Giuliano Campo

From the Fall of the ‘Teatro all’antica italiana’ to the Rise of Film: An Historical Overview.

Eleonora Duse has been considered the last symbol, and her art one of the highest achievements, of the Italian theatrical tradition of the Grande Attore. 1800s average or even high quality theatre was a narrative theatre, able to tell stories and show characters with extreme clarity and coherence, although generally poor in terms of set design and visual organization of the space. The theatre of the Grandi Attori was of a different kind, but belonging to the same order: divisions within the whole theatre world were hierarchical rather than genre based (for instance, there was not such a thing as research based theatre). The type of performances and the general quality were the same, however the Grandi Attori were able to produce a shift from the norm, to indicate rather than to show, to create a “mental theatre” (Schino 2004), that could generate dissatisfaction towards the “normal” theatre and nostalgia of the greatness of theatrical art. In order to understand the characteristics and the inner quality of the Grandi Attori and in particular of Duse’s art, I find useful to provide an historical overview of the system in which the Grande Attore has flourished and from which it was born and fed, and that contrasted, overall constituting the reason for its own existence: the 1800’s Italy system of Roles and its preconditions.

1. From the Commedia dell'arte to the System of Roles

It is debated whether or not the nineteenth century Italian theatre system for Parti e Ruoli (Parts and Roles)1 later known as 'Teatro all'antica italiana', found its seeds in the old operative structures of sixteenth and eighteenth century Commedia dell'arte companies, as stated by one of the founders of theatre studies, Silvio D’Amico2. Several cultural and social changes intervened over this long period of time in the Italian peninsula – such as the parallel decline of the Republic of Venice and of the Medici family, which both used to grant substantial support to some of the major Commedia dell’arte companies; the capillary diffusion of ‘amateur’, both popular and aristocratic, secular or clerical (or mixed) theatre and other related forms of public or private entertainment; and on a wider picture, at last, the tendencies towards a political unification, the birth of an 'official' Italian language, etc. - to allow us speculations over any direct connection between the two theatre forms. As a matter of fact, in the eighteenth century Commedia dell'arte was an outdated crystallized genre, operating with fixated and routine masks in improvised scenarios, where not degraded as a more or less vague literary reference. In a new urban space that saw theatre as a stone-built building at the centre of the town, equipped with exceptionally stagecraft machineries, excellent acoustic and comfortable audience areas, that replaced the typical open-air market place temporary wooden structures or the ‘Commedia rooms’ as the Commedia performance spaces, its appearance was often mixed up with other features of multiple genres of popular entertainments such as, first of all, opera and ballet, as well as masquerade, Carnival, social dances, musical evenings, festive, holiday performances, acrobats, ventriloquists, freaks or trained animal showings.

The actors of professional troupes used to enter those theatres and perform inside them like guests in a foreign land. Actors of Commedia dell’arte passed by them with the displayed indifference of those who can perform in any scenic space. The Great 1800s actors will inhabit them with carelessness and without caring too much of their scenes or their apparatus. Since the origin of professional companies, the theatre people’s effort was to modify, to deform, to corrode the theatre space from within, or abandon it. The only ones who lived them as the real masters were (and are) the opera singers. Among them, in eighteenth century, were the great emasculated singers of incomparable voice. (Schino 1995:95).

The actual sixteenth-seventeenth century Commedia dell’arte actors were not used to improvise only. Even their physical and vocal improvisation were based on solid structures, born for commercial use, aimed at producing a variety of new performances within the quick mode of production of travelling companies – by necessity due to the non existence of a unified country with a national theatre. Their performances included ‘poetic improvisation’ of monologues and verses in the academic or in the meretrices honestae tradition, far from the contemporary myth of theatre improvisation as original creation on stage. They used also to perform fully extended written plays, they were highly educated and skilled women and men used to dance, play music and sing; musical theatre originated from them. Before the Commedia dell’arte became perceived as a separate genre, the fixed types were used only for the performances based on scenarios, not for those using extended written texts, and each mask would not identify itself with a single character, as it was believed later, but was used for a range of characters, similar as far as the physical feature, the social status and the function within the canovaccio were concerned. Writing their own parts, those actors used to combine scenic technique with literary competence, creating the tradition of the actor-creator. Historically, the two modalities of commedia all’improvviso and premeditata (pre-organised) do not contrast with each other. As Taviani (1982) had noted, a commedia premeditata could be composed by the dramaturgy produced by the actors around the canovaccio, - which is the most common case, and requires a re-adaptation every time an actor had to be replaced - while it may exist a commedia all’improvviso without any actors’ personal intervention, written in all parts, but that the actors do not learn, out of necessity or laziness, and that is reconstructed on the spot, all’improvviso indeed, in a short time, using the actors’ invention or getting the aid of the old equivalent of the prompter.eighteenth century professional companies often had instead two specialized sub-groups: one performing improvisation with masks and the other following a script. In the time of transition, towards the end of the century and the beginning of 1800, there was not a common repertoire; the companies used to perform a considerable number of texts, which were variations of anonymous fabulae based on successful genres: comedies of masks, historical dramas and tragedies, French comedies of any sort, azioni spettacolose (spectacular actions, which was a sub-genre) and musical intermezzi, since musical theatre was the only popular performance of the time. Gradually, with the development of

a new order in modern capitalism and the extension of a urban middle class, they started to present more recognizable texts, either Italian (often Goldonian or based from abbot Chiari’s repertoire) or international, usually French or English bourgeois dramas, urban tragedies or sentimental comedies (Schino, 2014). One of the main problems to be resolved was to find a criteria for the distribution of the parts. Often actors had to play both old masked types and the new parts, since the companies had an ensemble restricted to ten to fifteen elements. There was no direct connection between the old masks and the new parts, so the new actor had to rely on other aspects of similarity, such as physical feature and social and psychological elements. Documents show actors that had to play, for example, parts of Pantalone as well as parts of tyrant, or Brighella and lover, or Arlecchino and caratterista. A lineage of the new roles from old masked (or unmasked) types does not exist, actors of this period of transition had just to modify their scenic features to the needs of the company. The old system tended towards extreme specialization, while this new system was based instead on the attitude of avoiding specialization, with a huge waste of resources, energies, time, for continuous adaptation to new characters, scripts and genres. There was, indeed, a high degree of generality, that was gradually overcome by a very welcomed confluence of new similar parts individuated in the new dramatic literature for the new growing bourgeois audience, and the establishment of a new “nomenclature and scenic typology” (Jandelli 2002:18). According to the hierarchisation of society, in contrast to the old domestic management style of Commedia dell’arte family, theatre companies were now extremely structured, in “first”, “second” and so on actors and roles.In this transition from a theatre of masks to a theatre of roles the actor felt lost, without an identity, seeing an old knowledge disappearing, that seemed increasingly useless, and a new system, the roles, in formation, that was indeed, without form and identity. Where an organic old system was characterized by economy and specialization, based on accumulation of personal repertoire, waste was now the new horizon, with the need of learning a disproportionate amount of new parts and its tasks within the company continuously changing. The need of a new standardization of the modes of production, of a new formalized medium, a renovated structure of sovratesto (over-text) a synthesis of dramatic signs for a shared immediate understanding, was found in the caratteri (characters of the dramatic personae, not to be confused with the dramatic personae themselves) typical of the eighteenth century literature, mainly French but also, as said, however in minor quantity, English. From chaos the actors, analyzing the caratteri, could reestablish serial behaviors and types and reenact a virtuous procedure for the establishment of an economical specialization. This came also as a result of progressive negotiation with authors and with an audience far more restricted in number than the previous, changed in their social composition and interested in the new bourgeois dramatic literature of which moral was represented and mirrored on stage. The re-modulation of the system took a long time to find a recognizable shape. The first documents stating the definition of the new system of roles dates back to the 1820s and 1830s, with an increase in the number of members (twenty to twenty-five) all hired accordingly to specific tasks and similar parts, defined and identifiable by the whole theatre community of artists and spectators.The standardization of modes of production, mirroring the industrialization of production in the outer society, at the end of the process found a sort of codification of acting styles

