The Miracle (play)
Encyclopedia
The Miracle was a 1911 play written by Karl Vollmöller
Karl Vollmöller
Karl Gustav Vollmöller, usually written Vollmoeller was a German playwright and screenwriter.He is most famous for two works, the screenplay for the celebrated 1930 German film Der Blaue Engel , which made a star of Marlene Dietrich, and the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime Das Mirakel ,...
and directed by Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
, from which three movie versions were later adapted. The play first appeared as a spectacle-pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1911.
The play opened in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1912 and was revived on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in 1924 after a tour of Detroit
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, Milwaukee
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
and Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. The New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
version, which opened January 16, 1924 at the Century Theatre
Century Theatre
The Century Theatre, originally the New Theatre, was a theater located at 62nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. Opened on November 6, 1909, it was noted for its fine architecture but due to poor acoustics and an inconvenient location it was financially unsuccessful...
was produced by Morris Gest
Morris Gest
Morris Gest was a Jewish-American theatrical producer of the early 20th century.-Early life:Born in Vilna, now Lithuania, the son of Leon and Elizabeth Gershonovitz...
, and starred Rosamond Pinchot
Rosamond Pinchot
Rosamond Pinchot was an American socialite, stage and film actress.-Early life and career:Pinchot was born in New York City, the daughter of Amos Pinchot, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party and the niece of Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot...
as the Nun and Lady Diana Cooper
Lady Diana Cooper
Lady Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich was an English socialite and actress.-Birth and youth:Born Lady Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Manners, she was officially the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the former Violet Lindsay, but Lady Diana's real father was widely supposed...
and Maria Carmi alternating nightly in the role of the Madonna. Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
also directed the first film version which used an early sound-on-disc
Sound-on-disc
The term Sound-on-disc refers to a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or playback sound in sync with a motion picture...
process to provide a limited soundtrack for the film.
The Miracle re-told an old legend about a nun in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
who runs away from her convent with a knight, and subsequently has several mystical adventures, eventually leading to her being accused of witchcraft. During her absence, the statue of the Virgin Mary in the convent's chapel comes to life and takes the nun's place in the convent, until her safe return. The play launched the career of Maria Carmi who went on to star in 25 silent films.
The play has its origins in a twelfth-century legend which Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
writer José Zorrilla y Moral
José Zorrilla y Moral
José Zorrilla y Moral , was a Spanish Romantic poet and dramatist.He was born in Valladolid to a magistrate in whom Ferdinand VII placed special confidence,...
turned into a dramatic poem
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
entitled Margarita La Tornera (Margarita the Gatekeeper). The poem differs from The Miracle in resetting the story in nineteenth-century Spain, as the 1959 film
The Miracle (1959 film)
The Miracle is a 1959 remake of a 1912 German film Das Mirakel directed by Cherry Kearton and Max Reinhardt which in turn was based on a 1911 pantomime play of the same name by Karl Vollmöller.-Production history and reception:...
would do, and in not letting the reader know that the statue has taken the nun's place in the convent until nearly the very end. Zorrilla's poem was made into an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
by Spanish zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
composer Ruperto Chapí
Ruperto Chapí
Ruperto Chapí y Lorente was a Spanish composer, and co-founder of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores.Chapí was born at Villena, the son of a Valencian barber. He trained in his home town and Madrid...
It was his last work before his death. The poem was also loosely adapted into a Spanish film, Milagro de amor, in 1946.