La Comedie italienne. L'Improvisation, les canevas, vies, caracteres, portraits, masques des illustres personnages de la commedia dell'arte.

In the second decade of the eighteenth century, the Parisian théâtres de la foire (fairground theaters) gave birth to French comic opera with the inception of the genre known as comédie en vaudevilles (sung vaudevilles interspersed between spoken dialogue). Vaudevilles were popular songs that “ran in the streets” and served as vessels for new texts that transmitted the latest news, scandals, and gossip around the city. Already in the seventeenth century, however, the Comédie-Italienne, the royally funded troupe charged with performing commedia dell’arte, began to create spectacles that incorporated street songs from the urban soundscape. In the late seventeenth century all three official theaters—the Comédie-Italienne, the Comédie-Française, and the Opéra—also infused the streets with new tunes that transformed into vaudevilles. This article explores the contribution of the nonoperatic theaters—the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne—to the vaudeville repertoire to show the ways in which theatrical spectacle shaped a thriving popular song tradition. I argue that because most theatrical finales were structured around many repetitions of a catchy strophic tune to which each actor or actress sang one or more verses, a newly composed tune used as a finale had an increased probability of transforming into a vaudeville. Some of the vaudevilles used in early eighteenth-century comic operas therefore originated in newly composed divertissements for the late seventeenth-century plays presented at the nonoperatic theaters. Other vaudevilles began as airs from operas that were also absorbed into the tradition of street song. By the early eighteenth century, fairground spectacles drew from a dynamic repertory of vaudevilles amalgamated from the most voguish tunes circulating in the city. The intertwined relationship of the popular song tradition and theatrical spectacle suggests that the theaters helped to mold the corpus of vaudevilles available to street singers, composers, and playwrights.

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Warum von einem Leben ohne Theater träumen?

arbeitstitel | Forum für Leipziger Promovierende ◽

10.36258/aflp.v6i2.3294 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 19-32

Author(s):

Sebastian Hauck

Keyword(s):

Commedia Dell'arte ◽

Comedie Italienne

Denjenigen Theaterformen, die gemeinhin unter dem Namen Commedia dell’Arte, Commedia all’improvviso, Comédie italienne oder Théâtre de la Foire bekannt sind, erweist sich ein Verfahren als grundlegend, das mit dem Erzählen von anderen Welten umschrieben werden kann. Auf der Basis mythischer Figuren und Maschere erzählten Akteure in der Tradition des souveränen Schauspielers von anderen, jenseitigen, exotischen Welten. Aus dieser Perspektive wurden die Normen, Regeln, Zwänge, Werte, Tabus dieser, der ›eigentlichen‹ Welt, spielerisch hinterfragt und relativiert. Nach dem jeweils unterschiedlichen historischen Kontext wurde ein bestimmter Aspekt dieser anderen Welt hervorgehoben: gegen Ende des 17. und zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts in Paris die Vorstellung, der Traum eines Lebens ohne Theater.

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What is Commedia dell’Arte Today? A Review Essay

Early Theatre ◽

10.12745/et.22.2.4128 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Pavel Drabek

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Review Essay ◽

Commedia Dell'arte ◽

Xviiie Siècle ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Comedie Italienne ◽

Xviiie Siecle

This essay reviews seven recent volumes on the commedia dell'arte: Christopher B. Balme, Piermario Vescovo, and Daniele Vianello's edited volume Commedia dell’Arte in Context (2018); Judith Chaffee and Oliver Crick's edited The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte (2014); Erith Jaffe-Berg's Commedia dell’ Arte and the Mediterranean: Charting Journeys and Mapping ‘Others’ (2016); Andrea Fabiano's La Comédie-Italienne de Paris et Carlo Goldoni: De la commedia dell’arte à l’opéra-comique, une dramaturgie de l'hybridation au XVIIIe siècle (2018); Emily Wilbourne's Seventeenth-Century Opera and the Sound of the Commedia dell’Arte (2016); Natalie Crohn Schmitt's Befriending the Commedia dell’arte of Flaminio Scala: The Comic Scenarios (2014); and Markus Kupferblum's Die geburt der neugier aus dem geist der revolution. Die commedia dell’arte als politisches volkstheater (2013).

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Commedia dell'arte Actresses and the Performance of Lovesickness

The Brock Review ◽

10.26522/br.v10i2.85 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 26-37

Author(s):

Clarissa Hanora Hurley

Keyword(s):

Medical Condition ◽

Commedia Dell'arte ◽

Cultural Attitudes ◽

Gender Based

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was a conjunction of interest in erotomania as a “real” medical condition and the representation of that condition in literature and on the popular stage. This period corresponds with the rise of the professional actress of the commedia dell’arte. This paper explores some instances of pazzia (madness) scenes in the scenarios of Flaminio Scala and contemporary accounts of commedia performances with a view to better understanding the role of the professional theatre and professional actress in shaping and reflecting cultural attitudes towards gender-based erotic “distraction”.

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