Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793), who is best remembered in literary history for his realist reform of comic theatre, was also a prolific librettist. His texts for music written from ...1748 onwards remain understudied but warrant significant reappraisal, for Goldoni was one of the first to give shape to the dramma giocoso, an innovative and realistic new genre of opera that went on to have a lasting legacy all the way to W. A. Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte. Through an interdisciplinary, historical approach and intertextual analysis, the present study reevaluates Goldoni’s drammi giocosi, largely overlooked by scholarship, to uncover the lasting innovations in form and content introduced by the Venetian playwright. Analysis of these texts also reveals clear affinity between Goldoni's contributions to the dramma giocoso and his reform of prose theatre. Most importantly, unlike other types of comic opera, the dramma giocoso has the particularity of combining buffo with serio, a dynamic that, through Goldoni's mature output, continually evolves to bring new realism and social relevance to opera theatre. Goldoni’s influence on this type of musical representation has not been fully considered, but the realism in music that he achieves through the dramma giocoso must be acknowledged as a lasting contribution to modern literature, and to operatic history.
This dissertation explores the creation of national identity through spatial manifestations of gender in synchronized swimming from 1907–present. While many competitive synchronized swimmers ...disinherit the sport’s performance past, my dissertation illustrates that synchronized swimming’s theatrical background is precisely the reason it has become an important genre for exploring self-conscious performances of gender, nation, and socio-spatial relations. These sporting entertainment moments emerge as particularly influential in eras when national, political strife leave the defining features of femininity in flux. I claim that the hybridity of the form—as sport and as entertainment—invites the viewer to read the female body as an active subject while simultaneously opening up questions about public space and objectification. By focusing on key moments of synchronized swimming’s popularity, such as Annette Kellerman’s iconic Hippodrome and Vaudeville performances, Billy Rose’s Aquacade at the New York World’s Fair, Esther Williams’ MGM aquamusicals, and the Hollywood rooftop performances of the present-day Aqualillies, I show how synchronized swimming provides a distilled vantage into the feminine citizen’s and the feminine collective’s relationships to varying political climates, social productions of space, and of course, theatrical performance.
The purpose of this thesis is to document and analyze the collaborative design process of the costume designer. The production of The Green Bird by, Carlo Gozzi, an original translation by Federica ...Deigan, and adapted by Leslie Felbain and Kristen Messer was performed at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, opening March 2, 2007. This thesis will provide an analytical approach to the Gozzi's script and detailed account of the design process with specificity to the costumes. This thesis is broken down into four chapters. Chapter 1 details the script of The Green Bird, inclusive of contextual information of Carlo Gozzi. Chapter 2 discusses the conceptual and collaborative design process. Chapter 3 details the production and rehearsal process. Chapter 4 is a reflection of the overall production, revealing issues and problem solving tactics. The appendices support the visual work of the design process.
This dissertation explores the rediscovery of commedia dell’s arte theatre in Europe during the Modernist era (approximately 1890-1930) by dramatists and theatre directors, which led to its usage as ...a tool for individual experimentation and general escape from the anxieties associated with the changing political environment. The appropriation of commedia dell’arte theatre was, for many theatre practitioners, the perfect structure with which to counteract the dominant Realist aesthetic that was prevalent throughout Europe at the time. Although these Modernist commedia-based plays and productions were generally created as art-for-art’s sake, this is not the case everywhere, as evidenced by some of the themes, both overt and masked, in the works of some Spanish dramatists. Using literary history as the theoretical framework, this dissertation contends that Modernist commedia-based dramas serve as an appropriate point of departure for comprehending literary reactions to, and reproductions of, the revolutions in technology, politics, and social practices that contributed to the modern order. While representations of cynical clowns, such as Harlequin, were mostly apolitical, the pessimism that dominates the farces, the pantomimes and the puppet plays can be viewed in response to the radically changing social and political environment. The primary focus of this study is to analyze, in the broader literary and historical context, what place Spanish commedia-influenced dramas have in the transnational scope of the European Modernist movement. Narrowing the focus of this investigation to those elements that are salient in the Spanish commedia plays, I investigate Harlequin’s status as a poet in five of these dramas, a role that contrasts significantly with his traditional character, a buffoon. In plays by Jacinto Benavente, Gregorio Martinez Sierra and Ramon del Valle-Inclan, Harlequin’s poetic and psychological depth is observed both through the influence of French Symbolist poetry and as a steward of the changing Modernist Zeitgeist. It is Harlequin’s ability to act independently of his commedia stock characters that insures his immortality, in that his antics are just as much relevant to audiences during the early twentieth century as they have been since he first surfaced in the sixteenth century.
