Public theatres in Europe did not experiment with perspective scenery until the first opera house, the San Cassiano, was built in Venice in 1637. The experimentation with perspective had taken place only in the West and only in court theatres, but it led to the invention of the proscenium arch and the clockwork stage. The proscenium was first used about 1560 to provide a frame for a fixed-perspective vista. But the magical effect of perspective was so compelling that people wanted to see it change, preferably before their eyes, and the proscenium served the additional purpose of hiding the necessary machinery. Large devices shaped like a prism with a different scene on each of the three sides, called periaktoi by Vitruvius, were used in place of angled wings to achieve some of the earliest set changes. This was the system in use when Bernardo Buontalenti built the Teatro degli Uffizi (1585) in Florence, the first theatre with a permanent proscenium stage. This was a cumbersome system, however, and it was not until 1600 that efficient methods of scene changing could be devised. That year the technique was developed for transferring a perspective painting onto a series of flat surfaces, facing the audience, along the sides of a stage (wings), across the stage at the level of the top of the wings (boarders), and at the rear of the stage (backdrops). Eventually the wings, boarders, and backdrops of a stage could be changed from one set to another in 10 seconds while any number of special effects took place simultaneously; this was the clockwork stage that, along with the proscenium stage, dominated theatre for the next 200 years. It was this type of theatre that was built in Parma in 1618; the Teatro Farnese is today the oldest proscenium arch theatre in existence.

From 1650 onward, stages became increasingly mechanized. Stage technology was an important feature of theatre design in the Baroque period, but its impact was seen primarily in the ever-increasing demands for backstage space. Technology also influenced onstage space in England and France, where a tradition of having audience members sitting along the sides of the stage had become fashionable and was not entirely eliminated until the 1760s. In the Baroque period, architects who designed theatres focused on the layout and decoration of the house. At the start of the period, the audience area was most often rectangular, but it also took the shape of a U, a horseshoe, and a bell. While all these forms continued to be used during the 17th century, increasing attention was being given to a variety of elliptical shapes, especially as theatres were increasingly specialized for use primarily for spoken drama, opera, or music, each of which required its own acoustical properties.

The shape of the house was determined by the shape of the galleries that formed it. These continued to increase in number to as many as seven, all but the uppermost level of which might be divided into boxes. Boxes were an outgrowth of the medieval tournament stands and are described as components of a theatre as early as 1516. They were a common feature of both English and Spanish playhouses by the 1580s, but by the mid-17th century they had taken on a new importance. In court theatres and opera houses, boxes and their location within the theatre were a confirmation of social status. In public theatres, boxes were sold to pay for the construction of the building, and theatres became increasingly dependent on this form of financing. The Baroque theatres are often referred to as “box, pit, and gallery” theatres, a term reflecting the social hierarchy established within them.

As the political challenges to such a hierarchy grew across Europe during the period, however, this theatrical form was also challenged. Jacques-François Blondel published one of the first attacks on Baroque theatre designs, and especially on boxes, in 1771. But by this time there already had been numerous examples of more democratic arrangements of audience spaces, ironically in court theatres, where rulers were increasingly interested in avoiding rivalries. The Drottningholm Theatre, a court theatre in Sweden, was, for instance, built with only two decorative boxes near the stage and no galleries. Public theatres had an additional incentive for the elimination of boxes. These theatres were becoming so large that they had reached the limits of the ability of actors to project their voices in them. Reducing the number of boxes allowed for larger numbers of people to be into the same volume of space. But the transition to these kinds of arrangements in the public theatres was slow, and it was still slower in the opera houses.

Early in the Baroque period the decoration scheme of theatres was largely restrained, but it became increasingly ornate until it reached the heights of the Rococo in the mid-18th century. After that peak, theatre decor gradually grew more restrained again as theatres, and architecture more broadly, moved into the age of the Classical revival in the last quarter of the 18th century. Increasing attention also was paid to front-of-house facilities, from ticket offices to lobbies, during the Baroque period.

The 19th century

The staging challenges of the works produced under the influence of Romanticism, as well as of the widely popular genre of melodrama, dictated the elimination of painted sets and the wing and boarder systems that had dominated the Baroque period. Painted scenery was increasingly replaced by three-dimensional scenery with which the actors could interact. This led to the advent of the wooden stage, which, through a combination of traps, slots, and elevators in the stage floor, was able to provide an extraordinary number of visual effects that gradually drove perspective scenery from the stage. The advent of the use of gas—its first successful application was demonstrated in 1803—and, subsequently, electricity made it possible to control lighting as never before. It also reduced the need for the actors to work on the apron part of the stage just in front of or just within the proscenium, a development that took the actors out of the volume of space occupied by the audience and put them into a separate world. When, in the last quarter of the 19th century, the lights began to be turned off regularly in the house during the performance, the experience of going to the theatre was transformed from a social event to an experience in observation.

The 19th century also marked the advent of increased concern for audience comfort and safety. The gradual decline of boxes—which were often located only near the stage, where they provided the best place to be seen but not necessarily the best place to see—was causing a reduced level of comfort for some important patrons. As compensation, the pit, which was the largest area from which one could see the entire stage, was significantly improved. In France the standing audience was removed, and seating was installed for the first time; in other counties benches were replaced by individual seats. Dividers were installed between small groups of seats in the rows nearest the stage, and the new designation of “the stalls” was given to this area. The advent of the use of iron for theatre support columns allowed the lowest level of boxes to be removed and the pit to be extended under the remaining galleries, thereby increasing the seating capacity of this area. Other columns were significantly reduced in size so that sight lines were greatly improved. The use of steel at the end of the 19th century allowed the galleries to be cantilevered, which improved sight lines even further. Fire safety became an increasing preoccupation of city planners, and their regulations became a major component of every theatre design.