Flaminio Scala

Title page of the first edition of Il teatro delle favole rappresentative , (Venice 1611).

Flaminio Scala (born September 27, 1552 in Rome , † December 9, 1624 in Mantua ) was an important actor , author and theater entrepreneur of the Italian Renaissance . With his impromptu comedies, he influenced such renowned authors as Lope de Vega , William Shakespeare , Ben Jonson , and Molière . Scala is considered to be one of the groundbreaking co-founders of the Commedia dell'arte . His pieces were among the first of this genre to be printed under the title Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative (Venice 1611).

Life

Little is known about his youth. However, his will, which he drew up in 1616, gives a few scant references to his origin. His date and place of birth are also recorded there. Accordingly, his father's first name was Giacomo and he came from Rome. The actor Francesco Andreini, who is friends with Scala, referred in his foreword to Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative to the author's aristocratic ancestry, which has only been passed down here and is not necessarily to be understood literally, but can also be meant as a generous compliment. Apart from his presumed birth in Rome, Scala seems to have lived and worked exclusively in northern Italy, preferably in the then dominant residential cities of Milan , Parma , Modena, Bologna , Ferrara , Brescia , Venice and Mantua. Only stays in Genoa with the Desiosi (1597) and the Uniti (1598) are documented. 1600/01 he participated with the Accesi on a tour to France. His comedy Postumio was published in Lyon in 1601. Five years later he was in Mantua, and in 1610 Cardinal Caetani forbade him to appear in Modena . The Desiosi , Uniti and Accesi were all renowned traveling actors troops. There is no written record of working with the even more famous Gelosi , who were led by the actor couple Francesco and Isabella Andreini, but it is more than likely that Scala was close friends with both of them. Francesco himself paid tribute to Scala in his book Le bravure del capitano Spavento (Venice 1624), while his son Giovan Battista had Scala appear in a short scene in his play Le due commedie in commedia (Venice 1622). After the death of Isabella (she died in 1604 on a trip from France to Italy), Francesco worked regularly with Scala on plays in which Isabella was also frequently represented as a character, as did the boastful Capitano Spavento , the showcase role of Francesco (she also became to his stage name).

At the beginning of his career, Scala played under the name Flavio one of the two young lovers who appeared in every commedia dell'arte (the innamorati , dt. The lovers). Later he was seen as a conceited Frenchman with a heavy accent in comical roles and called himself Claudio or Claudione on stage . There are no eyewitness reports about his appearances. However, it is said that he had a second source of income in addition to acting: He ran a perfume business in Venice, which was run by people he trusted in his absence. At that time, such shops were considered social meeting places, which benefited an artist like Scala, who lived on connections.

After the publication of his works (1611) there are more references to his further biography. In 1613 he was invited by Don Giovanni de 'Medici, the illegitimate son of the Florentine Duke Cosimo I, to found a new troop with the Confidenti . Scala led the company from 1614 until Don Giovanni's death in 1621. As capocomico , Scala had to take care of the entire administration and report regularly to his patron Medici . The corresponding letters are preserved in the Medici archive and were published in 1993. In the carnival season of 1615 Scala could be seen with the Confidenti in the Teatro San Moisé in Venice. When the Confidenti finally disbanded, Scala was almost 70 years old. He therefore had an urgent interest in getting a job at one of the northern Italian courts that would secure him financially. At the beginning of 1624 he succeeded in doing this in Mantua, where he was hired as a court perfumier, certainly a supply post. He sold his business in Venice and moved, but died in December. There is no portrait that demonstrably shows him.

16th century Flemish painting by the Commedia dell'arte Truppe I Gelosi , Musée Carnavalet , Paris .

Works

In his book Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative overo La Ricreatione Comica, Boscareccia, e Tragica: Divisa in cinquanta giornate , which he dedicated to the Bolognese Count Ferdinando Riario, Scala left behind no formulated pieces, but rather sequences of action, scenarios, as is the tradition of the commedia dell 'arte corresponds with their improvisations. Possibly there were also commercial reasons why no verbatim impromptu comedies were published in print to protect the respective troops from theft of ideas. However, since individual actors were constantly switching back and forth between different companies, this expectation, if any, remained largely unfulfilled. Why Scala decided to have his scenarios printed in 1611 is still not entirely clear. In any case, all other Comedia dell'arte comedy drafts from this period have only survived in handwriting. Otherwise, the earliest printed evidence of this genre is Èvariste Gherardis comédie italienne (Paris 1700).

It remains to be seen which readers Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative had and which exact purposes the book served. The two prefaces, one by Scala personally and one by Francesco Andreini, are only vague references. It seems that Scala was primarily concerned with leaving his work as authentically as possible for posterity. He was also aware that he was daring to do something completely new with his publication, that is, to serve the curiosity of the audience. The commedia expert Tim Fitzpatrick speculated in 1995 that Scala, like Giovanni Boccaccio , wanted to publish a total of one hundred stories in his Decameron . That would mean that Scala was planning a second volume with another fifty scenarios, but was not added for various reasons.

What is remarkable about Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative are the short summaries of the respective plot at the beginning of each scenario. They provide information about the prehistory and the historical background. In addition to the list of roles, Scala also put in front all external means that were necessary for a performance, for example special costumes, and located the action in a particular northern Italian city.

Trivia

Scala's life is in the novel The Glorious Ones by Francine Prose (1974) and in the same musical The Glorious Ones (dt. The Magnificent ) by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (premiered Pittsburgh made in 2007) on the subject. The play was shown off-Broadway in New York in October 2007, as well as in Toronto, London and in July 2017 at the Bavarian Theater Academy August Everding in Munich.

literature

• Andrews, Richard: The Commedia Dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios Lanham, Toronton, Plymouth, 2008.
• Ferrone, Siro / Buratelli, Claudia / Landolfi, Domenica / Zinanni, Anna (eds.): Comici dell'arte - correspondenze , Florence 1993, vol. 2
• Ferrone, Siro: Attori mercanti corsari: la Commedia dell'Arte in Europa tra Cinque e Seicento , Turin 1993
• Fitzpatrick, Tim: The Relationship of Oral and Literate Performance Processes in the Commedia dell'Arte: Beyond the Improvisations / Memorisation Divide , New York 1995
• Jordan, Peter: The Venetian Origins of the Commedia dell'Arte , London / New York 2014

Web links

Commons : Flaminio Scala  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andrews, Richard: The Commedia Dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios Lanham, Toronton, Plymouth, p. IX
2. ↑ Hulfeld, Stefan (ed.): Scenario piú scelti d'istrioni , Vienna 2014, p. 70 f.
3. ^ Andrews, Richard: The Commedia Dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios Lanham, Toronton, Plymouth, p. IX
4. ^ Andrews, Richard: The Commedia Dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios Lanham, Toronton, Plymouth, p. IX
5. ^ Andrews, Richard: The Commedia Dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios Lanham, Toronton, Plymouth, p. X
6. ↑ Ferrone, Siro / Buratelli, Claudia / Landolfi, Domenica / Zinanni, Anna (eds.): Comici dell'arte - correspondenze , Florenz 1993, vol. 2
7. ^ Alberti, Carmelo: Teatro nel Veneto: le stanze del teatro , Milan 2001, p. 33 f.
8. ↑ Flaminio Scala: Il teatro delle favole rappresentative. Pulciani, 1611 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
9. ^ Andrews, Richard: The Commedia Dell'arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios Lanham, Toronton, Plymouth, p. XIII