition s’emploie pour les grands opéra, comme Armide, etc. (Morel 1800, 139).

[14] Le lycopodium est la composition la plus propre à former des éclairs (Morel 1800, 141).

[15] Olearius 1662, 237.

[16] J'ai fait connoître, environ en 1763, cette propriété du lycopode, à Torré, Artificier: il composa aussitôt ces flambeaux, dont il fit le premier usage dans les feux d'artifice qu'il donnoit sur les Boulevards à Paris; il fut bientôt imité partout dans les spectacles de l'Europe (Baumé 1797, vol. 3, 42).

[17] L’effroi, la douleur de la jeune Eglé, la rage jouissante de sa barbare rivale, composent avec tout ce grand ensemble, un tableau énergique, également intéressant pour le cœur & pour les yeux. Les flambeaux, dont s’arment les habitans des enfers, en augmentent la terreur. En agitant ces flambeaux, la flamme s’en accroît si prodigieusement, qu’elle semble tantôt enveloper dans des torrens de feu ceux qui s’en servent, & tantôt prête à consumer l’intéressante victime de leur furie. Cet effet, si prodigieux en apparence, est celui d’une poudre contenue dans les capsules des flambeaux; cette poudre est si subtilement inflammable, qu’elle ne produit nulle fumée, nulle odeur, & n’est aucun risqué pour brûler, même légérement, dans sa plus vive explosion; la découverte de ce moyen est dû aux soins & au zèle ardent de M. DE LAVAL, compositeur de cette partie du ballet, ainsi que du premier acte, pour tout ce qui peut rendre la vérité dans le spectacle (Mercure de France, January 1766, 204). On Laval, who much later claimed credit for the invention of the lycopodium torch, see Guest 1996, 19, 249 (my thanks for this reference to Marc-Henri Jordan, personal communication).

[18] Le balet des esprits malfaisans, au 4e. acte, a frappé par l’effet terrible des flambeaux qui jettent des torrens de flamme; c’est une invention nouvelle que nous croyons être du lycopodium ou souffre végétal, dont la poussière s’embrâse, s’éteint & se rallume subitement en passant par le feu de l’esprit de vin (Mercure de France, April 1770, 169).

[19] Ce soufflet est remplis de la poudre nommée Lycopodium ou Lycopode; il doit être percé par le vase, comme un arrosoir: dans le centre des trous, il doit y avoir une ou plusieurs bobèches garnies d'une éponge imbibée d'esprit de vin, qu'on allume et qui enflamme cette poudre, lorsqu'on la fait sortir, en appuyant sur le soufflet.

[20] Mon ami, Mr. Foley m’a remis l'argent que vous avez touché pour Mr. de Crébillon, et il m'a communiqué vôtre lettre par laquelle vous demandez un modèle et un éclaircissement sur les flambeaux dont les diables se servoient dans l’opéra de “Castor et Pollux.” Mr. Boquet, qui est dépositaire de toutes ces diableries, fait faire ce modèle, et je vous l'enverrai par la première occasion (Monnet to Garrick, 9 December 1766, in Garrick 1832, II, 499). Louis-René Boquet was a designer of costumes and scenery at the Opéra. Monnet fulfilled his promise; for the letter that accompanied the model see Burnim 1961, 73

[21] Die Decoration war sehr schön; besonders übertraf der Brand des Capitols meine Erwartung. Man sah die Flammen immer mehr und mehr sich erheben, ein dichter Rauch unterbrach zuweilen das lodernde Feuer; die Seitengebäude brannten mit Geprassel bis aufs Skelet ab, und stürzten mit sprühende Funken zusammen (Uklanski 1808, 179–80). The translation here is largely derived from Uklanski s.d., 111–12, with a few emendations to bring it closer to the original German.

[22] Quoted in Black 1992, 256.

[23] Je vis aussi les flambeaux des Diables garnies de Lycopodium (Kruttge 1923–24, 23).

[24] Hivart’s letters to Sheremetev, preserved in the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg, were published in Russian translation in Elizarova 1944; but they have been published in the original French and they remain little known outside of Russia.

[25] Quoted in Rice, 2014, 70. 

[26] Quoted in Rice, 2014, 71.

[27] Quoted in Rice, 2014, 79.

[28] Quoted in Rice, 2014, 80–81.