and through a progression of analysis of psychological and typological taxonomies recreated roles and types suitable for the new forms of theatre. Although after the first third of the century we can observe a stabilization and definition of the roles and their internal dynamics, we have to say that this was always a work in progress, organic, alive, with some types fading and others raising, or modifying status and relevance in their applications and within the actual structure, and hierarchy, of the companies. We can observe a similar pattern in the musical theatre, in opera, which was by large the reference point of any theatrical structure from eighteenth to early nineteenth century, and by far the most popular genre of performance. In eighteenth century, in the opera seria, less popular than the opera buffa but more prestigious, there was no prescriptive distribution of roles on the basis of vocal extension or gender. Castrati used to take the roles of young lovers and heroes, women en travesti used to take the parts of first or second man. More in general, male parts could be played and sung by women, men or castrati, and female parts could be taken by women and castrati of any vocal register, and the only criteria for adapting the interpreter to the roles was age. Tenors, with younger voices, used to take the parts of fathers, counselors and traitors, while the Basses used to play the parts of older characters. At that time the music used to be written for the singers, often very popular and powerful, who could get, by contract, the right to choose the main roles, as they were the primo uomo or prima donna, so it was the music that needed to be adapted to the parts chosen by the interpreters, and not the other way around. This privilege, the prerogative of choosing the part by contract, for the primi attori and primi attrici so called assoluti, was one of the traits of the opera system that were adopted by the major theatre companies of 1800s. It was a usual practice for composers to listen the actors singers’ voices before writing their music. At the beginning of the new century the end of the era of castrati paralleled the tendency to homogeneity of repertory. Female contralti en travesti started to replace the castrati, voices needed to become more flexible and the libretti started to match characters to voice registers. The “arie da baule” (trunk arie) belonging to personal repertoire, inserted strategically in any possible context to receive applauses, just like the lazzi of the Commedia dell’arte actors, were still largely used by the actors singers, however their use had to be restricted due to the need of conformity to the new repertoire. This is another similarity of the process of gradual establishment of the new system in the theatre of 1800s, where the tendency for the actors of using a personal repertoire comparable to the “arie da baule”, preferred to the recitativi, and to be used in any possible situation, was replaced, especially by the second and third generation of Grandi Attori such as Eleonora Duse, by an accurate study of the characters and of their parts, and a personal, autonomous interpretation or re-creation of it – often a re-writing – rather than improvisation based on well known fixed patterns and similarity of situations to be recycled. Of course the difference between opera and the rest of theatre was radical in terms of organization of the companies: actors singers were generally different for every new production, or anyway the composition of musical companies was by nature very unstable, while the rest of theatre was formed by fairly stable travelling companies (compagnie di giro), normally run by families of artists.

In eighteenth century only the un-masked ‘Lovers’ (such as Luigi Riccoboni) kept on writing parts for the theatre, since they were movable to other genres, and somehow, ‘domesticated’ within modern society, while the wild Zannis and Zanni-related comical

masks got stuck, fossilized in their routines. And, as a matter of fact, theatre, that for centuries was the target of violent invectives, became now a totally accepted institution.Within professionalism, attempts to establish the so long desired Italian tragedy, by marquise Maffei and actor and theorist Riccoboni, failed, and indeed the deluded Riccoboni moved to Paris trying to revive the old Comédie Italienne, however making use of the stereotype of the Italian Commedia actor, funny and improvisator, wanted by the foreigners who confused Italian professional theatre with folkloric theatre. The French misunderstandings about the nature of Commedia dell’arte was, and still is, utterly responsible for the ossification of its imaginary until our days.3 With his 'Great Reform', that was in fact an integrated organic reform of theatre modes of production, the ‘company poet’ Carlo Goldoni and ‘his’ capocomico (actor-manager) Gerolamo Medebach, in consonance with their times, finally replaced the fallen system based on canovacci and abstract lazzi improvisations with written plays, full of realistic details, combining innovative performance practices with publishing policies. They managed to elevate their status as theatre workers to ‘literary’ artists, and soon after the masked types started to be perceived as a congeries of picturesque regional popular characters rather than an anthology of original, genius actors' creations. However, some aspects of the modus operandi of the deceased actual Commedia dell'arte companies can still be clearly traced in the 1700s, due to the enormous impact that they had in the previous centuries, having set the essential canons of any theatrical organised professionalism operating within a market-based society. This was the time of the renovated raise of the improvvisatori, some of whose, such as Bernardino Perfetti, Corilla Olimpica, Francesco Gianni or later, Tommaso Sgricci, Bartolomeo Sestini and Giuseppe Regaldi, achieved international fame and financial success. This phenomenon is certainly to be related much more to the new great popularity of the opera libretti among the middle class, and in turn of the operational features of opera system that are comparable to those of the old Commedia dell'arte, than to the medieval jesters or preachers - the actual “rock stars” of their times – or to the sixteenth century canterini or cantori in panca (bench singers) improvised performances that used to be offered and sponsored by the Italian Comuni for people’s entertainment and information. We can observe then, that at least two of the main characteristics of Commedia dell'arte (or, indeed, Commedia all'improvviso), notably improvisation on pre-set patterns within a determined scenario or canovaccio, and the pragmatic use of fixed types, respectively survived in these two forms of theatre, the improvvisatori and opera. After all even Goldoni himself was a very prolific author of libretti, and in particular of ‘drammi giocosi’, ‘opere buffe’ or ‘opere giocose’ (comic operas). Both functional characteristics will then migrate and unify in the nineteenth century system for Parts and Roles, establishing the new theatre canon. Cristina Jandelli (2002) noted that, in fact, before the establishment of directors-based theatres in 1900s Europe, and Stanislavsky’s revolutionary work on the character, that implicates theatre as an explicit work on the actors’ self, the character in theatre always needed a medium, the so called parte in commedia for the professional actor between sixteenth and eighteenth century, and what was called role from the beginning of nineteenth century until, in Italy, the half of twentieth century.In 1800s the emerging pre-romantic literature, with its variations as commedie lacrimose (tearful plays), or as pathetic-sentimental or historical dramas, all had indeed their own

characters that could be ascribable to set roles; similarly to Commedia dell'arte, also their plots saw repeatable dynamics between young lovers, old fathers, tyrants and specialised comic roles. In general, specialisation and adherence to the physique du rôle (including voice) optimizes a professional actor's performance and creates a sort of “actor's character”, able to be recycled in a fairly infinite number of variation. The exploitation of this classic actors’ tool merged as a necessity in a moment of renewal of repertoire, abandon of masks, and transition toward a fairly serial mode of production imposed by the market system of the time, and became the foundation on which the new system could be based on. The nineteenth century actor is, just like the Commedia dell’arte actor, eclectic in the use of different languages and skills, such as acting, dancing and singing, and ultra-specialised in terms of the type of character to be put on stage. Commedia dell’arte was, above all, independent entrepreneurship of theatre professionals, and this aspect certainly migrated from its origin to 1800’s theatre, due to its market-based nature. “Many think that the symbol of commedia dell’arte is an Harlequin performing in a square – Schino (1995) says – A more appropriate symbol is probably the theatre entrance ticket.” As Alonge (1988) states:

The articulation in roles acts as a mediator between the fading of the old production mode deriving from Commedia dell'arte and the new cultural-social situation emerging between 1700s and 1800s.

