Smoke and Mirrors

Verdi’s painstaking attention to detail went beyond the score of Macbeth and the preparation of singers. (He allegedly made Felice Varesi and Marianna Barbieri-Nini, who respectively created the roles Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in 1847, rehearse their opening duet 150 times in a row.) The composer was also deeply invested in how the opera would be staged. He was adamant that the production accurately evoked 11th-century Scotland, and he consulted historical sources to check the dates of Macbeth’s reign. Verdi was also concerned about the theatrical effects used in the work’s supernatural scenes, especially the apparitions (of daggers and kings) and appearance of Banquo’s ghost in the Act II banquet scene.

Indeed, Macbeth was created amid a flourishing of technological innovation on both sides of the Atlantic. When the opera premiered in Florence, Verdi considered—but ultimately decided against—using a technique called phantasmagoria for these special effects. Phantasmagoria was a form of horror theater that used magic lanterns, an early image projection apparatus developed in the 17th century which worked by placing glass slides with painted images in front of a light source, to project scary images. This new form of theater was brought to its artistic peak by French showman and physicist Étienne-Gaspard Robert, who performed under the stage name “Robertson” and developed his own version of the magic lantern called a Fantoscope. Kept behind a cloth screen coated with varnish to make it slightly transparent, the device would rear-project images onto the screen while remaining out of view of the audience, which remained in total darkness. Also called a “magic lantern on wheels,” the Fantoscope was mounted on a track so it could be moved back and forth to increase or decrease the size of the projected images, thereby making them appear to approach or retreat. Additional glass slides could be layered on top of one another, allowing one slide to stay stationary while another slide was manipulated—for example, to produce the effect of eyes shifting on a figure’s face.

Beyond this innovation, several other techniques were used in Verdi’s time—and even in Shakespeare’s time—to create a wide variety of theatrical effects.

ILLUSIONS

In the 19th century, Pepper’s Ghost was a popular device for projecting ghostly images onto the stage. Rather than place a machine to be manipulated behind a diaphanous curtain, as in phantasmagoria, Pepper’s Ghost worked by having an actor positioned below the stage (perhaps accessed through a trap door). The actor would stand in front of a mirror, with a light source directed up at them. At the same time, a sheet of glass would be placed on the stage. When the light hit the actor, their image would be reflected in the mirror and then projected onto the glass sheet for the audience to see. An advancement from early forms of image projection, Pepper’s Ghost allowed the actor to be seen moving and speaking without being on stage.

THUNDER

Verdi loved a good storm. (See, for example, Rigoletto.) So did Shakespeare. (See, for example, King Lear.) To create the effect of thunder, you can roll a cannonball across a wooden chute, floor, or false ceiling above the stage. A thunder machine, a wooden box balanced like a seesaw, could also be manipulated to roll cannonballs back and forth. A thunder cart or rumble is a wooden cart loaded with cannon balls that can be pushed back and forth on non-circular wheels to produce the desired effect. A thunder sheet, meanwhile, is a commonly used thin piece of metal, hung vertically and struck with hands or mallets to create loud rumbling and crashes.