Around “Antigone”. Reflections on Iconography and Music in the German Revival of the Classical Tragedy

In October 1841 was staged in the Greek theater of Postdam (Sans Souci, Neues Palais) the Sofocle’s tragedy Antigone, with a great success. It was not the very first representation of classical tragedy in Germany, but it was nevertheless pioneer for its high fidelity to the classical models: the tragedy had to be represented without cuts, with accurate translation. The king Frederick Wilhelm IV entrusted Ludwig Tieck with the realization of the entire project and Felix Mendelssohn with the composition of the incidental music, comprehensive of the integral vocal setting of the tragic choruses, never made before. Mendelssohn considered for long time the best way to associate music with classic theater, but discarded the very first tentative of old Greek music reconstruction, in his time completely unknown, and opted for a modern setting, but respectful of the classic theater structure and spirit. Also the theater building, the scenery and the costumes were prepared according to a new archaeological conception. Tieck involved himself in the matter, following in particular the book Das Theater zu Athen of Hans Christian Genelli (1818), archaeologist and architect personally known by Tieck. Genelli describes the Dionysus Theater of Athens according to De Architectura of Vitruvio, because the archaeological excavations of the Athens theater will be made by Wilhelm Dörpfeld only since 1882 to 1895. Tieck obtained documentation also for costumes and tragic masks. This paper aims to analyze the scenic apparatus and the costumes of this representation, basing on the few available iconographical documents, and to compare it with the setting of the text and with the music (particularly the choruses), from the standpoint of the coherence to a new approach to the past, depending from the increasing interest for the scientific archaeology.