Dancing the Righoletto.

The righoletto was a type of round dance current in Florence and its surrounding countryside in the late 14th and 15th centuries. It was above all a dance accompanied by song, one in which all the dancers sang the refrain, and a soloist sang the stanzas. Twelve "canzone a righolett"o have been identified in literary sources, together with three closely related works also appropriate to accompany the dance. The lyrics occupy a medium or lower poetic register; they range from moralizing texts to ribald narratives. Despite its country origins, the righoletto and its "canzone" were shared across social classes, largely via oral transmission. One "canzona a righoletto" survives with its music, the lauda "In su quell'alto monte." Another, the satiric "Non ti fidare che oggi è sì pocha fé," has been reconstructed from its model in the Squarcialupi Codex. The righoletto thus offers valuable glimpses of a vanished form of vernacular culture in late medieval Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]