Preparing for Commedia dell' Arte

Early Music, 2008

Reading this collection brings to mind the words of the melancholic Jacques in As you like it because the 'cultural performances' of its title include virtually anything on the whole world's stage: the musical and poetic performances of recited or sung texts, the visual presentation of texts on the page, the design and use of artefacts (ivory reliefs and silk alms purses), and even the performance of 'the vice of pride in the theater of society'(p. 197). Shakespeare's text works at the level of an extended metaphor, which is effectively how the various ' ...

Studies in Costume and Performance, 2018

Commedia masks have achieved iconic status in some theatrical circles, though recent interviews undertaken for my PhD thesis reveal that contemporary teleological practice relates to the purpose to which each individual re-creator conceives Commedia, and not necessarily to the historical model. A Commedia mask is identified as always being a specific role or stock type. These stock types, or 'tipi fissi' (fixed types) are, however, recreations or re-imaginings of the original Renaissance masks, and yet the purpose to which they are being put is, self-evidently, contemporary and performative. Using these historical masks, other than in the sense of Brechtian historicization, to make contemporaneously engaged theatre falls short due to a mismatch between contemporary and historical culture. Out of this mismatch arises then, the questions of who or what the masks represent today, and how new types can develop? Historical scholarship tended to focus on the individual mask, but I currently propose that contemporary Commedia dell'Arte masks be considered primarily as an ensemble or 'set', rather than as a collection of individuals. The performed function of this interdependent grouping is to comically communicate to an audience activity within the 'set', with the 'set' being defined as a purposed reflection of a society. This allows the genre to progress into areas of comically directed social and gender interrogation, promoting evolution within the mask set, rather than accepting the constraints imposed by their use as a mirror of Renaissance society to mirror our own. This analysis presents a theoretical framework to aid ongoing contemporary explorations into the form, purpose and design of the genre's masks. In this article I employ three terms to describe the genre: 'Commedia dell'Arte' to describe the historical form, 'Neo-Commedia'

It is with a mixture of skepticism, fascination, and ignorance that those unfamiliar with the Stockhausen enigma feel licensed to quip, “Stockhausen is from the planet Sirius.” It is true that there is an otherworldly aura about the fantastically and almost inappropriately creative composer who sought to recreate the sounds he heard in his head in a finite world. However, Stockhausen’s performance piece for solo clarinet and dance departs from the trend of dense, mathematically-derived onslaughts of notes typical of Gruppen, Kontakte, or Licht. In this vignette, Stockhausen copies a technique from the playbook of the commedia dell’arte, a theater movement native to Italy in the sixteenth century. Der Kleine Harlekin (1975) proposes to borrow a character type and its inherent implications and to transform it, in this case the character is none other than the roguish and impertinent buffoon Arlecchino. The adaptation of a dramatic character in this fashion allows Stockhausen to indulge his playful expressivity by capitalizing on the slapstick comedy of commedia dell’arte and the improvisation central to its tradition. However, the texture of the piece is still far from simple, it is complicated by the element of dance and foot-stomping rhythms which are inextricably linked to the rhythms played by the clarinet to create a polyphonic whole. The sly, engaging and familiar character of Harlekin serves as a guide, preventing sensory input overload and forming a cohesive vignette despite the fragmentary nature of the non-existent storyline. In order to understand the dramatic choice of Harlekin, this paper will explore the history behind his presence as well as the implications inherent in the use of his character. This will require some knowledge of the history of the commedia dell’arte, the science of buffoonery, and the power of movement to communicate. Der Kleine Harlekin, while simpler than his other musical landscapes, still indulges Stockhausen’s tendency to overpopulate his scores with dense polyphony and a barrage of sound in its composite of three overlaying textures: the drama through the muse of Harlekin, the music through the medium of the clarinet, and the dance through propagation of another rhythmic line and communicative movement.

Digital Creativity, 1999

The article discusses how Commedia dell’Arte (CdA) may be used as a design metaphor for Multi-user Virtual World (MVW). The introduction gives an overview of the beginning ideas and the general findings of the research, as well as connects CdA and MVW with other forms of improvisational and masked performance. An explanatory introduction to CdA is followed by examples on the possibilities of transforming practices and ideas from CdA characters, properties, staging, scenarios, themes and improvisations to MVW. Keywords: avatar, Commedia dell’Arte, multiuser virtual world

2010

Scholars often describe Caravaggio's paintings as inspired by scenes from quotidian life. A few see his work as influenced by popular dramas such as the commedia dell'arte. While one might think these are conflicting explanations, close examination shows that a wide variety of popular dramatic forms was as much part of daily life as daily life was part of popular drama. Caravaggio's "theatricality" is the careful depiction of quotidian life, expressed through the familiar language of popular dramatic forms, a sort of "visual vernacular" known to all classes. Caravaggio appropriated specific elements both found in a wide variety of popular theatrical media and recommended in treatises on oration, preaching, Jesuit spiritual exercises, and memory models, because they were proven to engage the emotions and make imagery memorable. Caravaggio went against painterly tradition and filled his shallow pictorial spaces with sharp side-lighting, deep shadow, and...