The system of roles spread all across Europe, and found its best rationalization and formalization in France, in Paris, in the highest theatrical institution of the time, the Comédie Française. However, due to the principal of all the typical structural features of Commedia dell’arte, that we have not fully considered yet, which was the permanent, long lasting necessity of travelling, this types-based comparable system permeated and remained a typical trait of Italian theatre until contemporaneity, while it disappeared everywhere else, in favor of the new system, centred on the figure of the director.

In order to analyse the actor’s professionalism we need to look at its traces over a period of three centuries of European life, from early 1600s to early 1900s, when the verticality of directing and neo-capitalist modality of production reduced its leadership. The actor of Commedia dell’arte and the Grande Attore were citizens of the same society. (Meldolesi 1984:107)

2. The System of Roles in Ninetheenth Century European and Italian theatre: The Grandi Attori.

Roles existed in Italy and in the rest of Europe. As far as the individuation of roles and their internal logic were concerned, the first reference point for most of European theatrical systems from the end Sixtheenth century on, was the French model and in particular, the national, resident, public theatre of the Comédie-Française. One of the reasons why this became the preferred model, especially in nineteenth century, was the increased status of its actors after the French revolution, both in financial and cultural

terms. Moreover, the protection and the attention of the State and its financial prosperity, gave the companies of the Comédie-Française the possibility to explore and expand all possibilities of the system of roles, even due to the high number of actors employed.4 Each role had second and third replacements, and they existed for the three major forms of theatre: tragedy, comedy and drama (bourgeois). There were premier roles for men and women, with further specializations (such as fort premier rôle). However the main roles for women were usually called jeune premiere (amoureuse, young lover) or grande coquette or ingénue. For opéra-comique lots of roles took the names from some famous interpreters. Traditional comique roles where valet for men (the former servant of Commedia dell’arte), the soubrette for women, all with a huge number of sub-species. Other classical roles where the amoureaux (lovers), and the rôle à manteau (old men), tyran and confident, also adaptable to the different genres and to the different levels of the hierarchy, and with a plethora of sub-specialisations. Old women were mères, duègnes, caractères and coquette marquees. The raisonneurs had often the function to express the author’s thoughts. At the bottom of the scale there were generic roles as utilités or rôles accessoire and comparses. It was not uncommon, especially for the young actors in minor roles (usually males but also females), to take parts en travestie.5 Aging, actors would move from a role to another on a prescribed scale (a typical example is the coquette who becomes mère). Apart from this natural evolution, or the other physiologic movement on the scale of roles due to career and technical development, or particular exceptional shifts wanted and obtained by some powerful Grandi Attori, roles were extremely fixed, and actors would keep them all their lives as a second nature.This had as a result that an emploi (the role) instead of being a narrow simplification of a repeatable dramaturgical type, had a huge number of further specification to fit well with an enormous range of characters, and, through the attentive research of the actors, to reach a high level of sophistication in the design of the dramatis personae. This system was able to produce a number of divi, like Talma, Mars and Rachel. At the time of Romantic acting style, according to which creativity would only come from individual inspiration, and that was popular in the theatre of boulevards, actors of the Comédie-Française would oppose their refinement, resulting from tradition, professionalism and training. Differently from Italy, where access to theatre profession was essentially precluded to those who were not born in art families (famiglie d’arte), in France there were different options to receive training and access major companies. Young actors could either come from peripheral theatres (like in England), or from amateur theatres, or from the Conservatoire or private schools, such as the one ran by François Delsarte, or from private teachers such as Isidore Samson.6 Some could make their own debut directly with the company, passing through a process of trials in front of the actual audience of Paris. Another radical difference with the Italian system was that, in major theatres such as the Comédie-Française (since its foundation in 1680, in contrast to the previous use) authors had the right to distribute the parts and control the accuracy of the acting during rehearsals.7 While in Italy the capocomico, and the Grande Attore, had the power over the company and over the selection of the repertoire and adaptation of texts according to their own and company members’ needs, in the Comédie-Française model-system this was the author’s prerogative. While in Italy we can identify the proto-director in the Grande Attore, this in France would be rather identified with the writer.8 However, also in France, while at the beginning of the system the roles had to adapt to dramaturgy, in the

development of it over time, the writers had to orchestrate their plots on the basis of the roles, and often reflect the composition of the companies or meet the specific skills of some prominent actors. Although the Comédie Française maintained the roles still for long time (the jurist Paul Olagnier in 1937 stated that the regulation of rules was still alive) as a sign of continuation of its great tradition, the general system in France collapsed at the beginning of twentieth century due to the raise of film, the end of market, the tendency of playwrights of following the new audience’s interest towards a further individuation of dramatic personae in daily, bourgeois, domestic and ordinary environment, and the raise of directing oriented productions where the importance of the performance of the ensemble was to take the place of the actors’ individual performances and skills.The roles in Germany were essentially derived from the French models and became the system of professional theatre since its beginning in the second and third decade of eighteenth century (Artioli 2000). At the end of nineteenth century however, due to a number of concomitant factors, such as the establishment of a system of national, resident, civic and municipal theatres, the relevance of the Dramaturg, along the same line of Goethe, as well as the raising significance of Romanticism and Naturalism, the new dramaturgy and the impact of Ibsen’s plays, produced the early raise of the figure of the director and the end of the roles.In England the theatrical system based on the lines of business, which was also similar to the French, termed much earlier than in the other European countries. While in Italy at the mid of nineteenth century it reached the edge of its sophistication, in England it was already rapidly fading. This happened essentially due to three factors: the approval of the Theatres Act in 1843, the birth and development of the rail system, and the integration within the companies of educated actors coming from the middle class, amateur and university theatres, not belonging to art families. The rail system produced the end of traveling, non-resident companies, the centralization of the system in the capital and the birth of touring companies, that were formed for some specific productions only. The Theatres Act, after two centuries of monopoly, opened licenses to non patent theatres (which were very few, in London only three, the Drury Lane and the Covent Garden in the winter and the Haymarket in the summer). This had as a result the substantial replacement of most of traditional repertoire and popular styles (the kinds of the infamous penny theatres or penny gaffs) with music-halls. The remaining, or new theatres, modified their offers from multiple bills to long runs, destroying quickly the centuries-old actor training based on lines and stoke companies, including the Shakesperian tradition of acting.9 However the new system, with the radical cancelation of tradition of acting, and where the new actors were essentially amateurs with no specific training, facilitated the flourish of a new dramaturgy around the 1890s, which reflected the values of the new middle class.The critic William Davenport Adams in his nostalgic series of essays Neglegted “Lines” (1896) attepted to define the different roles of the old English theatre, but his inaccuracy demostrates that the “Lines” were long gone.All other European, including Eastern European and Russian theatrical systems experienced a similar parabola.