Scholarship on the operas of Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) has focused on one type of female character in the composer's work, the so-called "Puccini heroine." This female protagonist is said to be ...weak, fragile, and usually dies tragically as exemplified in characters like Mimi from La bohème (1896) and Madama Butterfly (1904). Yet the "Puccini heroine" does not fully encompass the range of female characters who clearly do not fit in this category, such as Turandot and Minnie from La fanciulla del West. The dominance of the "Puccini heroine" in musicology literature distorts our understanding of Puccini's operas and in turn our view of Puccini as a composer. Puccini's heroines are dynamic and multifaceted and often cannot be fully encapsulated by a single category. Rather than uphold a limiting and false typology, introduce a different method that accommodates the inclusion of all Puccini's heroines to analyze and understand them more fully. After studying plays and novels that were used as sources for the libretti, Puccini's correspondences, artistic movements of realism, naturalism, and verismo, and other socio-historical evidences such as periodicals and newspapers, three character types emerge: the Sentimental Heroine, the Femme Fatale, and the New Woman. These types are based on female typologies historically represented during Puccini's lifetime. The three types are not mutually exclusive; instead, they overlap one another, allowing for a character to encompass elements from more than one type. Another important aspect of this project is to show how music is used to characterize these three types. This analytical process will help revise the former understanding of Puccini as a composer of limited skills in creating female characters, who depicts stereotypical representations of women in the nineteenth century, and help modern singers and interpreters of Puccini's operas develop deeper perspectives of these heroines.
Sergey Diaghilev's Sleeping Princess ballet (1921) was a spectacular representation of Russian Imperial splendor that failed, equally spectacularly, when created in the West. Based on the ...Chaikovsky/Petipa Sleeping Beauty (1890), the Ballets Russes re-creation of the nineteenth-century romantic ballet did not find favor in postwar London, despite Diaghilev's updating of the music and dance, and new décor. Diaghilev's innovative Ballets Russes had pushed ballet further and further away from the original ballet's emphasis on sublime beauty, with the result that Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes collaborators found it difficult in 1921 to present The Sleeping Beauty both sincerely and convincingly. Like many artists during the early twentieth-century, and especially after the Great War, Diaghilev, to borrow a phrase by musicologist Richard Taruskin, “sacrificed sincerity to irony.” Numerous alterations made to the music, choreography, and décor of The Sleeping Princess attest to tension between competing aesthetics. Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky revised the music of Chaikovsky according to an imagined eighteenth-century aesthetic, which had been gaining favor in France. Stravinsky's orchestrations of two Chaikovsky numbers suppressed the presumed sentimentalism of the older composer by interpolating elements of his own style, particularly compression of form and neutrality in affect. Bronislava Nijinska excised the outmoded mime. She adjusted other choreography and stage action, often according to her aesthetic views regarding movement; these ran counter to Petipa's original performance practice. Léon Bakst re-imagined the décor of the ballet as an intensely nostalgic desire for a lost Russia but also incorporated important ironic and parodic images. Shaped by different artists with different agendas, The Sleeping Princess was an uneasy suspension of elements that collided with traces of the original spectacle and its romantic aesthetic: super-saturated visuals, pared-down music, and choreography guided by an aesthetic different from that of the original. Applying terms anachronistically such as modernism or neoclassicism does not adequately encompass the messy mixture of specific stylistic traits evident in The Sleeping Princess. Nonetheless the collision of different aesthetics in The Sleeping Princess was not untypical for this time of transition, and it complicates our view of the Diaghilev legacy.
Early twentieth century criticism of Italian literature often treats the work of women playwrights as insignificant, reducing their theatrical texts to the trivial and non-political. Contemporary ...critics of the time, such as Benedetto Croce acknowledge the effort made by these women, but fail to recognize their talent or contribution to Italian literature in general, and women’s literature specifically. This project looks at the critical reception of Amelia Pincherle Rosselli’s theatrical works, along with the political climate of the times, and the contributions made by this playwright to the development of a female literary voice. Within this thesis, I examine the presence and trace the evolution of the female figure in Rosselli’s works, as well as the feminist perspective though a theory of theft and reappropriation by Adriana Cavarero. This theory, laid out in her text, In Spite of Plato, allows me to rewrite Pincherle Rosselli’s female protagonists in terms of a revised social order that places women at its center. Modern Italian philosophical discourse on equality and difference, with theorists such as Cavarero and Luisa Muraro at the forefront, allows for a new reading and contemporary re-thinking about these often disregarded or forgotten works and their protagonists. This project makes two significant contributions to the field of literature. First, it draws significant attention to a neglected and undervalued genre, therefore seeking to fill a gap in the history of women’s literature (specifically in Italian theatre) between Italian Unification and the rise of Fascism. Second, and more specifically, it focuses on the issues associated with defining the female voice and figure during the first wave of the Women’s Movement in Italy, occurring at the same time.
