The Italian Style and the Period

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments First and foremost, let me thank Frank Andersen, the Royal Ballet's artistic director, as well as Sofie Raske Andersen, Sus Friis Jørgensen, and the organizers, Erik Aschengreen and George Dorris, who have put such an enormous effort into ensuring the success of every last detail of the symposium. In agreeing to work up this study of Italian pantomime with so little lead-time, the Royal Theatre's Diana Cuni and Morten Eggert have been extraordinarily kind—not to mention their great expertise. My thanks also go to Eva Sørensen from the Royal Danish Theatre, who accompanied us with such care and skill. For research on the sources, allow me to thank José Sasportes, Giorgio di Genova, Stefano Liberati, Flavia Pappacena, Laura Salvi, and Patrizia Veroli. Madison and Debra Sowell have kindly allowed me to use an image from their private collection which has been crucial to my work. Thanks also to the support of Margherita Parrilla, the head of the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome, to the enthusiasm of two of our students, Marta Marcelli and Illja Kun, and my colleague Toni Sorgi, the reconstruction has actually seen the light of day. Allow me also to thank the head of the Municipal Library of Correggio, Dr. Viller Masoni, who did everything possible to research the musical sources. Notes 1. Gasparo Angiolini, “Lettere a Monsieur Noverre sopra i balli pantomimi (1773),” in Il ballo pantomimo, Lettere, saggi e libelli sulla danza (1773–1785), ed. Carmela Lombardi (Turin: Paravia Scriptorium, 1998). It is worth noting how, by a singular coincidence, 1748 was both the year in which the Danish Royal Ballet was established and that in which Gasparo Angiolini made his first appearance in Venice as a dancer. 2. See August Bournonville, Études Chorégraphiques (1848, 1855, 1861), ed. Knud Arne Jürgensen and Francesca Falcone (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2005), pp. 145–62. 3. Ange Goudar, “Osservazioni sopra la musica e il ballo,” La danza italiana, nos. 5–6, Autumn 1987, p. 41. 4. August Bournonville, My Theatre Life, tr. Patricia N. McAndrew (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1979), p. 642. 5. José Sasportes, “Invito allo studio di due secoli di danza teatrale a Venezia (1746–1859),” in Balli teatrali a Venezia (1746–1859), Catalogo generale cronologico dei balli teatrali a Venezia, Istituto italiano Antonio Vivaldi della Fondazione Giorgio Cini Venezia, Dipartimento di Storia e critica delle arti “Giuseppe Mazariol” della Università di Venezia, ed. Elena Ruffin and Giovanna Trentin (Milano: Ricordi, 1994), p. 18. 6. For more details on this topic, see Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” in Opera on Stage, Vol. 5: The History of Italian Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 7. See Jorgen Jersild, “Le ballet d'action italien au XVIIIe siècle au Danemark,” Acta Musicologica, Vol. 14, issues 1–4, Copenhagen 1942, pp. 74–94. 8. Angiolini, “Lettere a Monsieur Noverre,” p. 69. 9. Stefano Arteaga, “Ragionamento sopra il Ballo pantomimico” from “Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano (1785),” in Il ballo pantomimo, p. 251. 10. Angiolini, “Lettere a Monsieur Noverre,” p. 61. 11. Matteo Borsa, “Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi seri dell'opera (1782–1783),” in Il ballo pantomimo, pp. 209–234. 12. Bournonville, My Theatre Life, p. 642. 13. Borsa, “Saggio filosofico,” pp. 211–2. 14. Arteaga, “Ragionamento sopra il Ballo Pantomimico,” pp. 235–60. 15. Ibid., pp. 240–1. 16. Angiolini, “Lettere a Monsieur Noverre,” p. 68. 17. Carlo Ritorni, Commentarii della Vita e delle Opere coredrammatiche di Salvatore Viganò e della coreografia e de' corepei scritti da Carlo Ritorni Reggiano (Milan: Guglielmini e Redaelli, 1838). 18. La Vestale//Inventatoe posto sulle scene del R. Teatro alla Scala/dal Sig.r/Salvatore Viganò/Ridotto per Cembalo solo/Dall'Editore Dedicato/A Madamigella/Eleonora De Seyfert/Milano Gio.Ricordi, 1818, Correggio Municipal Library, call no. 41-7 (1) 1. A preliminary investigation of the music used by Viganò in some of his ballets has been conducted by Rossana Dalmonte, “‘Une écriture corporelle’: la musica e la danza,” in Il sogno del coreodramma: Salvatore Viganò poeta muto, ed. Ezio Raimondi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), pp. 145–239. 19. Dalmonte, ibid. 20. For a more complete study of the subject, see Fabrizio Frasnedi, “Il genio pantomimico: i fantasmi del ballo d'azione,” in Il sogno del coreodramma, pp. 241–326. 21. Leonardo da Vinci,Trattato della pittura, ed. Adachiara Zevi (reprint from an edition of 1817 of the Codice Urbinate Vaticano, Rome: Savelli, 1982), p. 157, n. 354, De' moti delle figure.