Teatri di formazione: Actio, parola e immagine nella scena gesuitica del Sei-Settecento a Milano (review)

Abstract

Teatri di formazione:Actio, parola e immagine nella scena gesuitica del Sei-Settecento a Milano Giovanna Zanlonghi. [La Citta e lo Spettacolo,Vol. 13.] (Milan: Vita e Pensiero. 2002. Pp. xxvi, 398. euro34 paperback.) In last thirty years, theatre studies have grown increasingly interdisciplinary. Exploring nature and function of theatrical performance now demands serious scholarly engagement with material and immaterial contexts of production. It has become clear that shape of ephemeral moment of performance is accessible only via scaffolding built around the empty space-a scaffolding composed of extant texts, iconography, designs, descriptions, etc. that must themselves be interpreted within a larger historical frame. Such exploration not only deepens our understanding of particular theatrical moments but also underscores various -ways in which performances both reveal and construct particular cultures. In her engaging Teatri di formazione, Professor Giovanna Zanlonghi undertakes such a study of performance and culture by examining Jesuit theatre in Milan during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She skillfully situates Jesuit theatrical practice within political, philosophical, spiritual, and aesthetic currents of age, thereby clarifying how theatre served as a medium through which Jesuits both engaged early modern Milan and also constructed their own corporate culture. The Jesuit theatrical enterprise offered both student performers and citizen spectators a kind of laboratory in which to experiment with ways of seeing and being in world. As title of volume makes clear, Jesuit theatre was indeed formational-for actors and audience alike. Zanlonghi does not confine her research and analysis to interior of college theatres. Excitingly interdisciplinary, Teatri di formazione relates formal Jesuit theatrical production to theatricality of Milanese public events for which Jesuits bore some creative responsibility, such as funeral display memorializing Spain's Philip III. In particular, Professor Zanlonghi's grasp of Jesuit rhetoric and spirituality facilitates her integrative reading of Jesuit theatre and theatricality even as it fosters a sophisticated appreciation of dynamic relationship between and among action, word, and image in Jesuit pedagogy. The author divides volume into two parts. In first segment centering on period of Spanish control in seventeenth century, significant civic events are placed in conversation with theatrical productions staged at Brera, Jesuit college in Milan. …