Pavia Intensive School for Advanced Graduate Studies
Western dramaturgy from Antiquity to today
University of Pavia, Aula Bottigella
6 – 10 September 2021
Monday 6 September
chair Giuseppe Antonelli
9.00 Welcome greetings
Giuseppe De Nicolao (ISAGS Director – Intensive School for Advance Graduate Studies)
Maurizio Harari (Department of Human Studies Director)
Giuseppe Antonelli (Coordinator of the PhD program in Sciences of the Literary and Musical Text)
9.30 Prolusion. The constitutive factors of drama: time and person
Guido Paduano (University of Pisa)
10.30 Seneca’s theatre as bridge towards modernity: forms and themes of Latin tragedy
Maria Jennifer Falcone (University of Pavia)
12.00 Illusion and fiction in the Renaissance: the case study of Sperone Speroni
Teodoro Katinis (University of Gent)
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Monteverdi the aristotelian dramatist
Stefano La Via (University of Pavia)
16.00 Seventeenth-century rewritings of the Sacred Representation: the case of Giovan Battista Andreini
Fabrizio Fiaschini (University of Pavia)
17.00 Workshops
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Tuesday 7 September
chair Fabrizio Fiaschini
9.00 Between Florence and Genoa: dramaturgy events for the early seventeenth century’s feast
Simona Morando (University of Genoa)
10.30 Prison scenes in opera in the 17th and 18th centuries: a multimedia topos
Angela Romagnoli (University of Pavia)
12.00 New frontiers of Goldonian philology
Marzia Pieri (University of Siena)
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Goethe in the Italian theatre: from Werther to Faust
Elena Polledri (University of Udine)
16.00 Workshops
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Wednesday 8 September
chair Fabrizio Della Seta
9.00 The romantic melodrama: instructions for use
Fabrizio Della Seta (University of Pavia)
10.30 Humor, “comique absolu”, and operetta in Second Empire Paris
Emilio Sala (University of Milan)
12.00 From the literary work to the musical scene: anomalies of the Russian context
Anna Giust (University of Verona)
13.00 Lunch
14.30 The ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk between philhellenism and performance
Michela Garda (University of Pavia)
16.00 Workshops
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Thursday 9 September
chair Donatella Mazza
9.00 Composing for the scene in the 20th Century: towards a post-dramatic music theatre
Gianmario Borio (University of Pavia)
10.30 Ich fordere die Merzbühne: theatre in Kurt Schiwtters’s idea of total art
Donatella Mazza (University of Pavia)
12.00 Contemporary rewritings of Lettres portugaises: the concept of fidelity in screen and dramatic transmodalisation
Laura Rescia (University of Turin)
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Between crisis of drama and post-drama: the Brechtian knot
Gerardo Guccini (University of Bologna)
16.00 Workshops
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Friday 10 September
chair Stefano La Via
9.00 Cross-cutting views in contemporary dramaturgy
Guillermo Heras (Chairman of Asociación de Directores de Escena de España)
10.30 Lope de Vega’s Perro del hortelano in Italy in the twentieth century, translations and productions
Paolo Pintacuda (University of Pavia)
12.00 Screen Dramaturgies
Federica Villa (University of Pavia)
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Workshops results
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Workshops
Workshops will take place in presence, and it will be necessary to communicate the chosen option no later than 15 August 2021 using the appropriate form available on the Registration page.
Vera Cantoni (University of Pavia)
Verbatim drama workshop
We will explore with a hands-on approach the role of playwriting in verbatim theatre, a genre of documentary drama that quotes its sources word-by-word. In groups, we will select source material, give it dramatic structure, make stylistic choices and imagine a staging for the text. Each creative step will be introduced theoretically and later shared and discussed.
Stefano Vizioli (Theatre Director)
Playing the stage
The workshop intends to accompany the participants into the creative and productive workshop of theatre and opera, bringing out the plurality of the languages that compose them and the variety of profiles and workers who collaborate in their realization. The stage professions (from the superintendence to the artistic direction to the production direction) and the artistic roles (the director, the singers, the choir, the conductor, the set designer, the costume designer, the light-designer) will therefore be analyzed, subsequently moving on to the relationship between texts, score, singing and acting, with particular reference to the centrality of the body and space, up to the most extreme experimental experiences.