Franco Ruffini in his 1990s lectures used to say that there is no such a thing as Theatre,

but different Theatres. We can elaborate on this concept both diachronically and synchronically. This may be clearly visible and understood in our directors-based system, however it is also apparent in twentieth century Italian theatre, where we can see the coexistence of three separate theatrical systems: opera, dialect theatre (made of usually resident companies) and Italian theatre (always travelling, compagnie di giro). They all operated, in different forms and shapes, within a system of Roles, although the typical modality for Roles and Parts belongs to the companies of Theatre in Italian, modelled after the older French system, with the difference that they were all travelling companies.10 In turn, within the Theatre in Italian, we can observe Primary, Secondary and Tertiary companies, and often, within the primary companies, two different ensembles. The whole system was self-funded, through the sale of tickets within a free market, with no external funding of any sort.11 The capocomici, usually primi attori, and then (after Duse’s example) also the prime attrici, were normally the owners of the companies, they had to choose the repertoire and distribute the parts within the company. They had full financial responsibility of the company, and, differently from the later, contemporary system based on public or private subsidies, they had to find strategies to attract and create a strong relationship with the audience (and make it come again and again, as this kind of system was based on spectators who would come back to watch the same companies, the same actors and often the same repertoire over and over). Touring abroad would provide the company with new opportunities of funding and experimentation. Tours abroad were also used to build or reinforce the reputation of the company.The Italian Grandi Attori were extremely popular internationally, and a good part of their income and prestige used to come indeed from international tours12. In the second part of the nineteenth century, at least, great actors were synonyms of Italians. It is well known the importance of Tommaso Salvini’s Othello13 for the establishment of Stanislavsky’s system. Similarly, for example, Giovanni Grasso had a major influence on Mejerchol’d’s conception and practice of biomechanics. While in the rest of Europe the Grandi Attori were rare, in Italy they were an integral asset of the system. Besides being exceptions, they were also functions of the theatre based on roles.

The list of roles in the first part of nineteenth century (fully defined in the 1920sto the 1930s of the century, for an average of twenty-twenty-five members) does not differ greatly from the list of roles of the second part of the century, which saw the Grande Attore protagonist of the stages. Operating within this system, actors were able to play different texts every night, even for thirty days in a row. They mastered make-up and they were responsible for their costumes. Roles focus on recurrent types of socio-domestic bourgeois repertoire (mother, father), psychological (such as ingenuo) or technical (primo attore, seconda donna, etc.). The definition of assoluto or assoluta for primi attori’s roles meant that they had the privilege, by contract, of rejecting and choosing their parts. In terms of qualities of the roles, there were only based on caratteri (characters, not to be confused with the dramatic personae) and tipi di parti (kinds of parts), but they were organized according to a strict hierarchy (primari, secondari and minori), derived from opera. Individuating and balancing these elements an actor would create the role according to the dramatic persona.14 That is why at the bottom of the hierarchy there were the generici.

A typical aspect of the life and the profession of the actors of the Teatro all’Antica all’Italiana was the fact that, until 1929, every three years all companies (with very few exceptions of some Grandi Attori’s ensembles which tended to keep their skeleton) used to dissolve and be reformed with other members. This used to happen on a specific day, after Carnival, the first Thursday of Quaresima (Lent). Actors moving from a company to another, after the show of Tuesday (martedì grasso), had only one rehearsal with the new company on Ash Wednesday when theatres were closed, and had to be ready to perform the day after with the new colleagues and the new repertoire. This demonstrates the efficiency of the system of roles and the skills of the actors trained within this world.

For the men we usually see the roles of primo attore, primo e secondo amoroso (first and second lover), primo caratterista, padre e caratterista, parti dignitose (refined parts), caratteri brillanti, tiranno e parti odiose (tyrant and odious parts), four for generic parts and one for parti ingenue (candid parts); for the women we have the roles of prima attrice, prima amorosa, madre (mother), serva e seconda donna (servant and second woman), caratteristica e serva, four for generic parts and three (probably playing also male characters) for parti ingenue. The company is then integrated by technical figures such as the Apparatore (stage decorator), the Rammendatore (mender) and the Guardarobiere (checker), for a total of twenty-eight members (of which twenty-five actors)15 The prompter was also an important member of any company, and had often the function of translating and adapting the texts to the needs of the company. In a permanent conflict with playwrights, who actually could be financially secure when working with a primary company, actors were always victorious, due to their substantial exclusive power within this system, where the audience was attracted by them, rather than by the texts, although a constant offer of new plays was necessary. The distribution of parts, that at the Comédie Française was a prerogative of the authors, in Italy was an exclusive right of the capocomico, or exceptionally of the direttore di scena, with the only limitation of actors with ruoli assoluti or of the company customs.16 Passing time, the major roles tended to attract parts traditionally belonging to minor roles, and lots of those extinguished. For example, an old common role was the mamo (a simpleton). At an early stage there were also secondi caratteri (that is basso comico, similar to buffo in opera). A classical ruolo primario, derived from Molière-Goldoni is the caratterista (from character). This later became the difficult second role of promiscuo (typically absorbed by the Grandi Attori due to its ductility). Alfieri’s styles of tragedy counterpart of the caratterista was the tiranno. At a late stage of the system, and especially at the beginning of twentieth century, the brillanti, who were also primi attori, typical of the Italian versions of the popular French pochade competed with the caratteristi promiscui (who were, by the way, masters of make-up), just to be then replaced in turn by the attori comici. However the caratteristi were the only roles that survived in cinema, absorbing the brillanti and the fathers. Also in this system, like in the French, there was mobility (ascending and descending in the scale) over a life career that followed an established linear set of roles. For instance, we would not be able to understand Duse’s artistic intervention in Cenere without acknowledging the sequences of shifts from the norm that there she proposes, still operating within the secular tradition of one of the principal roles of the system: the mother.

The actors of the old school used to influence each other and to be influenced by the spectators, who were expert and usually knew not only the plays themselves, but also the interpretations of the different actors and of the same actor over long periods of time. They used to accompany the art of the actor (and in particular, of the Grandi Attori), over their whole career.Actors used to specialize not only in specific roles, but also in specific parts and characters. Usually the major primary companies presented two repertoires, one including a large number of different plays, so that they could offer almost a different show every night, and another repertoire made of a few fixed titles, where the Grande Attore used to excel and was known for. A usual strategy was to get attached to a playwright, contemporary of classical. For example, Ernesto Rossi used to perform Shakespeare, and to fix in the memory of his spectators his image as Shakespearian interpreter, in order to instigate the want of watching his variations on the same, or similar artistic propositions.17 Their expert spectators were similar to opera’s lovers, who were immediately able to compare the performances of the different actors in the same parts, or of the same actor over the years, and able to discuss the details of their interpretation. They were able, through the power of their performances, just like opera singers, to empty the enormous spaces of the buildings that were certainly not build for this kind of theatre.18 There were couples of oppositions, of rivalries between actors of the same generations presenting similar repertoires or operating in the same markets. Some of these rivalries were real, however amplified by the producers, the critics and agencies (who normally were the same people or figures financially strictly connected) for advertising and promotional reasons. Famous are the rivalries between Rachel and Adelaide Ristori, Gustavo Modena and Luigi Domeniconi, Tommaso Salvini and Ernesto Rossi (both pupils of Gustavo Modena), Eleonora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt.19

