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How did the Commedia dell'arte cross the Alps to Bavaria?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

M. A. Katritzky
M. A. Katritzky
Affiliation:
Doctoral Research Student, St. Catherine's College, Oxford.
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Extract

The commedia dell'arte is a type of improvised acting based around the masked stock characters of the merchant, lawyer and servant, whose earliest names were Magnifico, il Dottore and Zanni (Plate I). From 1571 onwards, it was spread throughout Europe by visiting troupes of professional Italian actors, whose members, activities and travels are, for the most part, well-documented. The way in which it reached Bavaria is less clear. Records, including three festival books, suggest that already as early as February 1568, when crown Prince Wilhelm married Princess Renée of Lorraine in Munich, the commedia dell'arte was an established and popular feature of Bavarian court festivities, to which it contributed in three contexts. Some of its costumes were used in masquerades; the Venetian Magnifico, or merchant, and his servant Zanni (the servant-master pair who became the central comic focus of the commedia dell'arte) appeared as masked clowns on several occasions, and on 8 March 1568 there was a full-length play whose description in Massimo Troiano's festival book is generally acknowledged as the earliest known comprehensive description of a complete commedia dell'arte performance.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1991 , pp. 201 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1991

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References

Notes

1. For critical bibliography, see Heck, Thomas, Commedia dell'arte: a guide to the primary and secondary literature. New York & London, 1988.Google Scholar

2. Troiano, Massimo, Discorsi delli triomfi …Google Scholar; Wagner, Hans, Kurtze dock gegründte beschreibung …Google Scholar; Wirre, Heinrich, Ordentliche Beschreybung der Fürstlichen Hochzeyt. …Google Scholar All Munich, 1568. (References to Troiano in the present paper are to the Italian verso sides of the dual-language second, Venice 1569, edition. Leuchtmann, Horst, Die Münchner Fürstenhochzeit von 1568, Munich, 1980Google Scholar, reprints these versos, but replaces the Catalan rectos with a modern German translation).

3. Troiano, ff.146v-152v. Heck (p. 37) calls it ‘an early (so far the earliest known) description of an improvised Italian comedy, or CdA-style entertainment’.

4. The term is first used by Goldoni, in his play Il Teatro Comico of 1751, from whom it is taken up by Baretti, in 1764. (Gambelli, Delia, ‘Arlecchino: dalla “preistoria” a Biancolelli’, Biblioteca Teatrale, 5 (1972), 17–68, p. 30).Google Scholar

5. Kathleen Lea's pioneering and uniquely thorough study of the commedia dell'arte and its emergence as a definitive form is still broadly valid (Italian Popular Comedy, 2 vols, Oxford 1934).Google Scholar A detailed overall revision of Lea's conclusions is long overdue, based on subsequent research, which has tended to concentrate on individual aspects of this question, as for example Tim Fitzpatrick on improvisation (‘Flaminio Scala's Prototypal Scenarios: Segmenting the Text/Performance’, in The Science of Buffoonery: Theory and History of the Commedia dell'Arte, ed. Pietropaolo, Domenico, Toronto, 1989, pp. 177–189)Google Scholar, and Michael Anderson on performance space (‘Making room: Commedia and the privatisation of the Theatre’, in The Commedia dell'Arte from the Renaissance to Dario Fo, ed. Cairns, Christopher, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1988, pp. 74–98).Google Scholar

6. Joachim du Bellay, Regrets, no. 112 (quoted in Driesen, Otto, Der Ursprung des Harlekin, Berlin, 1904, p. 195).Google ScholarGrazzini, , Tutti i Trionfi, Carri, Mascheaate o canti Carnascialeschi andati per Firenze, Florence, 1559, pp. 461–3.Google Scholar

7. For more detail on this, see Katritzky, M. A., ‘The Diaries of Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria: Commedia dell'Arte at the Wedding Festivals of Florence (1565) and Munich (1568)’, Italian Sources of European Festival, ed. Mulryne, Ronnie and Shewring, Margaret, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, forthcoming.Google Scholar

8. Korr.Akt.924, (ff.33–58 63–112 and 117–21), Geheimes Hausarchiv, Munich (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv. Access courtesy of His Royal Highness Duke Albrecht of Bavaria, my thanks also to the Director, Herr Dr. Puchta, for his kind help). Partially edited (from a contemporary, probably shortened, copy, missing from the BHSA since at least the 1950s) by

Freyberg, M. V., Sammlung historischer Schriften und Urkunden, IV, Stuttgart & Tübingen, 1834, pp. 277–362.Google Scholar