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Abstracts
Gianmario Borio
Composing for the scene in the 20th Century: towards a post-dramatic music theatre
At the beginning of the 20th century, music theatre experienced a change of paradigms which has two roots: Wagner’s innovations and the experimentation within spoken theatre. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Schoenberg’s Erwartung are considered as significant examples of this transformation. This process further developed in the second half of the century with scenic-musical actions which adopts the principles of “postdramatic theatre”, as later labelled by Heinz-Thies Lehmann. Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 and Evangelisti’s Die Schachtel can be considered as representative works of this phase. In both, although in different ways, the music appear as component of an audiovisual experience in which all theatrical dimension are involved.
Fabrizio Della Seta
The romantic melodrama: instructions for use
By ‘romantic melodramma,’ we mean the Italian opera from about 1810 to 1870, a repertoire that includes the most loved masterpieces still performed today in opera houses worldwide. This enormous popularity has hindered the understanding of this form of art as dramatic in its own right. For a predominantly literary exegetical tradition focused on the primacy of the poetic word, it was challenging to conceptualize a theater based on the preponderance of music and singing as dramatic. The lecture aims to show how the melodramma is a form of theater belonging to the great European theatrical tradition, which is entirely part of romantic dramaturgy. Thanks to the collaboration of different means of expression (word, song, gesture, image), it stages fundamental problems of the society in which it was born, which remain largely current in the present day.
Maria Jennifer Falcone
Seneca’s theatre as bridge towards modernity: forms and themes of Latin tragedy
Seneca’s tragedies are enigmatic in many aspects: we do not know anything about the performance; showing the absolute evil, these texts are barely compatible with the author’s philosophical texts; some of the texts are not unanimously ascribed to Seneca. The dramatist follows the dictates of Horace’s Ars Poetica and actualizes in Rome the great Greek tragedy of the fifth century B.C. His plays have exerted a great influence on the playwriters of Western culture and his characters never cease to fascinate and inspire.
Fabrizio Fiaschini
Seventeenth-century rewritings of the Sacred Representation: the case of Giovan Battista Andreini
Within the difficult process of emancipation of the Commedia dell’Arte on the double front of literary-poetic legitimacy and moral ethical justification, the dramaturgical path constitutes one of the strategies most frequented by the ‘comedian professors’ of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Specifically, we will focus on the emblematic figure of Giovan Battista Andreini, whose omnivorous and eccentric textual production (tragedies, comedies, pastorals, poems, theoretical works…) always develops within the programmatic horizon of promoting the artistic and ethical-moral profile of actor and author of the Commedia dell’Arte, through a complex and articulated work of re-elaboration and contamination of genres and forms, as in the case, analyzed here, of the sacred representation.
Michela Garda
The ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk between philhellenism and performance
Th. W. Adorno highlighted the ambivalence of the ideal of Gesamkunstwerk. This take is the starting point to explore the contradictions between the concept described in Wagner’s writings and its compositional and performative realization. The contribution is articulated in three parts. The first one focuses on the emergence of the aesthetic discussion about works resulting from the collaboration of different media (Diderot, Herder, Schlegel). The second part investigates the relationship between the philhellenic roots of the Wagnerian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk in the so-called Zurich’s writings. Moreover, it takes into consideration the emancipation of the issues about the relationship between poetry and music from those related to the performance in the later writings. The theoretical framing will be compared with its poetic-compositional realization in some examples from Ring and Parsifal, related to the relationship between word and music and the so-called ‘metaphysics of the gaze’. The contribution investigates the relation between the philhellenic roots of Wagner’s concept and its actual implications in the conception of musical drama and performance in the Wagnerian operas. In conclusion, moving from the exploration of the concept as well as the original application of Gesamtkunstwerk, will be taken into consideration questions related to its reception in the discussion about the definition of intermediality and opera direction.
Anna Giust
From the literary work to the musical scene: anomalies of the Russian context (on the inter-semiotic translations of the ‘little tragedies’ by A. S. Pushkin)
The operatic libretto became a scapegoat in the anti-Italian feud when, especially in late-nineteenth-century Russia, the quest for an original form of musical theatre, independent form the Western model, spread out. Early attempts of Literaturoper began in imperial Russia. They were born out of the will to set a whole literary work to music, without the intervention of a librettist. This lecture will focus on some examples of this form drawn from the literary output of the poet Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837), and in particular form his cycle of ‘little tragedies’.
