Search

The recent and excellent edition of the most famous Ruzante’s comedy, curated by Luca D’Onghia, offers, among other things, a text restored and free of dense didactic remark with which it was always read to analyze it or to stage, since the sixties of last century and since the edition of Ludovico Zorzi. Written for four hands, the present work moves in two directions: on the one hand it reconstructs the history of this didactic interpolation, bearer not only of interpretation but of a real rewrite and secondly it wants to return to original text, coming to propose a conclusion of the play completely different from what was supposed to be and from what was view on stage.

Preamble and stimulus to more systematic investigations, the paper proposes an initial review of the actresses demography in Italy in the 18th century. Beyond its significant quantitative impact, the female component is significant above all because it attests the persistence of that mixture of different performative languages which is the distinctive feature of the Commedia dell’Arte, and that – not yet overwhelmed by the sectoral progress of professional skills –, is still visible in the 18th century. From a preliminary anagraphic survey, and through the sieve of exemplary events (like that of many actresses, as the Medebach and Marliani, Passalacqua and Rosina Costa, Teresa Gandini; Maria Donati, Antonia D’Arbes, Teodora Ricci and her sisters, Faustina Tesi), it emerges clearly the phenomenon of actresses who build their professionalism even as acrobats, dancers, singers and even businesswomen: this phenomenon is a particularly eloquent, when compared to a historical and legal context in which the capacity deficit (that excluded women from the public sphere and from holding officia and munera) had the full force of law and in which the status of ‘owner’ collided with that of minus habens. In short, new legal and artistic identities are asserting on the Italian scene of 18th century.

This extensive essay revolves around some unpublished documents about the ambitious and pioneering attempt to establish a permanent company in the ‘enlightened’ duchy of Parma (1770-1771). What emerges is an original cross-section of the Italian theatrical life in the second half of the 18th century that highlights the ins and outs, the relationship between politics and theatre, the most outstanding companies of the time, the rules of engagement, the profiles of actors and actresses – already established or in training – for the first time described above rhetoric and anecdotal tendencies.

The making of a first critical and commented edition of the theatrical works of the Rozzi congregation – based on the corpus of the congregation’s chief exponent, Salvestro Cartaio, called Il Fumoso – makes it possible to start exploring a so far neglected aspect of country-life plays. Indeed, it provides an innovative and essential contribution to an understanding of the ‘geography and history’ of 15th-century Italian theatre, especially its main production areas (namely, old Padua and Siena). The present study offers some preliminary reflections on the relationship between Ruzante and Il Fumoso: these playwrights are vastly different in terms of their socio-cultural background and artistic stature; yet, they are also very similar with regard to the innovativeness and complexity of their outlook on the ‘otherness’ of the countryside.

The present study offers a synthetic overview of some of the key insights that emerged from the first critical commented edition of the plays of the 16th-century Rozzi 119 Congregation (Congrega dei Rozzi). The edition focused on the corpus of the Congregation’s chief exponent, Salvestro, the paper-manufacturer, called Il Fumoso. That work not only provided fundamental methodological indications regarding the philological analysis of dramatic works, but also suggested the possibility of becoming acquainted with a dramatic art quite different from the kind of “theatre we have in mind”. The approach involved suspending any hermeneutic pre-judgement, by relying on a painstaking consideration of those witnesses that – albeit reticent – have handed down to us the otherness and richness of that culture.

The paper presents the synthetic review of an investigation on the figure of the most important Goldonian actress; at the same time, it tries to outline a methodological and critical framework for any research involving comedians with whom the Goldonian dramaturgy related (as well as that of ‘rivals’ Chiari and Gozzi). In fact, this kind of investigation has to confront with a pronounced lack of primary sources and, conversely, with the exuberance of the testimonies the author left on ‘his’ actors. Testimonies that theatrical historiography mostly took without the necessary critical scrutiny, although the boundaries between ‘historical truth’, ‘invention’ and representative convention are, in these, often indecipherable. Caterina Bresciani is a sample paradigm of this impasse: despite her absolute centrality in the artistic universum of the playwright, a deep mystery continues to hover around her human and artistic personality, so obscured by the lack of certain documentaries as by the representative clichés with which Goldoni handed down her memory. For the first time, the traits that remained hidden behind the ‘Ircana’s mask’ are here revealed, by a process that verifies the master data of the Florentine actress, her social backgrounds, her professional profile on the acting debut on the Venetian ‘scene’, her physical and recitative characteristics, demonstrating the impact that the so-called material history of the show – in the matter of a certain interpretative individuality – played for the most decisive phase of the Goldonian dramaturgical evolution.Il contributo presenta il ragguaglio sintetico di un’indagine sulla figura della più importante attrice goldoniana, e al tempo stesso cerca di delineare un quadro di riferimento metodologico e critico per ogni studio relativo ai comici con cui si confrontò la drammaturgia dell’autore (ma anche quella dei ‘rivali’ Chiari e Gozzi). Un’indagine di tale tipo deve infatti confrontarsi con una pronunciata ristrettezza di fonti primarie e, per converso, con l’esuberanza delle testimonianze lasciateci dall’autore sui ‘suoi’ attori, testimonianze per lo più assunte dalla storiografia teatrale senza il necessario vaglio critico, pur essendo in esse spesso indecifrabili i confini tra ‘vero storico’, ‘invenzione’ e convenzione rappresentativa. Di questa impasse Caterina Bresciani rappresenta un campione paradigmatico: nonostante la sua assoluta centralità nell’universum artistico del commediografo, un fitto mistero continua ad aleggiare attorno alla sua personalità umana e artistica, oscurata tanto dall’assenza di dati documentari certi, quanto dai clichés rappresentativi con cui Goldoni ce ne ha tramandato memoria. Per la prima volta vengono qui rivelati i tratti nascosti dalla ‘maschera di Ircana’, in un percorso che dell’attrice fiorentina accerta l’identità anagrafica, l’origine sociale e il profilo professionale all’atto dell’ingresso sulla ‘scena’ veneziana, le caratteristiche fisiche e recitative, dimostrando l’incidenza che la cosiddetta storia materiale dello spettacolo – nell’incarnato vivo di una specifica individualità interpretativa – rivestì per la fase più decisiva dell’evoluzione drammaturgica goldoniana.