Commedia Dell'Arte

A Handbook for Troupes

Oliver Crick, John Rudlin

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134629824
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Performing Arts

A companion to John Rudlin's best-selling Commedia dell'Arte: A Handbook for Actors, this book covers both the history and professional practice of commedia dell'arte companies from 1568 to the present day. Indispensable for both the beginner and the professional, it contains historical and contemporary company case histories, details on company organisation, and tips on practical stagecraft.
Essential for students and practitioners, this book enables the reader to understand how successful commedia dell'arte companies function, and how we can learn from past and current practice to create a lively and dynamic form of theatre.
Includes tips on:
* writing a scenario
* mask-making
* building a stage
* designing a backdrop
* costume
* music.
_

Part One
Commedia dell’arte all’improvviso

This section is composed of monographs on the leading Italian commedia dell’arte companies from 1568 (the earliest mention of any of them) to 1622 (when Richelieu became a cardinal and royal requests for the presence of itinerant Italian troupes in France came to an end). This period can be considered as the golden one of improvisation before Commedia became increasingly text-based. As well as Italy and France, Spain is also taken into account, but not other countries where Commedia is known to have had an occasional presence, including Bavaria, England, Russia, etc. One must beware, though, of assuming that the names of European countries indicated the same territories, or even nationalities, that they do today. Italy, after the 1559 Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis between France and Spain brought to an end sixty years of attempted French domination, was composed of three republics – Venice, Genoa and Lucca; the Papal State – which extended all the way from Rome up to Bologna; Milan, Naples and Sicily – which were ruled directly by the Austro-Spanish Empire of the Habsburgs; Ferrara and Tuscany – which were more or less Habsburg protectorates, and Parma and Mantua – which were protected by the French. Savoy, under the bright young star Emmanuel Phillibert, who had recently humiliated the French at the battle of St Quentin – was for a while able to do its own thing. France meanwhile was torn apart by repeated religious civil wars and held together by string in the form of the machinations of the Queen Mother, the Florentine Catherine de’ Medici, while her three hapless sons, Francis II, Charles IX and Henri III, bungled the kingship job one after another.

Figure 1 Italy after the treaty of Cateau Cambrésis (1559)

Commedia dell’arte evolved from its humble origins into being the entertainment form of its epoch within the twenty years prior to the period under consideration. Suddenly it was able to pass over existing religious and cultural borders, as well as the Alps and the Pyrenees, in the way that Renaissance and Mannerist painters had done before. The same right of passage was also afforded to musicians, with wandering Flemish composers, for example, much in evidence in Italy. Culture contact was thus not limited as to Muse or to direction: this was, above all, the time of the itinerant virtuoso, in whatever art form, and such individuals were able to transcend even the ravages of war as they went from one court to another, or one artistic centre to another, regardless of their national or class origins. The problem with Commedia though, as always with theatre, was that one virtuoso was not enough to perform a play: how could several band together in a way that enhanced rather than limited their renown – and thus their earning potential?

Improvisation lies at the heart of the answer. Commedia dell’arte all’ improvviso was not an isolated curiosity in sixteenth-century Italy: cantatore improvviso was also, for example, an accepted profession. Professional performers discovered that the craft which bound them together was the ability to improvise collectively in public. As for amateurs, since the nobility were excluded from the public platforms of both theatre and politics, they found consolation in attending closed literary academies, of which there were nearly 700. There they would compare classical manuscripts, suggest new readings or interpretations, decipher inscriptions on medals and coins, and sit in judgement on Latin odes or debate the propriety of a phrase. Unfortunately they also ‘tended to bestow on an unprofitable pedantry the honours of real learning’.¹ To enliven their dull and pretentious proceedings they also turned to the excitements of improvisation and invited poets to deliver impromptu Petrachan-style odes and sonnets; other all’ improvisso games included contests in mock oratory on unprepared topics – speeches which must have borne some resemblance to the sonorous sproloquio of Il Dottore.