Symptomatic are the reciprocal influences of the performances of Hamlet and Othello by Rossi and Salvini in the second part of 1800 (Schino, 2004).Historiography has often seen nineteeth century Italian theatre and the art of the Grandi Attori as genius but uncultivated, unable to portray the texts with a sufficient degree of accuracy, and overall responsible for the extreme delay or theatrical reforms in Italy. They were keeping the point of view of the contemporaries, where theatre is either text based or centred on the figure of the director, interpreting these experiences of the past under the light of their own set of criteria, values, organization, system of production. Mirella Schino (2004) points out that an evident truth has been forgotten, that is that from the second part of nineteenth century, in Italian theatre the masterpieces have been usually created by the actors, rather than by the writers, who were, with very few exceptions, mediocre.20 In his classical analysis, Claudio Meldolesi articulates the history of the Grandi Attori in five generations, which corresponds to five different phases: the precursors of the first part of the century;21 the phase of the “actual” Grandi Attori, such as Adelaide Ristori, Ernesto Rossi, Tommaso Salvini and Antonio Petito, that is the longest to have lasted, and that met and had to deal with Verismo (Italian naturalism); the fase mattatoriale, that is of the Mattatori, the new Grandi Attori who inherited qualities (and bad habits) of the previous, such as Ermete Zacconi, Ermete Novelli, Eduardo Scarpetta and indeed, Eleonora Duse, who was the most famous and applauded among all, in the period of passage between the two centuries; the attori passatisti, such as Ruggero Ruggeri,

Angelo Musco and Emma and Irma Gramatica, from 1910; and the phase of the independent actors, such as Maria Melato, Petrolini, Viviani and Benassi, who brought the tradition to conclusion, through diaspora and general dissolution of the system around the half of the 1920s. Sergio Tofano, the author of the fundamental book of memories Il Teatro all’Antica Italiana, clearly belongs to the latter, and well represents the passage from the traditional system of roles to directors’ based system, with all its ideological consequences. Essential document, his book, dealing with medium quality companies, falls often into the anecdotal, treating that past world with respect and affection, but also with that sort of paternalistic superiority of someone who, coming from a bourgeois background – he wasn’t an actor by background – could overcome the weaknesses of the old system and was able to align his practice to more modern and more advanced approaches.This division in organic generations may be suggestive but it appears not to have an overall clear foundation, except from physiologic certain changes of techniques and styles, poetics and productive processes. We may instead consider the Grandi Attori as a unified phenomenon, that lasted about a century and that, although it is comprehensive of countless diversities between the singularities of the protagonists, it shows so many relevant evident contiguities to allow us to look at them as members of a single family – not just figurative – moved by similar needs, intentions and abilities. This is, indeed, a family that includes the guitti, the lower and poorer representatives of the theatrical art, who were probably the majority, and, even if at times, as a category, have been idealized and put on pedestals, they remained mostly unknown, forgotten and essentially despised by the official historiography. Eleonora Duse, who, according to Silvio D’Amico, was born in a train from an actual old family of extremely poor artists, and worked for many years in a secondary company, visiting all minor urban centres, crossed the lines of any artificial and ideological separation, demonstrating with her biography and art (she also died while touring) that the inner value of pre-1900 theatre lied in the sense of belonging to a community, or species of human beings, living in a different way from the rest of society: the actors. Also the other famous Grande Attore of her generation, Ermete Zacconi, was raised in a poor art family. Overall all actors, from the most popular, applauded and praised, to the last of the guitti, shared a similar material and cultural environment, as well as similar consideration from the rest of society. Even the Grandi Attori shared the smell of that misery that was so strong in the medium and low level theatres. Even when they were considered “divine” (like “la signora Duse”) they were in contact, involved in something “low”, corporeal, passionate, promiscuous. All of this, everything, their whole biographies, were somehow brought to stage, transfigured by the art of the performer and by the theatrical fictional apparatus of the characters and the roles, enjoyed and admired by the audience for a night, but then, socially unacceptable. Actors were no longer kept off the urban cemeteries, however, for their audiences, they still retained some classical infernal characteristics. It is symptomatic the description of the Grande Attrice Rachel made by the critic George Henry Lewes, who depicts her as a “panter” “not really human” 22, and by Charlotte Brontë, who saw her as a “demon”, “not a woman, but a snake”.23

There is an interesting document, a letter written by Eleonora Duse to Arrigo Boito in 1887, that shows the material situation of theatre, including those where the primary companies of the diva were operating. In here Duse says that she “will get sick because

of the cold entering from an open door”, that she will need a doctor to acknowledge her cold so that [“theatre mud!”] she could complain with the theatre owner and move to another better theatre.24

Schino (2004) notices how material and cultural marginalization, as well as some bad habits and artistic cheap routines, were not just frames around the Grandi Attori’s genius. They were not the cause, however they naturally produced something essential that is hard to trace due to the scarcity of available material. The ethical and social ambiguity of professional actors of any level brought with itself their “mental diversity”, which is a fundamental element that we may use in order to understand the effectiveness of their art on stage. Italian companies have been described as having “gypsy” traits, sharing lives and interests all connected to their job, due to the hard material conditions of their isolated lifestyle. This “actors’ micro-society” (Meldolesi, 1984) allowed the long time of the training for their performances; their whole quite gloomy lives were projected towards their performances. With the end of the travelling companies of the Teatro all’Antica Italiana, the new actors lost their diversity from the rest of bourgeois society, having their lives spent and focused to the outside world rather than within the theatre world.25 Social and cultural misery of the nineteenth century actor was then not just an inconvenience that had to be removed; it was the cause of their instability, difference, detachment from the rest of the “normal” world. With producing a constant feeling of living permanently in an “extra-daily” dimension, it was the necessary humus for the production of theatre art. Diversity, that flourished between life and craft, was necessary for the effectiveness of the stage presence of the actor. When this “mental diversity” was gone, it had to be replaced, and that long time of the physical and mental permanent formation of the actors, that once was their lifestyle itself, became obsolete with the directors’ new theatre based on short time of preparation for productions, and found its place in theatre schools, laboratory theatres, and various other forms of training. This was the main trait of the passage from 1800’s to 1900’s theatre, and involved, essentially, the everyday practice and lives of the actors and their identity.26 Of course, this process did not involve the whole population of actors. Most of them lost the perception of their natural centrality within theatre and became passive, other-directed by producers, intellectuals, authors and critics. Having to build their performance on characters to be found on texts only, and in short time, they had to put first the general design instead of working on details, the exact opposite of the creative process of the Grandi Attori. In the old system, when actors had individual huge repertoires based on a multitude of different parts for the same role, whenever they prepared a new performance overcoming usual routine, focusing on details, keeping the remaining aspects of their performance (gestures, postures, set of psycho-physical expressions, and even memory of lines) automatic due to large experience and repetition, they managed to create genius performances.27 This became impossible for average quality actors belonging to the new system. Schino (2004) cleverly notices that the first directors must have studied the complexity of the Grandi Attori’s performances, trying to create an equivalent in their productions, which were opposite in terms of style. The art of the Grandi Attori was then also an example and a model for the directors. While the Grandi Attori were able to produce multiplicity from the singularity of their own performance, and were themselves, their own bodies, the whole performances, the early directors (the great reformers) operated with the multiplicity of the individuals in order to

create an organic unified performance comparable with a body.

