by Anna Alberati
An example of baroque theatre-show
An example of baroque theatre-show A rare text, purchased by the Casanatense Library in the year 2000, which is therefore added to the important theatrical collection already present in the Library: L’Adamo, a sacred representation, but it seems like a drama, or perhaps it is an oratorio or better still a drama for music. In any case, it is a theatrical text in verse, written and performed by Giovan Battista Andreini (Florence 1579 – Reggio Emilia 1654), actor, actor-director and playwright, one of the most extravagant and bizarre theatrical authors in the entire history of the Commedia dell’Arte. Son of Francesco and Isabella, both illustrious comedians and men of letters, he began his career as a comedian in the Gelosi company under the name of Lelio, in the role of the Lover, but even before the Gelosi disbanded he had formed his own company, the Fedeli, with which Giovan Battista was for a long time in the service of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and with which, at the same time, he took his shows around northern Italy and Europe, to Paris, Prague, Vienna. 
Giovan Battista Andreini’s literary production includes some poetic compositions and some theoretical ones in which, in relation to the Church’s heated polemic against the theatre, he defends the intellectual nobility of his profession as a comedian, the cultural and professional role of women actresses and in particular, against the accusation made against the theatre of possessing a diabolical power due to his fascination, he finally supports the vision of a theatrical art as an autonomous, legitimate and free art. But Andreini composed above all many texts of different theatrical genres, namely comedies, tragicomedies, dramas, tragedies, woodland, maritime, pastoral, sacred representations, in which the author fully manifests his adherence to the multifaceted aspects of baroque theatre, but with a particular and extraordinary freedom of fantasy that is entirely personal, with a language rich in images and elaborate verbal games, with the invention of unlikely and overwhelming events, in which he also inserts very lively scenes, rich in movement and verve.
Furthermore, he shows his research aimed at the creation of a total theatre, which in reality already existed in the performances of the Commedia dell’Arte, but which in him reaches very notable results, and which includes poetry, dance, acrobatics, mime, masks, dialects, but above all music: the melodramatic forms which were just establishing themselves in Florence and Mantua (and which Andreini had witnessed), in fact, inspired him to also seek a different, new and important agreement between the literary text and the music.
Adam. Sacred Representation by Gio. Battista Andreini
L’Adamo it is a sacred representation that is more similar to a melodrama, both because of the large space given to music and singing, and because in the cutting of the scenes it reveals all the characteristics of an opera libretto: although it has been defined as “a boring document of theology” (Alessandro D’Ancona) it finds its value in the rich staging, distant and lost, but revealed and documented by the numerous engraved images present in the text (published in Milan in 1613 and immediately after with a new frontispiece in 1617) which illustrate the scenes, all 37 scenes, designed by Carlo Antonio Procaccini, with the engraving by Cesare Bassani.
As has been pointed out (Franca Angelini), it is an example of baroque theatre-spectacle, in which the word must only set the machine of the spectacle in motion.
But this theatrical text also had a very particular fame, which is due to the resonance it had in Italy and England after the hypothesis, expressed by Voltaire in his Essai sur la poesie épiqueBut this theatrical text also had a very particular fame, which is due to the resonance it had in Italy and England after the hypothesis, expressed by Voltaire in his, that the great English poet John Milton, during a trip to Italy, had attended a performance of the drama and that it had inspired him to compose his poem. Paradise lost: the consequence of this statement was that some copies of the edition of the arrived in England L’Adamo and that subsequently some translations were made into English, so much so that Andreini’s work became known and carefully studied within the Anglo-Saxon literary world.
The other numerous theatrical creations of Giovan Battista Andreini are very significant, and combine the characteristics of the cultured or erudite comedy with the characteristics of the Commedia dell’Arte, with its taste for the marvelous and the fairytale mixed with the realistic and licentious taste: among these The Venetian, all in Venetian dialect, The Centaur, a bizarre work that is comedy in the first act, pastoral drama in the second, and tragedy in the third, The Two Comedies in Comedy, where the action is enriched by the performance of two comedies, one performed by amateur comedians and the other by professionals, so that three different comedies alternate, intertwine and merge on stage.
It is also worth noting that the shows, all with music and dance, that Andreini and his company brought to the French court, on the one hand were constructed to be appreciated by an aristocratic court – and therefore with simple and lively melodies similar to the French Airs de cour and Chansons à boire, then very fashionable – on the other hand they had a notable influence on the court festivities and on French musical taste, and probably suggested to Molière and Lulli that theatrical form of comédie-ballet so typical of French theatre.
Giovan Battista Andreini has never enjoyed great fortune among Italian writers and critics, but it is clear that his theatre finds its true realization only in its stage representation: the vitality of his comedies, bizarre and extravagant, imaginative and fascinating, has in fact had its splendid confirmation in the modern baroque staging of some of them, carried out in recent years by the great director Luca Ronconi.
The works of Giovan Battista Andreini owned by the Casanatense
Comedies:
The Campanacia. A Pleasant and Ridiculous Comedy .
Venezia, Alessandro Zatta, 1662.
Prologo, 5 Atti. [Comm .352.5]
The Centaur. Sauce divided into comedy, pastoral and tragedy .
Venezia, Salvatore Sonzonio, 1633.
Prologo, 3 Atti. [Comm .232.2]
The Two Comedies in Comedy. A Very Extravagant Subject .
Venezia, Gherardo e Giuseppe Imberti, 1623.
Prologo, 5 Atti. [Comm .203.2]
Ismenia. Royal and Pastoral Work .
Bologna, Nicolò Tebaldini, 1639.
