 Ultimately, Appia sought to unify stage movement and the use of space, stage rhythm and the mise en scene.Appia was one of the first designers to understand the potential of stage lighting to do more than merely illuminate actors and painted scenery.His ideas about the staging of "word-tone drama", together with his own stagings of Tristan und Isolde (Milan 1923) and parts of the Ring (Basle 1924-25) have influenced later stagings, especially those of the second half of the twentieth century.