Sixteenth century commedia dell’arte actors relied on gaudy costumes, physical humor and improvisation to entertain audiences. The spieltenor in the modern operatic repertoire has a similar comedic ...role. Would today’s spieltenor benefit from consulting the commedia dell’arte’s traditions? To answer this question, I examine the commedia dell’arte ’s history, stock characters and performance traditions of early troupes. The spieltenor is discussed in terms of vocal pedagogy and the fach system. I reference critical studies of the commedia dell’arte, sources on improvisatory acting, articles on theatrical masks and costuming, the commedia dell’arte as depicted by visual artists, commedia dell’arte techniques of movement, stances and postures. In addition, I cite vocal pedagogy articles, operatic repertoire and sources on the fach system. My findings suggest that a valid relationship exists between the commedia dell’arte stock characters and the spieltenor roles in the operatic repertoire. I present five case studies, pairing five stock characters with five spieltenor roles. Suggestions are provided to enhance the visual, physical and dramatic elements of each role’s performance. I conclude that linking a commedia dell’arte stock character to any spieltenor role on the basis of shared traits offers an untapped resource to create distinctive characterizations based on theatrical traditions.
The goal of this dissertation is to use Giorgio Strehler's Goldoni productions (and Arlecchino servitore di due padroni in particular) as a means to defining his directorial aesthetic. The purpose ...behind this dissertation is to provide a framework for examining the director's career that is expansive rather than restrictive, using Goldoni and Arlecchino servitore di due padroni as a through-line for Strehler's fifty-year career at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano. The importance of this research is to define Strehler's multifaceted style and bring to light interrelationships among his various works, creating a base from which a variety of subsequent critical inquiries can be made. It also establishes Strehler's identity within the larger scope of the Italian theatre as a whole. Finally, it creates the critical challenge of finding more expansive notions of directorial style and concept that unite diverse ideologies without restrictively delimiting our understanding of the director. Crucial to understanding Strehler's work with Arlecchino servitore di due padroni is his consistent reinterpretation of the play, which received no less than five distinct productions during Strehler's lengthy career. The importance of his repeated reworking of existing productions is that it provides a baseline for examining what elements were maintained and what elements changed or evolved. The four key influences that defined Strehler's aesthetic in his work with Arlecchino were commedia dell'Arte, Brecht, "refractive theatricality" and Copeau. Rather than treating the seemingly disparate aesthetic elements as separate periods in Strehler's career, this dissertation uses a single play as a lens for examining and unifying these elements.
La commedia dell'arte is a recognized, vibrant theatrical form that emerged in Italy during the Renaissance. However, while great attention has been given to the particulars of the genre (performance ...techniques, important troupes, leading players), there lacks a study behind the reasoning for its vast international popularity. In this thesis, I explore why this particular genre was able to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries, finding a dedicated and enthusiastic following in most European countries for over 200 years. After analyzing commedia dell'arte's original development in the Italian peninsula, examining the predominating Carnival ideology and the ability of the troupes to establish both regional and national symbols through the creation of specific stock characters, I will concentrate on the international tours and performances. By looking at the adaptive qualities of the troupes, and specifically their ability to play off of Europe's lack of national identity and Northern European's fascination with their exotic southern neighbor, I will discuss the reaction of Northern Europe with the Italian theatre, with a detailed look into the success of the troupes abroad. The popularity of the troupes will also be explored through the unique adaptation, assimilation and adoption of commedia dell'arte techniques and characters into developing national theatres of the other countries. I will conclude with a look of how commedia dell'arte has been and can continue to be effectively used in today's theatre. The examination of what drew both native and foreign audiences to the commedia dell'arte performances opens up possibilities for modern practitioners who wish to capitalize on the ability of the troupes to successfully play to a wide spectrum of people.