Prologo, 5 Atti. [Comm .337.3]
Lelio banished. Woodland tragicomedy. Milan, Giovanni Battista Bidelli, 1620. Prologue, 5 Acts. [Comm .322.1]
The Sultana. Comedy .
Parigi, Nicolas de la Vigne, 1622.
5 Atti. [Comm .162.1]
The Turk. Woodland and maritime comedy .
Venezia, Paolo Guerigli, 1620.
Prologo, 5 Atti. [Comm .322.2]
The Venetian. Comedy. Venice, Alessandro Polo, 1619. Prologue, 5 Acts. [M .VIII.30 CCC]
Adam. Sacred Representation. Lugano, G. Roggia, 1834 [2 exemplars: O.X.23 CC; Vol.Misc.2572.6]
Other writings:
The Oliuastro or The Unlucky Poet. Fantastic Poem. Bologna, Nicolò Tebaldini, 1642. [M .VIII.62 CC]: incredible poem in 25 cantos
Tears. Second composition. In contemplation of the penitent and weeping life of the great protector of France, Mary Magdalene. Paris, Noel Charles, 1643. [Vol .Misc.1053.15]: some poems in honor of the Saint.
The Mirror. Sacred and poetic composition; in which the image of the Comedy is represented to the eye, how vague and deformed it is when represented by virtuous or vicious comedians. .
Parigi, Nicolao Callemont, 1625. [K .VIII.37 CCC.1]: composed in defense of the comedian’s profession
Celestial theater in which it is represented how divine goodness has called penitent comedians and martyrs to the degree of beatitude and sanctity. Paris, Nicolae Callemont,[1625]. [K .VIII.37 CCC.2]: 21 sonnets dedicated to the saints who practiced the profession of actor and to the theater in general.
F. Guerrini The five prisoners, Macerata, 1634 frontispiece
The Scenarios
The comedian Giovan Battista Andreini, a cultured and literary person, wrote out the text of his comedies in detail, which he performed in various theatrical venues with his company of Faithful, but the Comici dell’Arte, for their shows, almost always used the scenario (also called outline or subject),
that is, the written text with the indication of the simplified structure of the plot of a fable to be represented on stage, on which to then build the performance, inventing jokes and dialogues, with the technique of their profession as impromptu comedians: in the scenario there is the topic, the list of characters and the robbe necessary (costumes and objects), the indication of the actors’ entrances and exits, with the description of the events that occur in each scene and on which the game of the Commedia dell’Arte could be born, led by the head actor and performed with skill and discipline by the various comedians.
C.Tiberi The Three Lovers Tricked, Todi, 1672
In the classic definition by Andrea Perucci in his treatise Dell’arte rappresentativa premeditata, ed all’improviso (Naples, 1699), “the subject is nothing other than a weaving of scenes on a formed topic, where in summary an action is mentioned, which must be said or done by the reciter unexpectedly, distinguished by acts and scenes”.
The first known written source is the scenario of the comedy all’improviso performed in 1568, which is told in the work of Massimo Troiano Dialogues …: in which are narrated the most notable things done at the wedding of the Most Illustrious and Excellency Prince William VI, Count Palatine of the Rhine, and Duke of Bavaria, and of the Most Illustrious and Excellency Madame Renata of Lorraine , (Venice, Zaltieri, 1569), c. 146v-152v [P .XII.51]: the comedy was constructed by Troiano himself and the musician Orlando di Lasso, who also played the main character, the Magnificent Venetian, and who together with his Zanni (the servant from Bergamo) “made everyone split their sides with laughter with their acts”.
G.Briccio, The disdainful gypsy, Venice, [17th century]
The Casanatense Library also has in its manuscript and printed collections three very important collections of seventeenth-century Commedia dell’Arte scenarios:
1.
Il teatro delle fauole rappresentatiue di Flaminio Scala, Venezia, Giovanni Battista Pulciani, 1611, [GG .XIII.12], the first and also last printed edition of its kind, 50 scenarios that document the culminating moment in the history of the Commedia dell’Arte;
2. the two volumes of the collection of 103 Scenarios [Ms. 1211-12] Of the comic subjects scene of B.L.R. Part one, Rome 1618, e Of the Scene of Comic and Tragic Subjects by B.L.R. Part Two, Rome 1622, by Basilio Locatelli, the oldest manuscript collection of scenarios in existence;
3. the collection of 48 Scenarios from the first half of the 17th century [Ms. 4186], by an anonymous author, almost all inspired by the intrigues, the apparatus and finally the typical conventions of Spanish theatre: among these we note The Atheist Struck by Lightning and The Stone Guest, in which the myth of Don Giovanni appears, a typically baroque myth destined to flourish in theatre and music for more than three centuries.
The images illustrating the editorial are taken from
Adam. Sacred Representation by Gio. Battista Andreini Florentine to the M. Christ. of Maria de Medici Queen of France dedicated. With privilege .
In Milano, ad instanza di Geronimo Bordoni libraro, [1617]
[26], 177, [1] p.; 41 numbered chalcographic illustrations (n. 13 double numbered) engraved by Cesare Bassani based on a drawing by Carlo Antonio Procaccini; 4th
Prologue, 5 Acts
Characters: Eternal Father, Chorus of Seraphim, Cherubim Angels, Archangel Michael, Adam, Eve, Adam’s guardian Cherub, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, The Seven Deadly Sins, World, Flesh, Hunger, Fatigue, Despair, Death, Vainglory, Serpent, Infernal Messenger Fly, Chorus of Goblins, Chorus of Fiery, Aerial, Aquatic Infernal Spirits.
[Comm. 892]