9. Supporters include Guoimar, Paule, ‘Les Influences italiennes dans les Fêtes Princières en Allemagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, in Le Théâtre italien et l'Europe, Actes du 2e Congrès International, 1982, ed. Mamczarz, Christian Bec et Irène, Paris, 1985, pp. 146–7, 153, 157.Google Scholar

10. Suggested by Hackenbroch, Yvonne, ‘Jewels by Giovanni Battista Scolari’, The Connoisseur, 159, 1965, pp. 200–5.Google Scholar

11. On Troiano, see Eitner, Robert, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Quellen Lexikon der Musiker und Musikgelehrten, 10 vols, Leipzig, 1900–1994, 9, 1903, pp. 459–60Google Scholar; Leuchtmann, (pp. 428–64).Google Scholar Trioano's promising career was cut short in 1569 when he disappeared after being implicated in the murder of a fellow court musician (Eitner, Robert, ‘Massimo Troiano als Flüchtling’, Monatshefte für Musikgeschichte, XXIII, Berlin, 1891).Google Scholar

12. Pirrotta, Nino, ‘Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata Fiorentina’, in Musique et Poésie au XVIe siècle, Paris, 1954, pp. 286–97, p. 291Google Scholar; Schöne, Günter, ‘Les fêtes de la Renaissance à la cour de Bavière, in Le Lieu Théâtral à la Renaissance, ed. Jacquot, Jean, Paris 1964, pp. 171–82 & 2 plates, p. 175Google Scholar; de Ridder, Liselotte, Der Anteil der Commedia dell'Arte an der Enstehungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der komischen Oper, Köln 1971, pp. 56–7.Google Scholar

13. Troiano, , f. 147v (ray translation).Google Scholar

14. For Lassus bibliography, see Haar, James, ‘Orlande de Lassus’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music, ed. Sadie, Stanley, vol. 10, London, 1980, pp. 480–502.Google Scholar

15. Troiano, , ff.147v–148v, 149v, 150v.Google Scholar

16. Information on Livizzano is taken from Troiano (f.42v) and archival records (some published by Sandberger, Adolf, Beiträge zur Geschichte der bayerischen Hofkapelle unter Orlando di Lasso, 2 vols (I & IIIi), Berlin, 1894–1895, (IIIi).Google Scholar

17. Pageboys were not often individually named in the Munich court records, and I have come across no other references to Malaspina there. But a kinsman, Marchese Octavio di Malaspina, had been present at Ferdinand's entry into Mantua in January 1566, and later hunted with him (Korr.Akt.924, ff.109v–110r, 111r).

18. On Scolari, see Hackenbroch.

19. On Terzio, see Eitner, (9, 1905, p. 382)Google Scholar; Lea, II, p. 7, n. 2.

20. For more detail, and references, see Katritzky, M. A., ‘Music and Spectacle in Prince Ferdinand's Diary, Orlandus Lassus, and the commedia dell'arte’Google Scholar, forthcoming.

21. Detenbeck, Laurie, ‘Dramatised Madrigals and the commedia dell'arte tradition’Google Scholar, in Pietropaolo, , pp. 59–68.Google Scholar

22. Although not indicated by Butchart, David (‘A Musical Journey of 1567: Alessandro Striggio in Vienna, Munich, Paris and London’, Music and Letters, 63, 1982, pp. 1–16)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, whose assertion that Striggio was present at Wilhelm's wedding in 1568 (pp. 8, 13) is not supported by the court records.

23. Korr.Akt, 924, f. 105r-v. My translation from the original German.

24. Duke Wilhelm made particularly strenuous attempts to restrict the practice in as yet unpublished documents of 1583, 1584 and 1586.

25. Korr.Akt.924, f.92r.

26. Wagner, , f.40v.Google Scholar

27. For more on the significance of this partnership for the ‘pre-history’ of the commedia, see Katritzky, M. A., ‘Italian Comedians in Renaissance Prints’, Print Quarterly, IV, 1987, pp. 236–54.Google Scholar

28. Four o'clock Italian time was four hours after the Italian twenty-four hour clock started, generally at or around sunset. (Talbot, Michael, ‘Ore Italiane: The Reckoning of the Time of Day in pre-Napoleonic Italy’, Italian Studies, 40, 1985, pp. 51–62).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Korr.Akt.924, ff.49v–50r.

30. Troiano, , ff.68v, 88v, 122vGoogle Scholar; Wagner, , f.41vGoogle Scholar, Wirre, , f.40v.Google Scholar

31. Paolo Giordano Orsini, husband of Isabella d'Medici (named in full on f.83v).

32. Korr.Akt.924, ff.93v–94r.

33. Troiano, , ff.146v–152vGoogle Scholar; Wagner, f.63r.