As well as being used by the new generation of comici dell’arte to legitimise the hitherto street art of improvising, the literary academies are of further interest to the study of Commedia because many of the major troupes emulated them when choosing their names. Most academies opted for an appellation with, as they saw it, deliberate Socratic irony, for example the Lunatici of Naples. Other preferred cryptic bathos, such as the most famous of them, the Accademia della Cruca, (The Academy of Bran), which took a sieve as its motif – meaning that learning, after they had sifted it, was as pure as it could be. The names of Commedia troupes such as the Gelosi, the Confidenti, the Accessi, the Dediosi, the Fedeli, the Uniti, the Affezionati, the Constanti, all emulated the nomenclature of these learned societies, thus indicating, they hoped, a communality of cultural purpose between the world of academe and the arte of the professional comedian. There also grew up an elitist rivalry between troupes similar to that which existed between the literary organisations, a more or less friendly struggle to be primus inter pares. This concept of ‘first among equals’ extended to the status of individuals within the troupes; of particular note is that the academies afforded equality to their female members, and actresses were similarly accepted into commedia dell’arte companies. Isabella Andreini, for example, was not only a leading member of the Gelosi, but was also elected to the academy of the Intenti in her home town of Padua. She also published two books of poems, and a pastoral, La Mirtilla. Tasso wrote sonnets to her. Other companies, such as the early Confidenti and the Dediosi, had a woman as capocomico.

In most troupes, as we shall see, there was, further, a desire to emulate the internal democracy by which such belles lettres societies were run. However, actors tend to be second only to chickens in their desire to establish a pecking order – as Orazio Nobili said of Domenico Bruni, the leader of the later Confidenti, ‘he holds the position of best among betters’.² Nevertheless, the co-operative intention, at least, of the comici should not be doubted, and the requirement for brotherly love was written into the earliest extant mutual contract (Padua 1546), which determined that ‘ . . . in order such a company shall survive in fraternal love’, it would ‘ . . . without any hatred, rancour and dissolution, make and observe with love, as is customary among good and faithful companions, all articles written hereunder . . .’³

If it was necessary to legislate for such fraternalism, however, it may be that experience had already shown that it was not that easy to sustain when faced with the rigours of touring. Sisterly love, as the first actresses made their appearance on stage in the last quarter of the cinquecento, seems to have been an even rarer quality as prima and seconda donnas vied for recognition. In the audience, too, women had to struggle for their place, but not with each other. When necessary, royalty solved the problem of the propriety of women attending Commedia by commanding separate ladies only performances in private chambers. For the hoi polloi the answer was often segregation: for example, public theatres in Spain had places set aside exclusively for women – a gallery called a cazuela, a jaula de las mugeres, or a corredor de las mugeres. They had their own doorkeeper, but the doors were not always kept successfully shut. A typical complaint comes from Seville in 1627 ‘that women occupied seats in the

first and second rows of the sillas and bancos among the men, and likewise in other parts of the theatre, from which great scandal resulted.’⁴ An alguacil (peace-officer) was always stationed in the cazuela (a.k.a. a round stew pan with close-fitting lid intended to steam food slowly) to keep the women within bounds since otherwise ‘they pelted the actors with fruit, orange-peel, cucumbers, or anything found at hand, to show their disapproval, and generally came provided with rattles, whistles or keys, which they used unsparingly.’⁵

Figure 2 Isabella Andreini. Frontispiece to her La Mirtilla, Verona, 1588.

In France, ladies can hardly be said to have visited the only public theatre, the Hôtel de Bourgogne until Richelieu began to take an active interest in theatre in around 1635. Women did go to the theatre but

c’était surtout des femmes perdues. . . . Les honnêtes femmes n’allaient point à l’Hôtel de Bourgogne et n’y pouvaient aller, affrayées par les insolens et par l’immoralité des spectacles; mais leur abstention même était un mal et laissait le champ libre à l’immoralité comme aux insolences. (It was above all women who had lost their reputation who went to the Hôtel de Bourgogne . . . honest women didn’t go there because of the impropriety and immorality of the shows; but their very absence left the door open to immorality andimpropriety.)⁶

Commedia needs lost souls (of both sexes), as well as honest ones: in it the refined is defined by contact with the unrefined, and the indelicate becomes delectable as a relief from the delicate. The top companies, to whom we now turn, were the ones that were able to keep their feet in the piazza whilst their heads were in the palazzo.

