This thesis examines the role of solid and painted masks in Giorgio Strehler's successive stagings of Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan between 1947 and 1997. ...Through my description and analysis of documentary evidence about these stagings, the Piccolo Teatro, Giorgio Strehler, his mask-makers Amleto and Donato Sartori, his actors, and lighting designer, I demonstrate that masks were used in the above-mentioned productions as rhetorical tools that expressed Strehler's relationship with Goldoni (the man and his work), communicated his political convictions on stage, partook in his attempted reform of the Italian theatre after World War II, displayed his vision of theatre history, proved his endorsement of the actors' potential in performance, and helped position the Piccolo Teatro within an Italian and pan-European artistic elite. My examination of video recordings and photographs of the productions, letters of personal correspondence, theatre reviews, transcriptions of interviews, and programme notes, among other documents, traces the evolution of Strehler's interpretative vision of the Commedia dell'Arte over fifty years. This vision, as I argue in the introduction and conclusion to my thesis, helped shape how other theatre directors, educators, as well as actors, mask-makers, and, arguably, academics have come to imagine Goldoni's work, Commedia dell'Arte, and masked performance. A close study of Strehler's successive stagings of The Servant of Two Masters and of the use of masks within them will therefore allow for a better understanding of Strehler's trajectory in the theatre, but will also exemplify how the use of a particular theatrical object (the mask) in a series of productions that were successful worldwide influenced how many of us now perceive a performance tradition (Commedia), a theatre (the Piccolo Teatro), and a play (The Servant of Two Masters).
Risalendo all’indietro, da Goldoni a Cervantes e a Lope, il contributo prova ad inquadrare l’eredità lontana dei termini «comedia» e «arte», nella discesa dall’Ars poetica, secondo una linea non ...normativa, nella fondazione di un’ars drammatica o «comica» nel rapporto tra scrittura e pubblico nell’Europa moderna. Rapporto che è peraltro il centro originale dell’antico discorso di Orazio.
Zwischen Wagnerismus und Verismo Fischer, Jens Malte
Archiv für Musikwissenschaft,
2012, Letnik:
69, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The essay examines German opera's precarious development, with special emphasis on the libretti, in the aftermath of Wagner's legacy, between ca. 1900 and 1920. The success of the fairy-tale opera as ...invisioned by Humperdinck and Siegfried Wagner was, with the exception of Hänsel und Gretel, short-lived—a condition that distracts from the fact that the artistically far more interesting Königskinder by Humperdinck, alongside Hans Pfitzner's Der arme Heinrich, were the most impressive examples of relevant and autonomous German opera in the wake of Wagner. Thoroughly independent of Wagner's orbit were the temporarily successful comic operas of German-Italian composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, which were based on commedia-dell-arte plays by Carlo Goldoni, while German experiments in Italian verismo were ultimately not viable (notable exceptions are Wolf-Ferrari's I Gioelli della madonna and Max von Schilling's Mona Lisa). In spite of its impressive score, the enormously gifted Austrian composer Franz Schmidt's second and last opera (Fredegundis) met with failure, thanks to its tedious libretto. The Gordian knot of this unfruitful situation was finally severed with Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang and Die Gezeichneten, both based on his own libretti.
This thesis documents my journey, as an MFA candidate, through the building, development and growth of Florindo Aretusi in Regent University’s production of The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo ...Goldoni. The introduction of this thesis document outlines a summary of specific challenges I expect to encounter through this thesis process. Chapter One is composed of historical research of the playwright, play and commedia dell’arte. Chapter Two consists of my textual analysis of the play, including the structure of the plot, the suggested controlling and counter ideas, as well as spine phrases for all major characters. Chapter Three dives into an in-depth character analysis of Florindo Aretusi, including Florindo’s backstory, his unique spine phrase, sample beat work and physical and vocal techniques that will be practiced and implemented to bring Florindo to life. Chapter Four includes a rehearsal and performance log that documents my process through the journey. Chapter Five reflects on major discoveries, criticism I received, as well as advice I have for future actors who will tackle of the role of Florindo. The Appendices include the rehearsal schedule, a brief sample of my free associative writing, the program and promotional materials, and production photos.
This dissertation traces the emergence in late eighteenth-century Italy of an ideological connection between voice and subjectivity, arguing that this link was forged as a means of assuaging ...anxieties about Italy’s role in European culture. For most of the century, virtuosic voices had dominated Italian “serious” opera: onstage, singers flaunted flashy embellishments while projecting the static categories of the Cartesian passions. But after midcentury, as new epistemologies of emotion converged with neoclassical aesthetics, Italian musicians and literati increasingly criticized those voices as inauthentic and unfeeling. In order to redeem voice, and with it Italian culture, reform-minded singers and intellectuals rebranded Italy’s most famous export as an agent of moral edification. They asserted that voice could make audible the interiority of a feeling subject, and potentially represent the political agency of that subject. Some reformers even attributed to certain voices the power to civilize humanity by cultivating feeling, inspired by the myth of Orpheus’s lyric song. The resulting complex of discourses and practices is what the dissertation calls “the lyric mode of voice,” a phrase which combines the ancient generic definition of lyric as musical poetry with the late-eighteenth-century literary mode characterized by emotional intensity, vivid subjectivity, and expressive immediacy. The dissertation explores the lyric mode of voice through representations of two archetypal poet-singers, or lyric figures: Orpheus and Sappho, who functioned both onstage and in literature as dynamic symbols of “authentic,” subjective vocal expression. By articulating the ways in which the lyric voice was rendered as cultural and political power, this dissertation unpacks still-resonant myths about uniqueness and agency. It does so by interweaving historically-situated musical analysis with interpretive threads from literary theory and philosophy. It thus intervenes in musicology by placing historical musical-vocal practices into dialogue with intellectual history, and contributes to Italian studies, eighteenth-century studies, and the history of ideas by demonstrating how intellectual histories might be excavated from the residues of sonic practices. In approaching voice as both a discursive category and a set of culturally contingent practices, the dissertation ultimately considers how historical ideologies and practices of voice together inflected “modern” constructions of subjectivity.
What was the historiography of Il mondo nuovo, a fresco painted in 1791 by Giandomenico Tiepolo? How did its title emerge? Giandomenico likely found the inspiration for his subject in popular ...entertainment on Venice's Piazzetta. The houselike structure in the fresco's middle ground-a peep show-had been labeled il mondo nuovo by the eighteenth-century playwright Carlo Goldoni. Yet the fresco was not named until after 1906. Art historian Pompeo Molmenti introduced the Goldoni-inspired title, his efforts seconded by Corrado Ricci, a powerful art administrator. Both were steeped in the "politics of nostalgia," associated with the Italian Aesthetic movement.
This thesis encompasses the process of discovering the character Pantalone de’ Bisognosi in Carlo Goldoni’s, The Servant of Two Masters, performed at Regent University. The introduction offers a ...summary of foreseen challenges that I expect to approach in portraying Pantalone and strategies for overcoming them. Chapter one will consist of a compilation of the research behind the play and character. Chapter two will cover textual analysis of the script, the controlling and counter idea of the play, and spine phrases of all main characters. Chapter three offers character analysis on Pantalone de’ Bisognosi, and techniques and exercises applied to work through the foreseen challenges presented in chapter one. Chapter four records personal reflections of the rehearsal process and performances of The Servant of Two Masters. Chapter five concludes with discoveries and insights of my work playing the role of Pantalone de’ Bisognosi. The appendices contain the playbill, concluding with production stills from this show.
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