Torelli, Giacomo

Torelli, Giacomo (1608–78), Italian machinist and scene-painter. A practical man of the theatre rather than an artist, he made many important innovations in the designing and setting of scenery, being the inventor of the carriage-and-frame device for moving several sets of wings on and off stage simultaneously. He was a pupil of Aleotti, and may have worked with him on the building of the Teatro Farnese, which was not completed until 1628. In 1640 he was responsible for the building of the Teatro Novissimo in Venice, where the magical effects of his stage mechanisms won for him the nickname of ‘the great magician’. Five years later he went to Paris and inaugurated the fashion for machine plays of which the finest was Corneille's Andromède (1650). This was produced at Molière's first theatre, the Petit-Bourbon, which Torelli had completely refurbished backstage, painting new scenery and installing machinery of his own invention. It was all destroyed by his rival Gaspare Vigarani in 1660, but the designs were preserved, and over a hundred years later the complete survey of contemporary theatre machinery given under ‘Machines du Théâtre’ in Diderot's Encyclopédie (in 1772) shows that it was almost all based on Torelli's ideas.