Nicola Sabbatini (EN)

Nicola Sabbatini (1574 – 25 December 1654), also known as Niccolò Sabbatini or Nicola Sabbattini, was an Italian architect of the Baroque.

A native of Pesaro, he was extremely influential at the time for his pioneering and inventive designs of theaters, stage sets, lighting and stage machinery. Working in the court of the Dukes of Urbino, he was among the first designers of sophisticated machines which created realistic visual and sound effects such as the sea (the column wave machine)[1], storms, thunder, lightnings, fire, hell, flying gods and clouds, etc. He wrote one of the most important books on how to construct and use a number of devices, scenes and machinery for the stage, Pratica di fabricar scene e macchine ne‘ teatri, which was published in 1638 [2]. The internal architecture of theaters, such as plans for building seats for the audience, was also advanced by Sabbatini.

Sabbatini developed and described a number of novel stage lighting techniques, such as dimming mechanism to darken the whole stage, directed spotlights for illuminating certain parts of the stage (it is believed that he invented the first reflector spotlight, by attaching a polished basin behind a light source) and several others, thus effectively being, together with Sebastiano Serlio and Leone de' Sommi, one of the creators of stage lighting for dramatic purposes, including scripting lighting changes in synchronization with the play or opera. He developed a number of acoustic effects machinery, such as a "thunder box", a contraption which had heavy (15 kg) iron or stone balls which rolled down a case of wooden stairs when the effect was called for.