3. The End of Theatre Tradition and the Establishment of Film Industry We have to remember that the Italian tradition of actors was an unconscious tradition, not well understood by the actors themselves, and doomed to fade at the change of system of production. It was based just on blemished habits, customs, without an ideological skeleton of discourses and ideals able to dignify them. Last Grandi Attori, like Ermete Zacconi, really believed that the tradition could continue, even inside a context that changed completely (Schino, 1988). They thought they could still manage with the new texts and new audiences, handle the change of repertoire, the fall of the system of roles, the loss of hegemony of art families, the end of self-sufficient, closed market-based system of the companies. This paradoxical belief makes us understand that the micro-society of the actors did not have in fact strict and permanent rules, neither of life nor of art, and that their techniques and their traditions were based instead on continuous adjustments and adaptation to circumstances. They were confident – and with them the whole theatre community, including critics, writers and spectators – that they could eventually survive any accidents, even radical, due to their historical attitude to flexibility, and their feeling of eternity of the art of theatre. However that was a new element of the contemporary world that appeared and grew fast operating as a definitive breaking element: cinema.The underestimation of the deadly impact of cinema in the theatre society in terms of modification of audiences’ habit is still common in today’s analysis of show business. However it is quite impressive to read the analysis of the crisis of theatre by all protagonists of the 1930s, while the devastation was taking place, including the major intellectuals and theatre personalities, authorities and connoisseurs such as, for example, Silvio D’Amico (for instance, in La Crisi del Teatro, in 1931) or Luigi Pirandello (see the proceedings of Convegno Volta in 1934). They were blaming the “delay” of Italian theatre based on roles28, individuating the reasons of crisis in the old tendency to histrionics of the actors, in their lack of education, in the organization based on travelling companies closed to any external contribution or to new acquisition of artists who were not part of the families – a sense of belonging that was created as a myth and exhibited as a blazon of noble progeny and exclusivity29. – They were claiming instead the establishment of a new system based on national theatres or resident Teatri d’Arte, with consequent transfer of power from the actor to the author (or the future director) and administrators. They identified the weakness of the theatrical system in the lack of an interesting offer from the capocomici, in the lack of unified artistic vision and national spirit, in the lack of drama schools, and of public financial support and attention. They were, after all, promoting all elements of disintegration of the society of actors rather than being aware that cinema was very simply replacing theatre as a form of entertainment, bringing theatre as an organic system, alive as a parallel society, to an end, and were often unconsciously in line to the “fascist anti-actorial attack” (Meldolesi 1984:37). They were then unaware of the fact that the crisis now was not temporary, like any past movement of transition or passage from a generation to another, usual in theatre, but it was definitive and deadly. In fact “starting from 1930 nobody could do theatre anymore with profit without dealing with public bodies” (Meldolesi 1984: 27). The proceedings of Convegno Volta are symptomatic. It seems that none of the

protagonists of twentieth century theatre was really aware that cinema was not just a novelty, but a game change, and the result of a long journey of the European human’s will for realistic representation.30 Actors became to to be evaluated for their ability of making realistic performances, rather than effective, and started to work for cinema instead than for theatre, essentially for financial reasons, but also because of easiness of artistic performance. The bottom level in the theatrical hierarchy of the theatre companies, the generics, not being specialized in any specific role, were the ideal candidates to become film actors. Actors who did not belong to art families, and that were in effect, amateurs, started to be preferred to professionals. Finally, the establishment of sound cinema, in a society where the 50% of the population was illiterate, damaged theatre both internally, causing crisis in the organization of the company, and externally, making theatre unnecessary as a form of entertainment. The data of European companies ending their activities or entering financial crisis in the period 1927-1928 (D’Amico 1931) – that is, at the beginning of the mass diffusion of sound cinema, with accurate dubbing and synchronisation, – and the enormous number of tickets sold to cinema shows in the same period of time, are self-explanatory.31

Anyhow, besides the raise of cinema there were actually other factors that brought to the dissolution of the system. After the success of theatre in mid 1800s, actors became more inclined to offer a middle class lifestyle to their children, outside the profession, while young people belonging to the middle class started to think positively to access a profession that then looked socially integrated. Also in Italy the access of amateurs in the profession was one of the active elements of crisis of the tradition. They were often well prepared after a period of training in some schools or academy. They knew the texts due to amateur experiences. They were ready-made and enthusiastic self-made-actors, and financially convenient for the capocomici (Jandelli 2002). Amateurs were also more adjustable to the new needs of the early twentieth century audience, which was becoming accustomed to cinema. In a moment of crisis and need of reducing the ensembles, these young generici could take multiple roles, especially because most of the second parts had already disappeared or were absorbed by the principal parts. They were then more adaptable to new dramaturgies and, of course, the favorite by film industry.Soon the loss of audience produced not only the fading of the system in financial terms, but also the end of the internal system of acting, the way to prepare and show and watch and understand the performances. We have to be aware of the fact that “precision, care, effectiveness and complexity of Grandi Attori’s interpretations, even in performances that were not considered as successful, are hard to imagine for us, who are used to much simpler theatrical forms.” (Schino 2004:108)

Cinema, as an apparatus, as a device, was born in Paris, within a quite small triangle in a central area, between the laboratories and the theatres of Méliès, Lumière and Reynaud. However, the first film theorist, Ricciotto Canudo, and the first proper director, Giovanni Pastrone, who established the first canons of cinematic language based on montage, and produced the first kolossal, were both Italians. “Before Hollywood, Turin was the Mecca of cinema” (Brunetta 1995:35). Pastrone’s masterpiece, Cabiria (1914), that exploited the moment of success of spectacular historical films, was co-written with Gabriele D’Annunzio (or at least, D’Annunzio’s name was used to advertise the film). This is a strong sign of the inner relationship and contiguity between theatre and early cinema

industry. The “sommo poeta” had accepted the job only due to an advantageous contract, just for the money, since he, like most of Italian intellectuals and artists, used to despise this new form of popular communication, never seen as a real form of art. Among whose results, there was the creation of a divo, a longshoreman from Genoa, Bartolomeo Pagano, Maciste in the film, who provided the model for the well-known Mussolinian poses. Pastrone was also the creator of one of the most successful female models of Italian cinematic diva,32 also inspired by the D’Annunzian ideal of femme fatale, in the person of the former generica Pina Menichelli.

Initially, besides hiring any sort of entertainer for their short silent comedies, like circus clowns, acrobats, members of companies in dialect or travelling tertiary companies, film producers made use of actors of primary companies, especially the young members, the generic, emptying the companies from the energies of the fresh generation. They also hired popular actors, who were already divi in theatre, in order to attract audience. Using the big names of famous theatre actors was an obvious marketing tool, and followed what was largely used in the theatre of the time.33 In 1912 Giovanni Pastrone managed to work with Ermete Zacconi for the film Padre. Duse’s Cenere belongs to the same production criteria, even if the creative contribution of the actress was massive (and was considered, by herself, a failure). It represented her coming back to the public sphere, at a time of war, after seven years of absence, lived intensively through a spiritual maturation. Even due to D’Annunzio earlier involvement with this lower genre, and besides financial needs, the cinematic media was certainly chosen by the great actress after an accurate analysis of its artistic potentials. As a matter of fact, Duse was a proto film director, when in Italy theatre directing was not yet established. Duse’s own acting style seemed to fit well with the needs of this new media. All Grandi Attori’s acting styles were defined by their power, their illuminated presence utilizing huge and figurative or small and energetically compressed gestures and actions, vocal scores and orchestrations based on contrasting defined strong emotions. According to Schino, Eleonora Duse was the only one whose characteristic was continuity. She was able to build a “second performance, not a radiation of different fragments in the space, but having a parallel completeness. Not sudden changes of direction, but a whole labyrinth.” (Schino 2004:26-27)Even if, as said, her character in Cenere clearly derived from the theatre role of the mother, Duse tried to understand the inner characteristics of the new media, adapting her acting style to film, creating new ways, less emphatic than those of her contemporaries. This experimental approach was not appreciated nor understood by the audience. Soon film producers changed their strategy. Divismo in cinema had to be built on different foundations, all purely cinematographic. Within a context where the most famous capocomici, the divi in theatre, were actually women, the new stars had to be female, and the new diva had to take the character of the femme fatale of the Belle Epoque and the decadent vamp, all derived, but degraded, by the 1800’s role of seconda donna.At the beginning of film industry, the film d’arte were essentially filmed theatre, and most of the productions of that time had a final comedy in music-hall style. For certain time performances were mixed live and screened. Actors were then imported from theatre. The first Italian fictional film, La presa di Roma (1905), used Carlo Rosaspina of

