THEATER "À L'ESPAGNOLE" AND THE ITALIAN LIBRETTO

Abstract

The last three hundred years of dramatic criticism have all couched the problem of this roundtable in simple, opposing terms: Spanish versus French, comedy versus tragedy. Rather than paraphrase Paolo Fabbri's analysis of the problems this has posed, I will begin with the proposi tion that comedy should not be judged as tragedy. Arcangelo Spagna in the preface to his Melodrammi scenici of 1709 suggested that comedy should be judged by the standards of Aristophanes, Plautus and Teren ce. He also held up the ideals of Italian prose comedy, which he des cribed as the acts of private persons, expressing their internal passions and feelings, and using a diversity of languages (by dialect and social class), witticisms, and jokes.1 He hardly begins to describe, however, the varieties of "not-tragedy" that were common in the seventeenth century: Italian comedy and tragicomedy in prose and verse; all kinds of Spanish comedias, including romantic comedies "de capa y espada;" and also French comedies and tragicomedies, not to mention the elusive world of improvised theater in all three countries. "Not-tragedy" also includes the majority if not most of the Italian operas of the Seicento. From the perspective of this roundtable, my task is to offer some evidence of Spa nish ?and French? ?not-tragedy? in Seicento opera. My presentation falls into two parts. The first proposes some historical points of contact between the French and Spanish theater and opera in Rome. In the se cond part I discuss three operas (two Roman and one half-Roman) that are based on Spanish and French comedies already discussed by Maria Grazia Profeti with a look at their scores.