Romanticism Exhibition

How the Romantics put fear in our hearts

This prompt book for the opera production of Der Vampyr is interleaved with blank pages for stage directions and gives a glimpse into stage practices around 1832. For the Frankfurt premiere, the director made notes about stage effects such as thunder, lightning, pistol shots, moonlight, and coloured lighting. For particularly difficult entrances, he added cues and musical notation. The director sketched the actors’ positions and movements for almost every new scene, and also made drawings of the two most important sets. His directions for the spectacular first scene in the rocky gorge show that theatres were still using Baroque stage effects at the time. The production was performed only three times.