Parterre (theater audience)
Although the word parterre originated in France, historians use the term interchangeably with its English equivalent, "the pit", to designate the same part of the audience in England, present-day Italy, and Austria.
Historians studying theater audiences in France have traditionally identified the parterre as the exclusive domain of lower-class males, with the exception of female prostitutes.
Prostitution was normal and individuals who ventured into the parterre could expect to be pick-pocketed, spied upon, and jostled about, in spite of the police or doormen who were charged with maintaining order.
Yet, according to historian and musicologist James Johnson, Few complained about the noise and bustle ... eighteenth-century audiences considered music little more than an agreeable ornament of a magnificent spectacle, in which they themselves played the principal part.
James Van Horn Melton writes that "audiences at London's Drury Lane Theater expressed their dissatisfaction by pelting the stage with oranges.
Though only informal critics, the size of the parterre, which ranged from around 500 to over 1000 spectators, meant their voice carried some weight with theater managers, whose commercial success depended partly on their patronage.
[17] On many occasions, for example, audience members from the parterre succeeded in forcing performers to switch programs mid-act, or repeat their favourite arias.
[18] The wide range of 18th century sources defining the parterre as a judge, include personal letters, memoirs, and published periodicals, such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator and The Tatler, which circulated in London's Coffeehouses.
[21] In the late 17th century, royal authorities in England, France, and regions in present-day Italy published numerous edicts threatening to discipline unruly behaviour, from interrupting performances to wearing hats, that were distributed as pamphlets or read aloud in theaters.
[24] Even a request from a bishop in England to lower the curtain before the start of the Sabbath at midnight could not prevent the pit from rioting and trashing the theater when the stage manager attempted to comply.
Early 17th century theater-houses, which were often converted tennis courts, were not conducive to creating the illusion of a single vantage point on the stage.
[30] The theater architect, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, saw the plans for seating in a more positive light, and wrote that "[T]he cabal will end, and we will judge authors more rationally once we have destroyed what is incorrectly called the enthusiasm of the parterre.
[36] Hall-Witt argues that the shift in elite behavior in theatres was prompted by changes to the theater's subscription to the loges, which meant that box seats would be available to non-elites.
By adhering to a new etiquette of politeness that valued silence and attentiveness, elites could replace old methods of differentiation based on seating, with 'superior' behavior.
For Habermas the public sphere constitutes a "realm of communication" that is open, egalitarian, rational, and critical and can be traced to the rise of the "bourgeois" in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The significance of the parterre for Ravel is how it functioned as a critical segment of public opinion in an absolutist state, eventually becoming a symbol of political culture in France.
[46] Ravel finds evidence of an emerging public opinion in the parterre audiences of the theater, which in his view was "one of the first forums in France where the subjects of the Bourbon Crown insisted on their place in French political culture".
[47] Using 18th century police records, Ravel argues that disorderliness in the pit demonstrates the critical nature of parterre audiences, who were not merely responding to performances and the social activates around them, but were undermining the very authority of the court, who remained, at the same time, the patrons of France's "privileged" theaters, the Comédie-Française, Comédie-Italienne, and the Paris Opera.
Ravel demonstrates how writers constructed an image of the parterre as a legitimate public critic, endowing it with an authority equivalent to that of the king.
[51] Thomas Kaiser summarized the effect of this process well when he wrote, "the evolution of arts and letters ... created an international tribunal of public judgement that it did not control.
[57] In Friedland's words "... this new, artificial system depended, not on the actors' belief – or, as we tend to refer to it today, on the spectator's suspension of disbelief".