A close reading of The Tragedy of Othello in light of the popularity of improvised commedia dell'arte in Italy at the time the play was written suggests that commedia dell'arte strongly influenced the composition of the play, but this influence has not been fully appreciated by Shakespeare scholarship. If this interpretation of the literary and historical evidence is persuasive, the play becomes a brilliant, satirical comedy derived from commedia dell'arte but with a disturbing, tragic ending, not the traditional romantic tragedy that has puzzled commentators. The question then becomes when and where the dramatist learned so much about the Italian commedia dell'arte to be able to draw on it so extensively in Othello and other plays. In this new reading, the seven principal characters, from Othello the general to Emilia the maid, have their prototypes in characters of commedia dell'arte. Much of the action reflects the rough comedy of commedia dell'arte; and Iago's gleeful, improvised manipulation of the other characters mirrors the improvised performances of commedia dell'arte. Arguably, this reading also offers readers, theater directors and playgoers the promise of a new and deeper appreciation of the play as a bitter satire of human folly that entertains, disorients and unsettles, denying the audience the Aristotelian catharsis of tragedy. Although a few Shakespeare scholars have noted traces of commedia dell'arte in several plays, notably The Tempest, its influence on Othello has been almost completely ignored. It's not discussed in the many scholarly, single-volume editions, including those by E. A. J. Honigmann, Michael Neill, Kim Hall, Russ McDonald and Edward Pechter. Nor is there anything on it in the collected works of Shakespeare, such as the Riverside, Norton, Pelican, Oxford or most recently the RSC edition from Random House. The focus is on other sources and influences, principally Cinthio's

1995

95,000 word thesis submitted for the Degree of DPhil, 1994-95 300 word abstract The research field addressed by this thesis is the commedia dell'arte and its iconography in the period preceding Callot's Balli di Sfessania engravings of c. 1621. Its main aim is to provide a broad overview of the surviving early pictures in order to contribute towards a more detailed understanding of the history of the commedia deH'arte in the opening decades of its existence, 1560-1620, by using late renaissance pictures as a documentary source.

Theatre Survey, 2009

One of the things that strikes one most forcibly in surviving images of early commedia dell'arte is its enigmatic physicality, the manner in which its actors everywhere adopt postures and make gestures that seem not merely emphatic and exaggerated but almost ...

2020

Wier Dissertation Abstract Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstage, as virtuosic opera singers, and as independent professionals in the Venetian cityscape. They accomplished this partly in prototypical commercial opera houses. From such spaces the sound of their voices, and the memory of their performances in cross-dressed and warrior woman roles spilled out on the cutting edge of performance to spread the novel form across early modern Europe. The performance of cross-dressed and warrior woman roles transgressed normative gender codes and is one way early modern divas overcame misogynist perceptions. In fact, by occupying “the norm in myriad ways,” these women exceeded and reworked accepted norms performatively while modelling independent agency and pioneering a new profession for women (Judith Butler, Undoing 217). For my project, I trace the reception of the early modern diva’s “sonic performances of gender” (Andrew Dell’Antonio) and the movement of her resonant body from opera stage to city-street. To do this, I apply J. L. Austin’s analytic lens of performativity as employed in gender studies and performance studies scholarship to analyze the social impact of the early modern operatic diva’s performance of self. My interdisciplinary methodology interlaces material historical data, close textual and musical readings, with performance theory. Specifically, I examine the music and texts of five performance scores to understand how composer Francesco Cavalli (1602 - 1676) and his librettist collaborators tailored warrior woman roles to fit the voices of lead singers like Anna Renzi (c.1620 - c.1661). To provide the socio-material context outside of score and text, I focus on Renzi’s career and the reception of her performances in La finta pazza (1641) and La Deidamia (1645) along with perceptions of her in everyday life. With theoretical approaches centered on performativity, gender, reception, and celebrity status, I work to wrest out remnant traces of ephemeral “presence and its reception through embodied understanding” of performance embedded in scores, letters, and performance accounts (Diane Taylor, The Archive 292).