Gerardo Guccini
Between crisis of drama and post-drama: the Brechtian knot
Brecht’s position is central and a turning point in all the main historical theories and syntheses dedicated to dramatic language. Szondi affirms that “epic theater” resolves the age-old crisis of drama by objectifying a theatrical world that is coherent to itself, based on the radical reorganization of the relationship between epic themes and dramatic form. The Brechtian model is central for Lehmann as well, so much so that its overcoming determines the start of the “post-dramatic” phase that the same scholar proposes to define with the attributes of “post-epic” or “post-Brechtian”. The affirmation and dissolution of the epic model therefore constitute facts of historical significance, which concern not only the dramaturgy of the twentieth century, not only the political theatre, but the analytical organization of the compositional processes in relation to the material complexity of the theatre. The present contribution aims to observe the action carried out by the Brechtian opera, framing it in two distinct perspectives, respectively defined by the scene/audience relations and by the infra-theatrical relations between author/director and actors. The former perspectives highlight principles that will then be reactivated by the “narrative theatre”, the latter experience full range of the dramaturg’s functions, renewing its role.
Guillermo Heras
Cross-cutting views in contemporary playwriting
Starting from personal reflections on his own experience of dramatic writing, the speaker will address a series of issues relating to the dialectic between drama of the past and present or future alternatives, showing the necessity in any form of art to move between tradition and topicality.
Teodoro Katinis
Illusion and fiction in the Renaissance: the case study of Sperone Speroni
The culture between 15th and 17th century stressed the function of simulation and dissimulation in every field, while the dialogue became the place where this function took a literary form. The identification of the interlocutor with his mask brings the dialogue very close to the theatre. This relation has attracted several scholars, in Europe as well as in North America, toward the study of the art of dialogue and the theory of dialogue, but the investigation has often involved the radical theoretical aspects of the subject in the culture before the Baroque: the idea that the whole human world is driven by convincing illusions. This class will focus on the case study of Sperone Speroni, with particular attention to his Dialogo della Discordia and Apologia dei Dialoghi.
Stefano La Via
Monteverdi the aristotelian dramatist
The principles codified in Aristotle’s Poetics, though mostly underestimated by today’s scholars, can still be reproposed as primary critical-exegetic tools for our understanding of Claudio Monteverdi’s entire theatrical production. Among his favourite poets, not by chance, one finds leading authors such as Torquato Tasso and Battista Guarini, well known also for their modern and anti-dogmatic interpretations of the Poetics. The same path was followed, even ‘though in different times and contexts, by Monteverdi’s opera librettists: from Alessandro Striggio (Orfeo) to Giacomo Badoaro (Ritorno di Ulisse in patria), including even the rather experimental and transgressive Gianfrancesco Busenello (Incoronazione di Poppea). The first part of the lecture will be devoted to the historical definition of key concepts and principles such as “complex action”, “tragic incident”, “mutation”, “peripety”, “agnition”, “dénouement”, “catharsis”, and to their crucial impact upon the dramatic musical structure of Orfeo and Ritorno; the second part will focus, more in detail, on the “madrigale rappresentativo” Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (dramatic setting of the Gerusalemme Liberata, XII: 52-62, 64-68) where one can recognize the highest and groundbreaking outcome of Tasso’s twofold epic and theoretical lesson (with reference to his Discorsi Dell’arte poetica e Del poema eroico).
Donatella Mazza
Ich fordere die Merzbühne: theatre in Kurt Schiwtters’s idea of total art
Kurt Schwitters was one of the most eclectic artists in the very eclectic panorama of the German historical avant-garde: painter, graphic designer, performer and installation artist, poet, he also embraced the theatre and embedded his most revolutionary projects in the idea of a total art involving space, materials, actors and audience as elements of a Dadaist composition that breaks the mould.
Simona Morando
Between Florence and Genoa: dramaturgy events for the early seventeenth century’s feast
The essay will examine two types of performances from a textual point of view. An opera for music written by Jacopo Cicognini for Florence, the Andromeda, a new manuscript of which was found, and, on the Florence-Genoa axis, some texts to be recited singing as interludes of nobility dancing parties written by one of Cicognini’s friends, the Savona-based poet Gabriello Chiabrera, whose Vegghie are a rare edition that needs to be studied.
Marzia Pieri
New frontiers of Goldonian philology
From the very beginning Carlo Goldoni strived to combine his profession as a comic poet with the public defence of his profile as an author, owner and direct handler of his compositions translated from scripts into books, and he promoted four different editions of his works during his lifetime, continually rewritten and updated in different containers for an ever growing public, which by the Pasquali edition had become European. The extraordinary theatrical and book fortune that he received was not enough, however, to redeem him from the minority of the theatrical and to welcome him in literary histories, and for a long time he remained a forgotten and misunderstood classic. His texts, abandoned in the hands of comedians, have been scrambled, pirated and tampered with in every way, and only belatedly assembled according to an outdated “philology of the heart” inclined to arbitrarily select, among the various lessons available, the one deemed most readable and captivating. The Marsilio edition, containing the entirety of the author’s works and inaugurated in 1993 on the bicentenary of his death, and which includes more than 120 titles in over 60 volumes, has promoted a critical discussion, at times lively and controversial, which has rebuilt the stratified, Goldonian dramaturgy workshop, making it a methodologically exemplary philological “case”.
