Zwischenspiel

An interlude in the theater (up to about 1700 and intermedium ) is an insert between the acts of a drama or images. The interlude mostly belongs to the genre of comedy, drama, into which it is inserted, on the other hand to the genre of tragedy.

The insert was used as a rest and changing break for the actors and the change of set. Therefore, they often found instead on the proscenium in front of the main curtain. In addition to the interludes there were pros and sequels that were content not necessarily connected to the main game.

History

In ancient Greece, affiliated recitations and songs of the theater choir the dialogical parts ( Epeisodion ) of the dramas. In Roman times, this choral passages were pantomimic interludes.

In the religious- didactic mystery plays of the late Middle Ages, often burlesque episodes were inserted. Since then, interludes often differ not only by the comic, but also by the language of the main game: The drama was held in the form language, Latin, and later Italian or French, while the interludes were vernacular and often written in dialect. The Spanish stage developed the interlude to its own poetic genre, the Entremés, which was followed by the Sainete. In Germany there were interludes spoken already in the drama of Renaissance humanism. In the 17th century it peaked again. A prominent example of musical performances from this period is the Abdelazer Suite from 1676 by ​​Henry Purcell. In the 18th century, the interlude was then gradually replaced by such ( Interlude ). Especially in the French tradition was dancing to the music. This type interlude called Divertissement.

Between games were popular, while the three - or five-act serious drama, in which they were inserted, with his often political importance was a representative Compulsory for the court. A special case were the main and state actions in which comic interludes were the main thing behind which the serious drama became a template that merely regulated the flow.

From the sung comic interludes at the opera ( Intermezzo ) dates from the early 18th century, the opera buffa. One of the most famous interludes that could be solved as an independent unit of the drama, to which it originally belonged, was Pergolesi's La serva padrona ( 1733). Strictly speaking, it consisted of two contiguous interludes that were given between the three acts of an opera seria. The detachment of the short scenic interludes of the great serious drama in the 18th century was emblematic of the emancipation of the bourgeois " popular theater " from the court theater. This social emancipation seems still in the naturalistic theory of the one-act play by August Strindberg.

The diversity of the interludes in the late 18th and 19th centuries were not only the scenic one-act plays and musical Entractes, but also extended poem recitations, tableaux vivants, mimes or acrobatic numbers. A clear separation between the spoken, sung and mimic interludes were rare ( cf. Vaudeville ). In Vaudeville and Music Hall after 1850 the whole program was as it were from interludes. Theaters with artistic standards, as they emerged at the end of the century, partly from entertainment theaters (such as the German Theatre in Berlin ), so often tried to distance themselves from this denomination. Since the later 19th century theatrical interludes tended to either be omitted or claim artistic independence. You are either as part of a larger piece or belong to the sphere of entertainment theater.

As a counter- movement, the tradition of the interludes in "serious" theater was revived in the early 20th century. One of the most famous ( dance ) interludes from this period is Vaslav Nijinsky's L' Après -midi d'un faune (1912). The composer Richard Strauss experimented again with the genre of the interlude, as in Ariadne auf Naxos ( 1912) or Intermezzo ( 1924).