Duse’s company. The first divo of cinema was Max Linder, who exploited for the screen the theatrical role of brillante (the French premier comique or jeunne homme, that was the French domestic version of a dandy). Also Cretinetti (André Deed) hired in 1908 by Itala Film of Turin, was a typical French music-hall singer-acrobat. Soon the divo in film appeared to have typical characteristics: to be a fixed type, serially produced, where the actor is identified with the dramatic persona. In Italy the genre of “diva film” fully focused on the figure of the actress, manage to separate the actor from the character. Taken as first inspiration the Danish actress Asta Nielsen, the unknown Francesca Bertini, and the art family born and already prima donna Lydia Borelli34 created new models of emancipated women for Italian audiences, also due to the attentive creative support of their personal cameramen, Alberto Carta and Giovanni Grimaldi (Jandelli 2007). In USA, Hollywood independent productions started showing the names of the actors, and adopting sophisticated marketing strategies in order to set up a star system and make the actor significant for the audience even outside the screen.35 A technical development was essential for the establishment of star system: the reduction of the distance from the camera in order to create closer and gigantic images of the actors, which have never been so close to the audience.36 This also made obsolete and inadequate the classical emphatic style of acting. After a few years, with the fading of the organic theatrical system ran by actors and based on roles, under the new production circumstances, theatre actor training was not only not seen as necessary, but also undesirable. The divi of film were soon all new and belonging to a different logic and approach on their activity. Exemplary is Emilio Ghione, a former unsuccessful painter who became a star with his 1914 series of Za la Mort, where he invented a strange and mysterious expressionistic character of a villain with positive attitudes, and in his career made over a hundred movies.New ideas for training film actors replaced the traditional theatre pedagogy.37 Even before the foundation of institutional drama schools (the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica was established in 1936) some successful handbooks for the new actors were published.38 They were all focusing on facial expressions and rudimental psychological, emotional memory techniques (however not too distant from today’s average actor training). The expressive, “latin” style of Italian early film actors, was enormously successful in Latin Mediterranean countries and in Central and South America, but was also exported in most the rest of the world (Brunetta 1995). In theatre, in 1930s the travelling art families were totally marginalized and could only hardly work far from the main centres, and access to the profession was open to anybody. The theatre professional actor, as it has been known for centuries, was hardly kept in the memories of the new audience and new generations of artists, for whom acting, even in the remaining, marginal institutional theatres, started to mean realistic representation of dramatic personae in the same manner of how they might appear on screen and, later, on television. Yet, some exceptional actors could still appear, whenever they were attracted within the orbit of the “knights of impossible” (G.B. Show 1895), the great twentieth century directors and reformers who, so to recall Ruffini’s analysis, chose theatre as a means for either radically transform art or for recreating the human being.

1

Known as lines of business, within a stock company, in the English tradition. I use the term “role” throughout the chapter, to translate the Italian ruolo (emploi in French) instead of the too generic “type”, which is rather adherent to the Commedia dell’arte model.2 D’Amico created, through his fundamental Tramonto del Grande Attore (1929) a long lasting image of the Italian Grande Attore, that only in the past thirty years started to be questioned, beginning with Claudio Meldolesi’s Fondamenti del Teatro Italiano, first published by Sansoni in 1984.3 However France certainly built on the Commedia dell’arte system of use of types the earliest versions of a theatre based on roles (emploi) which dates back at least to 1660 (Randi, 2000) and at the Comédie-Française lasted until the beginning of twentieth century.4 In 1826 there were thirty-nine actors in the troupe, in 1948, forty-eight (Laplace 1995).5 This was common throughout Europe, especially in small companies. In England in particular, some parts en travestie, especially in opere buffe, were taken by first actresses, like Eliza Vestris, who was also one of the protagonists of the new genre of extravaganza. According to Adams these characteristics may have derived by the English tradition of Pantomime and its main role, the principal boy (Degli Esposti 2000).6 Simson was the private teacher of Rachel for all her life, and was also a teacher at the Conservatoire (Randi 2000).7 This would also derive from the French tradition of writers-metteurs en scène, from Molière to Voltaire.8 However it has to be clear that the passage from the function of the 1800s direttore di scena to the contemporary director does not consists in continuity, but in the opposite, in the crisis of the model. While in the nineteenth century market-centred theatrical system the thought of theatre could be identified with the productions, the new thought of directors was separate from, and often opposite to, the thinking of productions (Ruffini 2000).9 The change of paradigms is apparent when we look at the number of parts played by one of the last actors who trained with the old system, Henry Irving. Between 1860 and 1865, working at Royal in Manchester still under the multiple bill, he performed an average of 32 parts a year, while at his Lyceum Theatre, under the long run system, between 1878 and 1883, he played only 7 parts a season (Degli Esposti 2000). Besides, Irving was a great Hamlet, and one of the few prominent actors who re-imposed Shakespeare’s plays on English stage, where it became rarely performed from the mid of nineteenth century, after the golden age of Edmund Kean and William Macready (Schino 2004). Paradoxically, the contemporary tradition of Shakespearian acting is based on Italian interpreters such as Salvini and Rossi, rather than on English models as it is commonly believed. Even the English audience adored Salvini’s Othello. Just to give an idea of the popularity and the skills of this great actor, it would sufficient to remember that in his Russian tournée in 1885 he could perform in Italian, with the other actors performing in Russian (Schino 2004).10 Inspired by the romantic ideas of the actors of the previous generation, in 1900 Ermete Novelli attempted, without success, to establish a resident company at the Teatro Valle in Rome (the “Casa di Goldoni”) to follow the French model. Other failed attempts were made, later, by Boutet, Praga and Pirandello.11 This is one of the reasons why theatre, and in particular the art of the actors, was rarely appreciated as a proper art. It was rather considered a low-ranked craft, conditioned by commerce. Playwrights were the only category that could achieve a higher status, due to the literary-based culture of a society governed by the middle class. This is also a clear paradox, since due to the internal organisation of the system, actors were incommensurably more powerful than the authors. The friction between the two categories was one of the reasons of the fading of the system.12 See, for example, the number of companies performing regularly in Spain in Lidia Bonzi and Loreto Busquets (1995) Compagnie Teatrali Italiane in Spagna (1885-1913), Roma: Bulzoni.13 It is particularly significant, because coming from a prominent English critic, George Henry Lewes, the consideration that Salvini’s Othello was greater than that of the great Edmund Kean.

