Theatre of Italy

[16] The pagan spectacles suffered the same fate, where the judgments and measures taken by the religious were much harsher: still in 1215, a Constitution of the Lateran Council forbade clerics (among other things) to have contact with histrions and jugglers.

Despite the numerous restrictions, the vernacular dramaturgy develops due to the trouvères and jesters, who sing, lute in hand, the most disparate topics: from love driven towards women to mockery towards the powerful.

More famous is the XIII century Rosa fresca aulentissima, by Cielo d'Alcamo, a real jester mime destined for stage representation, which does not spare double entenders and overly licentious jokes towards the fair sex in verses.

Even more articulated were the texts of Ruggieri Apuliese, a jester of the 13th century of which there is little or no news, mostly discordant, but in which a sardonic ability can be traced to parody and dramatize the events, enclosed in his gab and serventesi.

During the 13th century, however, the jester prose in the vernacular suffered a setback due to the marginalization of the events to which it was linked: representations in Curta, street performances, and more of which the chronicle does not remember.

Unlike the lauds, the texts are not in small numbers and bear the signature of great names, not least that of Lorenzo the Magnificent whose La rappresentazione dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo denotes a certain richness of style and complexity of dramatic interweaving.

[20] It can therefore be admitted with certainty that, in different forms, theatrical practice remained alive and strongly connected to religious worship throughout the Italian territory: to a lesser extent, to collective events such as court parties and festivals.

It is a set of Medieval Latin texts, mainly composed of the metric form of the elegiac couplet[21] and characterized, almost always, by the alternation of dialogues and narrated parts and by comic and licentious contents.

The flowering of the genus is mainly inscribed within the European season of the so-called rebirth of the 12th century and is affected by the ferment of that cultural climate that the philologist Ludwig Traube called Aetas Ovidiana.

The small flowering of this genus enjoyed considerable success; its importance in literary history is noteworthy, due to its influence on subsequent authors in vulgar languages, in particular on medieval fabliaulistics and novellistics of which they anticipate themes and tones, and on humanistic comedy of the fifteenth century.

Regarding the scenography, it can be completely placed on the level of sacred representations, since jesters and buffoons, troubadours and singers did not use support elements that could help the spectator in the figuration of the story narrated.

It must be borne in mind that there is no figure of set-up or set designer, so such works necessarily had to submit to the requests of the brotherhoods, and almost certainly carried out by untrained artists or of little fame given that the possible gain was little.

In fact, as has been stated, the "linguistic-expressive operation that was the basis of these comic works [...] could only be received and appreciated in high-level cultural contexts, but also sensitive to a comedy of a goliardic matrix : university circles thus represented the natural pool of readers and spectators of humanistic theatrical writings".

[28] The Tuscan capital stood out in the 15th century for the enormous development of the Sacred representation, but soon a group of poets, starting with Agnolo Poliziano, gave their contribution to the spread of Renaissance comedy.

[41] The genesis of commedia may be related to carnival in Venice, where the author and actor Andrea Calmo had created the character Il Magnifico, the precursor to the vecchio (old man) Pantalone, by 1570.

In his first comedies the presence of Pantalone, Brighella and with a great Harlequin, perhaps the last of a large caliber in Italy, like Antonio Sacco who played with the mask of Truffaldino, is constant.

[45] The romantic drama was preceded by a period close to Neoclassicism, represented by the dramatic work of Ugo Foscolo and Ippolito Pindemonte aimed at Greek tragedy.

However, it must clash with the invasion of certain French achievements of the theatre of art, already Frenchized since the previous century, such as the Comédie larmoyante which opened up to the development of the real Italian bourgeois drama.

From Felice Romani, librettist of the early 19th century for the works of Vincenzo Bellini, up to Arrigo Boito and Francesco Maria Piave, who with the librettos for Giuseppe Verdi opened the Risorgimento period of Italian musical theatre.

In a Piedmontese Italy, the central role of Naples ended and its mask remained in the shade, now limited to a few Pulcinellesque theatres such as the Teatro San Carlino.

He was also the initiator of a dynasty that dominated the Neapolitan theatre scene for decades and the creator of Felice Sciosciammocca's mask; the work that most stands out in its prolific production is Miseria e nobiltà, whose fame among the last generations is also due to the film transposition of 1954 with Totò in the leading role.

Among the signatories some important figures of the theatre of the period: Luigi Pirandello, Salvatore di Giacomo, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Gabriele D'Annunzio.

The Apulian actor-playwright also tried to bring acting back to the center of attention, reworking the texts of the past, from William Shakespeare to Alfred de Musset, but also Alessandro Manzoni and Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The experience of the Lombard playwright Giovanni Testori also deserves to be mentioned, for the breadth of his commitment - he was a writer, director, impresario -, the multiformity of the genres practiced, linguistic experimentalism:[61] he worked extensively with the actor Franco Branciaroli and together they profoundly influenced the post-war Milanese theatre.

At the end of the 1960s, the Nuovo teatro[63] was strongly affected by the climate of cultural renewal of Western society, it contaminated with the other arts and the hypotheses of the avant-garde of the beginning of the century.

With Mario Ricci, then with Giancarlo Nanni, both coming from painting, a second season will take the name of Teatro immagine,[64] continued by Giuliano Vasilicò, Memè Perlini, the Patagruppo, Pippo Di Marca, Silvio Benedetto and Alida Giardina with their Autonomous Theatre of Rome.

[78] Thus, the San Carlo was inaugurated on 4 November 1737, the king's name day, with the performance of the opera Domenico Sarro's Achille in Sciro, which was based on the 1736 libretto by Metastasio which had been set to music that year by Antonio Caldara.

Its goal is to train a new generation of young musicians, technical staff, and dancers (at the Scuola di Ballo del Teatro alla Scala, one of the Academy's divisions).

For example, in 2006, tenor Roberto Alagna left the stage after being booed during a performance of Aida, forcing his understudy, Antonello Palombi, to quickly replace him mid-scene without time to change into a costume.

Especially in the 19th century, La Fenice became the site of many famous operatic premieres at which the works of several of the four major bel canto era composers – Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi – were performed.