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‘When a Dream Vanishes’: Edward Gordon Craig in Florence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Alessandro Sardelli
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Abstract

When Gordon Craig settled in Florence before the First World War, he found himself amidst a flourishing avant-garde artistic community. which he regarded with some caution. Between the staging of Rosmersholm with Duse in 1906 and the closing of his short-lived theatre school at the Goldoni Arena in 1914, he also conducted a correspondence with the eclectic cosmopolitan Carlo Placci – a previously unpublished source on which Alessandro Sardelli has drawn to illuminate Craig's Florentine years, during which his influential journal The Mask made its earliest appearance, and Craig also developed the idea of his adjustable screens, first employed during his Moscow collaboration with Stanislavski on Hamlet.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 18 , May 1989 , pp. 140 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

Notes and References

1. The Mask, Vol. I, No. 8 (1908), p. 159–60. This letter was also published in On the Art of The Theatre (Heinemann, 1911).

2. The significant role of the musicologist and scholar Placci is evident from his papers and rich correspondence with key personalities and European culture. These documents are now held at the Marucelliana library in Florence. See also Tisi, M. J. Cambieiri, ‘Carlo Placci, maestro di cosmopoli nella Firenze fra Otto e Novecento’ (Florence: Vallecchi, 1984).Google Scholar

3. There are 13 unpublished letters from Placci's correspondence in the Marucelliana library, partly reproduced here, without further reference.

4. Corradini, E., ‘L'arte della scena: E. Gordon Craig’, in Vita d'arte, Vol. I, No. 3 (1908), p. 183–6.Google Scholar

5. Craig, E. Gordon, A Note on Rosmersholm (Florence, 1906).Google Scholar

6. Gaio [pseudonym of Adolfo Orvieto], ‘Rosmersholm’, in Marzocco, Vol. II, No. 49 (1906), p. 1.

7. This letter and the two following ones are part of the Duse-Placci correspondence (1889–1922) held in the Marucelliana library, Florence. These three unpublished letters are written in pencil and in Italian, on the headed writing paper of the Grand Hotel, Florence, and are undated, but are from the later part of 1906, and were probably sent to Placci between 8 and 20 December. As far as possible the very individual layout and punctuation of sentences has been preserved.

8. Duse is referring to Rosmersholm (1886) and John Gabriel Borkman (1896) by Ibsen, and La Mort de Tintagiles (1905) by Maeterlinck.

9. G. Noccioli, Diary 1906–1907; now published in ‘Eleanora Duse nel suo tempo’, Quaderni del Piccolo Teatro, Milan, 1962, p. 31–73.

10. Undated letter, from early 1907.

11. For more on the editorial policy of La Voce, see the introduction to Simonetti's, C. M. bibliography, Le edizione della ‘Voce’ (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1981)Google Scholar, and the catalogue of the exhibition Il tempo della ‘Voce’, ed. Nozzoli, A. and Simonetti, C. M. (Florence: Vallecchi, 1982).Google Scholar

12. A postcard sent from San Marcello Pistoiese. Handwritten, in Italian on both sides of the card, it is part of the unpublished Placci-Papini correspondence, 1904–35, now in the Papini Archive, the Primo Conti Foundation, Fiesole. It was one of the items in an exhibition, Papini, 1881–1981, and is in the catalogue, ed. M. Marchi and J. Soldateschi (Florence: Vallecchi, 1981).

13. E. Corradini, ‘L'arte della scena! E. Gordon Craig’, p. 186.

14. Il Marzocco, Vol. XIV, No. 46 (1906).

15. D. Nevile Lees was born in 1880 in Wolverhampton, and died in Florence in 1966. The E. G. Craig collection of books on the theatre is held in the library of the British Institute of Florence, where an exhibition on her life in Florence was held in Feb. 1987. See the catalogue ‘ I Record Only the Sunny Hours’: the Life and Work of Dorothy Nevile Lees, produced for the exhibition (Florence: Giuntina).

16. Baltrušajtis, J. (born 1873 in Kaunas, Lithuania, died in 1944 in Paris) contributed to Craig's book, A Life in the Theatre (Florence: Giuntina, 1913)Google Scholar. See E. Kuhn Amendola, ‘Vita con Giovanni Amendola’ (Florence: Parenti, 1960), p. 308.

17. These unpublished letters, written in Italian, are part of the Baltrušajtis-Papini correspondence (1904–40) now in the Papini Archive, Primo Conti Foundation, Fiesole.

18. The choice of the name clearly refers to Lord Howard, the English patron who helped finance the Gordon Craig School initially, and then, with polite excuses, withdrew all his economic support.

19. The patent was also deposited in England and France. For a summary of the patent deposited in England, see Innes, C., Edward Gordon Craig (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 143–5Google Scholar. The technical account of the patent deposited at Rome and each sheet of the attached drawings were signed on Craig's behalf by C. A. Rossi and Company.

20. Sorani, A., ‘Gordon Craig e il teatro’, Il Marzocco, Vol. XXXVI, No. 44 (1931), p. 2.Google Scholar

21. Craig, E. G., ‘Gentlemen, the Marionette!’, The Mask, Vol. V, No. 2 (1912), p. 97.Google Scholar

22. The strips of canvas made a flexible joint which allowed the panels to be opened from both sides of the screen, by pivoting them on the hinge where rotation was needed.

23. Craig, E. G., Scene (Oxford University Press, 1923), p. 25.Google ScholarPubMed

24. Marinetti, F. T., ‘Futurism and the Theatre: a Futurist Manifesto’, translated from the Italian by Lees, D. N., The Mask, Vol. VI, No. 3 (1914).Google Scholar

25. Marinetti, F. T., ‘The Meaning of the Music Hall, by the Only Intelligent Futurist’, Daily Mail, 21 11 1913Google Scholar; reprinted in Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1971), p. 59.

26. Placci, C., ‘Una colonia ritmica’, Corriere della Sera, Vol. XXXVI, No. 109 (1911).Google Scholar

27. The community was the initiative of the German entrepreneur Karl Schmidt, and wanted to create a utopian workers' colony at Hellerau, near Dresden, on socialist principles. In planning the colony, he hoped to elevate the spirit of the workers with dance, rhythmic gymnastics and meditation, using teaching methods for movement and rhythm developed by J. Dalcroze.

28. Undated letter, from the first quarter of 1911.

29. The members of the English committee were Laurence Binyon, George Calderon, Gilbert Cannan, Gerard Chowne, J. Paul Cooper, Walter Crane, Osman Edwards, J. L. Garvin, J. Martin Harvey, C. Lewis Hind, Augustus John, P. G. Konody, Ambrose MacEvoy, Haldane McFall, T. Sturge Moore, William Poel, Albert Rothenstein, Professor Sauter, J. B. Scott, Charles Shannon, Martin Shaw, William Strang, Donald Tovey, H. G. Wells, R. Vaughan Williams, W. B. Yeats.

30. E. G. Craig, On the Art of the Theatre, p. 71.