The wings

The flat-wings scenery was shifted horizontally by a chariot-and-pole system. The system was controlled by six stagehands that moved the large capstan placed under the stage on the right hand side (seen from the auditorium). From the capstan, a large amount of lines and ropes went to a drum and from there to the carriages that were used to change the wings.

A flat wing was a painted piece of canvas in a frame. To the frame was attached a pole that was inserted in a sloth in the stage floor and connected to a chariot under the stage floor. To shift a set, the stagehands fixed the poles and the lines of a new set (that was already in place in the backstage) to the chariot system. The carriages ran on tracks. The Drottningholm system consists of forty-two chariots. When the capstan was turned, the present set of flat wings was moved away by the carriages and simultaneously replaced by the new set. This required a complicated amount of ropes and lines, and every string had to be attached to the chariot in the proper way. The Drottningholm chariot-and-pole system is relatively simple because there was not enough space in the theatre to have more equipment. Nevertheless, it worked very well and they were able to change sets within ten seconds. The flies, horizontal pieces of painted cloth attached to the flybars, and a finishing backdrop, completed the flat wing scenery.

Aleotti was the first to use the flat wings in the theatre. He constructed them in the theatre he build for Ferrara’s Accademia degli Intrepidi (1606), and later on in the Farnese theatre in Parma (1618). The static angled wings scenery was still in use at the time. The flat wings meant a change for more dynamic, changeable, stage settings. The first publication concerned with flat wings only was Troili’s Paradossi per pratticare la prospettive (1671). The flat wings were still operated manually. Torelli mechanised them by inventing the chariot-and-pole system that was subsequently elaborated in Italy and adopted by theatres all over Europe, including Drottningholm.

Frank Mohler made an animation of a Drottningholm wing change; it is to be viewed on his website: http://www1.appstate.edu/orgs/spectacle/Pages/18thscenechange.html