Commedia dell'Arte and Opera Buffa

Commedia Links on chdirector.com

Rigoletto: Florida Grand Opera 2006

Don Pasquale: Wolf Trap Opera 2002     Program Notes: Commedia dell'Arte and Don Pasquale

     Barber of Seville: Minnesota Opera 2001   Can Opera be Funny? Article on Barber of Seville

MN Opera Interview about Commedia dell'Arte and Barber of Seville

   La Compagnie Marcel Marceau: Barcelona 1991

  Arlecchino and His Master's Daughter: Paris/ Tokyo 1989     Carnavale: Les Folies Bergères, Paris 1988

The Italian Comedy of the Renaissance and 17^th Century was the most successful form of theatre for more than 3 centuries. The characters are eternal and have been handed down to us as Harlequin, Pierrot, Scapin, Punch, and Scaramouche. It inspired the works of Shakespeare and Molière, as well as modern artists like Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, and The Marx Brothers. Every television sit-com owes its characters, in part, to the “Stock Characters” of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte.

Half-masks were used, like the masks of the Carnavale in Venice, and the scenarios were mostly improvised by the master-actors who performed them. Comic bits and complicated physical stage business called “lazzi” were created, and women were allowed to act in these performances long before the practice was adopted in other styles.

 Commedia dell’Arte =Theatre of Skill or Craft

• Master Actors
• Virtuosity
• Commedia is a “storm in the center of calm.”—Carlo Goldoni
• Lusty Physical mirth
• Abandoning one’s self to the pleasures of un-reason
• Audience enjoys the ritualized  playing-out of a strategy—they do not want to be moved emotionally. The successful union of the two lovers is the main point of the intrigue: “The sanctity of the renewal of life.”

 Stock Characters: Conventions of Character

 Lazzo / lazzi = ribbon, like ornaments or musical turns.

Patter = Wit, intellect, intoxication

 Commedia Tirata: like an aria

• Il Dottore had lengthy Tirate, often in Latin
• Some assert that the aria, as an operatic convention, began by adding musical underscoring to commedia tirate (accompanied recits)
• Tirades: “the opera’s arias are not illuminations of character so much as performances—tirades of musical virtuosity…a scale and time largely unrelated to any real dramatic function.”,  “A caricatural distortion of the natural.” (Kimbell)

 Chiusura / Chiusure ( rhymed moments in a tirade) add to the musical quality of commedia tirate

• The Lover’s Tirade included conceit and metaphor, along with a quasi-musical climax in a chiusette (like a sonnet)
• Figaro has a lengthy Tirate in Marriage of Figaro that was the chief censure as the play being revolutionary.
• Basilio has a Bravura Tirata in Beaumarchais about Calumny, that becomes his La Calumnia aria in Barber of Seville
  

17th Century : Molière: Ecole des Femmes and Les Folies Amoureuses

18^th Century: Stock Characters from La Comédie Italienne in Beaumarchais among others

 19^th Century Boulevard Theatre in France

·         La Pantomime Traditionnelle Française : Masks removed, stock characterisation remains

·         Jean-Baptiste Gaspard Debureau

·         Pierrot: Man of the people= Popular Theatre

·         La Pantomime Blanche or La Pantomime Traditionelle is the French form of Mimedrama popularised in the 19th century surrounding the character Pierrot, a descendant of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte stock character Pedrolino.

  20^th Century

·         Charles Dullin and Louis Jouvet : Volpone

·         Etienne Decroux and Jean-Louis Barrault : Les Enfants du Paradis

·         Marcel Marceau as Arlequin chez Barrault, his Pierrot becomes Bip

·         Dario Fo and a circus-like commedia with masks

·         Chuck Hudson : Arlequin et la fille de son maître

o        A certain naivte

o        Healthy, G-rated sexuality

o        Danny Kaye as The Court Jester in level of comedy

Text and movement: there is NO text, therefore movement is extremely rich. The opera has extremely rich text, therefore movement will be simple and precise.