Paolo Pintacuda
Lope de Vega’s Perro del hortelano in Italy in the twentieth century, translations and productions
The fortune of Lope de Vega’s Perro del hortelano (ca. 1613) is a very interesting phenomenon of above-average interest aroused in Italy in the twentieth century by some of the numerous works of classical Spanish theater. In this instance, the focus of attention was not only on the text, to be translated (perhaps commented on) and offered to the reader; but also – especially in the second third of the century – on its return to the stage, leading to the representation of one of the most pleasant comedies of the greatest Spanish playwright of the Golden Age.
Elena Polledri
Goethe on the Italian scene, origins and contemporary developments: the Werther, epistolary novel, comedy, melodrama, tragedy
The speech will focus on the theatrical reception of Werther in Italy, showing how from the end of the eighteenth century the Goethean novel was subjected to radical transformations in translations and theatrical adaptations, as well as in opera librettos. The presentation of the first eighteenth and nineteenth-century theatrical adaptations of the novel, which soon became comedy and melodrama in Italy, will be followed by a comparison with some contemporary stagings.
Laura Rescia
Contemporary rewritings of Lettres portugaises: the concept of fidelity in screen and dramatic transmodalisation
The lecture’s aim is to analyse the filmic and dramatic rewritings of Lettres Portugaises (1669), a model of seventeenth-century French epistolary fiction, realized in 2009 by Eugène Green and Louise Doutreligne. This case study will allow us to rethink the concept of fidelity in screen and theatre adaptations through the analysis of citation practices and transmodalisation.
Angela Romagnoli
Prison scenes in opera in the 17th and 18th centuries: a multimedia topos
The prison scene is one of the most fortunate topoi in the history of opera: present sporadically in other forms of theater before, with the establishment of the system of impresario theaters it became universally established in the world of opera as a characteristic of the genre. The prison was one of the sets that the theaters were equipped with; it was an ideal setting for the expression of strong affetti, destined to appeal to the public; it was the optimal location for the moment of maximum envelopment of the dramaturgical knot; it had the fascination of the horrid. It was also a pervasive topos reflected in all the different languages of the scene: the visual aspect was very important, involving both the scenography and the lighting; music naturally had its part to play, and the poetic text on the one hand offered the composer the possibility to resort to unespected formal solutions (for example, monostrophic arias, cavatinas, accompanied recitatives), and on the other hand exhibited some specific features, for example phonetic, to complete the horrific effect of the whole. Acting certainly had a role, since the jail scene can be considered the operatic pendant of the great monologues of the spoken theater; parody and the comic element were not missing either, especially in the seventeenth century. A ‘multimedia’ topos, therefore.
Emilio Sala
Humor, “comique absolu”, and operetta in Second Empire Paris
After the failure of the 1848 Revolution, the emergence of Hervé’s and Offenbach’s operettas with their anarchistic and absurdist humor marks an epoch-making transformation in Parisian cultural and musical landscape. As Kracauer wrote in his famous book Offenbach and the Paris of his Time (1937), the Parisian “operetta society” found perhaps its most complete artistic representation in “Offenbachiade”. In the same years, Baudelaire published a number of essays on caricature, modern laughter and “comique absolu” – an expression or symptom of the Baudelairian self-divided subjectivity. Is it possible to compare the modern, self-reflective laughter theorized by Baudelaire and the mocking spirit and parodic attitude of the Hervé’s and Offenbach’s operettas? My paper will be an attempt to answer this question by examining several examples drawn from the operetta’s parodic practices, intertextual jokes, and meta-music.
Federica Villa
Screen Dramaturgies
From the curtain behind which Pythagoras was hidden, the opaque surface of the screen has traditionally been considered as something that prevents vision and therefore hides the truth. On the contrary, the advent of cinema has shown that the opacity of this surface is also what allows us to see, so that light and shadow, traditionally opposed by our culture, cannot exist separately. The long history of screens, from the wall of the prehistoric cave to the displays of our devices, is marked by the intertwining of concealment and exposure, subtraction and exhibition, visible and invisible. And now more than ever, due to the pandemic, screens have become the space where our experiences build their own dramaturgies.