Zan Ganassa (1568–1610)

Whilst, as we have seen, some ‘golden age’ Commedia troupes sought to create a company image by adopting a collective cognomen, other performers remained happy to receive their share of the take from a boss whose name and fame stood for them all. As far as is ascertainable, Alberto Naseli, known usually only by his stage name Zan Ganassa, was the first such capocomico to take a Commedia troupe to Paris. Of his previous work in Italy, little is known, except that he probably came from Bergamo itself, thus having more right than most to call himself ‘Zan’ (a diminutive of ‘Zanni’, unless one argues that ‘Zanni’ is a diminutive of ‘Zan’ . . .). On stage he certainly spoke in Bergamese dialect. His Magnifico was Stefanello Bottarga and his first innamorata Vincenza Armani. Tomasso Garzoni wrote of her that:

Of the learned Vicenza I cannot speak, but by imitating the eloquent style of Cicero, she has placed the comic art in competition with oratory . . . [and] in part by her admirable beauty, in part by her indescribable grace, has built an increased following for herself.⁷

Together (one assumes, though only Ganassa is mentioned) they played at Mantua in 1568. Vincenza then left the company and shortly after took the wearing of her role as a lover to the extreme by taking poison. A funeral oratory written by her lover, Adriano Valerini, praises her cooking, embroidery, Latin, musicianship, composition and singing of madrigals, sculpture in wax and, of course, her acting – in three different styles: comedy, tragedy and pastoral. She can be credited as being the first of the refined, educated female lovers.

Ganassa next appears as part of the festivities in honour of the marriage of Lucrezia d’Este in Ferrara in 1570. It is this performance that must have prompted Charles IX to invite Ganassa and his compagnons italiens to Paris in 1571 as part of the celebrations for his royal entry into the city with his bride. After playing for their royal patron, the company began giving public performances in August, probably at the only public theatre in Paris, the Hôtel de Bourgogone.

Figure 3 Stefanello Bottarga as Pantalone, from the ‘Recueil Fossard’, a collection of images of commedia dell’arte put together by a musician at the court of Louis XIV. Clearly his Panatalone was a ‘Magnifico’, evidence that the terms were interchangeable in the sixteenth century.

Exporting commedia dell’arte was not, however, to prove that simple. On 15 September, the Parlement de Paris issued an arrêt forbidding the Italians to play again in public on pain of ‘prison and corporal punishment’. The fact that the actors had letters patent from the king and personal permission from the prévôt de marchandes was to be ignored. The prévôt was told to give no more such permissions in future, and residents of Paris were forbidden to attend performances or face a ten livre fine. A second arrêt was issued a month later, which would seem to indicate that performances had not completely stopped. Ganassa and his troupe probably over-wintered in

France, but without performing. Parlement's prohibitions were not a case of censorship following on scandal – Ganassa was known for his sense of decorum and being ‘prolific only in absurd and tasteful witticisms, and so modest that every modest spectator could be much delighted by him and truly hold him in affection’.⁸ He was actually praised, albeit posthumously, by Father Giovanni Domenico Ottonelli in his Della Christiana Moderatione del Teatro⁹ for providing performances ‘free of all obscenity’. It was rather that, being the first Italians to play in Paris, Ganassa and his well-disciplined company had not only stumbled unwittingly into a power struggle between king and Parlement, but also trodden on the toes of a vested interest. It was claimed they were charging three to six sols for tickets, ‘an excessive sum never before levied for such purpose and an imposition on the poor’,¹⁰ ...