Leone De Sommi and the archaeology of the director's workbook

Abstract

Leone De Sommi is well known to scholars of the theatre as a leading figure of theatrical activity in Mantua in the late ISOOs'. De Sommi wrote plays2,designed settings and costumes,stage-manged, and directed a variety of theatrical entertainments — ballets, musicals, intermezzi, comedies, tragedies and pastorals— at the Gonzaga court in Mnatua between 1556 and 1592. He directed outside of Mantua,in the Duchies of Savoy and Turin, and, between 1538 and 1556, at the Este court in Ferrara, where he played an active role (as a director, dramaturge, and choreographer) in the early staging experiments of Giambattista Guarini's IIpastor fido. Most historians of the theatre claim the director emerged as an independent professional towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1826-1914) is generally cited as the first modern regisseur (Cole and Chinoy 22). The accepted view is that the rise of naturalism and the new dramas of realism (embodied in works such as Zola's Therese Ragni)!. Checkliov's The Cheny Orchard and Gorkys The Lower Depths) demanded an ensemble interpretation with an emphasis on scenic realism. Thus the appearance of the modern director— a commanding visionary in control of every aspect of production, who could visualize, interpret, harmonize all the elements of the scenic environment and express the soul of the play (Cole and Chinoy 25). The general assumption of most theatre historians is that prior to the 1850s or so the director is a shadowy, underdeveloped figure rather than a professional functionary. Impromptu at Versailles{\<obo)'ar\i Hamlet (l601)are cited as seminal but embryonic considerations of the director's craft. Both Moliere and Shakespeare figure prominently as director-authors but with the emphasis on their activities as authors, while the medieval stage manager is usually regarded as no more than a precursor of the director. In fact, according to standard theatre sources, there were no directors, in the full sen.se of the term, till the end of the nineteenth century. Leone De Sommi is generally described as a forerimner or emi:)r)onic