14 For example, Othello would be a role for primo attore, a prima parte tragica, and a carattere of jealous (Jandelli 2002).15 This is the list of roles in the company “Vedova e Pieri” in 1824 (in Il Dramma 1948, republished by Jandelli 2002).16 In 1900 this was changed by law, with scant success.17 Among the numerous examples of long lasting artistic relationships between Grandi Attori and contemporary authors, here we can remember at least the couples Eleonora Duse-Giuseppe Giacosa and Duse-D’Annunzio. 18 For this comparison, see Alonge, R. (1988) Teatro e Spettacolo nel secondo Ottocento. Bari: Laterza, and Jandelli (2002).19 It is interesting to note that both Bernhardt and Duse were not only prime donne, but also administrators of their companies and curators of all their productions, activities that included full practical, creative and intellectual engagement.20 Just to pick one, from many of possible examples of this kind, an historical episode would clarify how writers were functions of the actors, and not the other way around (as the authors always wanted it to be): in 1887 Eleonora Duse obtained a great success with Giuseppe Giacosa’s Tristi Amori in Turin, while the same play was a failure just three months before in Rome staged by another company.21 Great actors of this early phase such as Emanuel and Gustavo Modena were impregnated of Romantic culture, and were actual proto-directors, aiming at overcoming the roles to prevent ossification of practices and privileges, the risks of cabotinage and repetition of clichés, for a free develoment of individual artistic skills and aims within harmonic ensembles.22 George Henry Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting (1875). Fragment cited by Schino 2004.23 Thomas James Wise and Alexander Symington (eds) The Brontës. Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence (1932, republished in 1980). Oxford: The Shakespeare Head Press. Fragment cited by Schino 2004.24 Eleonora Duse, Arrigo Boito, Lettere d’Amore (1979) ed. by Raul Radice, Milano: Il Saggiatore. The letter is cited by Schino 2004.25 See the interview by director Ettore Giannini with Alessandro D’Amico for RAI in 1963, quoted by Schino, 2004:73.26 On twentieth century theatre pedagogy and the radical transformation of theatre between the two centuries, see Fabrizio Cruciani (1985), Registi pedagoghi e comunità teatrali del Novecento. Firenze: Sansoni27 Repetition and exactness of partitura (score) was one of the key tools of the Grandi Attori. Comparing the techniques of two of the main actors of his times, Edward Gordon Craig, the first theorist of directing, individuated this in Henry Irving, his master, as the peculiar approach of a “true artist”, as opposite to the approach of Eleonora Duse, symbol of an actor who was not a “true artist” (and one that, for instance, he adored) who would continuously improvise details, showing the inner inevitable instability of the art of the actor (and trait of genius, beyond theatre itself). 28 Delay in comparison to European theatre centred on the figure of the director. Rather than delay, Italian theatre historians have observed that Italian theatre had a different development due to the strenght of the classical system of roles and travelling companies, due to the presence of the Grandi Attori, and due to the lack of a unified nation until the end of 1800. However some of the Grandi Attori, and in particular Eleonora Duse, have been identified by some of his late contemporary as an element of continuity between the old system and the new system based on the director. Mario Apollonio, in his Storia del Teatro Italiano (1938-1951) writes: “the new history of European theatre passed all through the art of the ‘Signora Duse’, and none of the recent theories of drama, from Craig to Tairov, none of the boldest directing practices, even opposed to each other, from the uber-marionette to the actor-creator, from the decorative preciosity of stylists to the shady technique of the intimists, would have become aware of itself without her.” (vol.II:664)29 This was also exhibited in order to indicate the discipline and extreme strictness of education and training of the members of families growth in art, as revealed by Antonio Colomberti’s Notizie

Storiche dei più distinti Comici e Comiche che illustrarono la Scena Italiana dal 1700 al 1800.30 Now we are well aware that film, sound film, colored film, 3D film, and before, photography, did not come as technical accidents thrown in contemporary world, or temporary forms of spectacles for illiterates and unsophisticated people, that had always existed, but are the result, and are preceded, by centuries of Western attempts of putting the human at the centre of the world, giving the illusion of being in control of it. Classical arts, including sculpture, literature and finally, theatre, all were moving towards pre-cinema, from the humanistic architectural invention of perspective in Tuscany, to more progressive realist paintings of myths and heroes, from the passage from medieval living mystery plays to chariots or palanquins carrying sculptured life size sacred images, and triumphs such as the one in the Sacred Mountain of Varallo (1491). When they finally started to change subjects, focusing on the everyday life of the middle class according to the new ideologies, they begun digging their own grave. In theatre the bourgeois, idealistic ideology of primacy of intellect, tended to favor writers within the internal hierarchy, and realistic effects on stage. The descriptions of Ernesto Rossi’s Othello killing Desdemona as being of “shocking realism” (Anna Busi, 1973, Othello in Italia, Bari: Adriatica) by his contemporary critics, are exemplary. However, the impression of naturalness of the Grandi Attori’s performances was not produced by a tendency to approach a naturalistic style, but was rather recreated in the mind of the spectators as a recreation of an alternative, extra-daily, consistent nature, according to an organic, and classical, artistic procedure. The focus of film industry was instead, basically and progressively, on reproduction of everyday behaviour, even when using historical setting or spectacular special effects. Jean Louis Comolli (1971) explains that this is “part of the history of the raise and dominance of capitalist bourgeoisie and its ideology” and that “the ideological cinema apparatus is itself produced within these codes and systems of representation, and is their complexion, perfection and, at the same time, overcoming”. 31 A few data helps understanding this trend in Italy: in 1893 Enrico Rosmini reports the existance of 1055 active theatres in 775 towns (Alonge 1988). In 1899 Lyonnet estimates the existance in Italy of 100 travelling companies, plus 7 in dialect, 24 for operetta, 21 for varietà e maschere, and more for opera, for a total of 220. This huge number looks even an underestimation of the actual situation, restricting the survey to only some major companies and regions. In 1924, that is still at the age of silent film, for the first time cinema cashed more than theatre (five millions of lire more). In 1936-37 the whole activity of the major theatre companies consisted in only 4667 productions. In 1938 theatre cashed 24 millions of lire, while cinema cashed 586 millions (Jandelli 2002).32 The Italian term diva is two centuries old, as it always defined opera and later, theatre stars.33 The only exceptions were Pirandello and, somehow, D’Annunzio; the only authors able to replace the Grandi Attori’s fame in terms of attraction for the audience. It is not by chance that the first Italian “kolossal”, Cabiria, used the name of D’Annunzio, and that the first sound film is based on Pirandello’s short story In silenzio.34 Lyda Borelli brought to cinema poses and gestures typical of the symbolist and pre-expressionist theatre, characteristic of the Art Nouveau aesthetic of the post-mattatori generation.35 The meaning and dynamics of this new kind of star system clearly differs from the one known in English 1800’s theatre, where popular actors used to visit minor theatres and towns on their own, without their companies, for short periods of time, performing as the main attractions of the night.36 Initially the distance was twelve feet (“Stage” distance) and was reduced to nine in 1909.37 Or lack of pedagogy within the companies, where the youngest members had to learn by themselves, just by watching and interacting with the older and more experienced – sometimes great – actors, who were actually only interested in their own personal success.38 Like Beniamino Battista’s Come si diventa artisti cinematografici (1931), and before, Giovanni Scocco’s L’Arte silenziosa: l’espressione dei sentimenti portati al cinematografo (1918), Giuseppe Guerzoni’s Cine-scuola epistolare illustrata. Arte, industria, commercio cinematografico (1928), and the popular Paolo Azzurri’s handbook Come si possa diventare artisti cinematografici (1917-1926). Azzurri was a minor actor and director of the society Ambrosio in Turin, the same of Duse’s Cenere.