Robert Ketterer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Robert Ketterer
This thesis has two objectives. (1) It develops from semiotic methodology a system for analyzing ... more This thesis has two objectives. (1) It develops from semiotic methodology a system for analyzing the functions of movable stage properties. (2) It employs that system in analyzing the use of props in nine plays of Plautus. Props have two major categories of functions, mechanical and signifying. Mechanical functions include props which are simply scenery (the scenic function), tools, props which are manipulated by the actors to some end, and causative props, which generate action or dialogue rather than being passive recipients of it. A type of causative function is the characterizing function; a prop can cause people to react in such a way as to indicate something fundamental to their characters. The signifying functions, like linguistic signs, build upon one another. At the least, a prop will denote what it is (a staff represents a staff), but dependent upon that denotation can be various levels of connotation. A prop at the connotative level can be either a standardized label of character or circumstance (staffs label old men, lights label nighttime scenes) or symbols, which are more abstract connotative signs of moods, images or themes in the play. The two categories are also interrelated; for example, connotative functions can turn a tool into a causative prop. Furthermore, props can function in groups t form, e.g., a symbol. Two types of plays have been analyzed in the light of this system. Plays of exchange (Ch. II: Curc., Epid., Bacch., Capt., Aul.) focus on the paths of exchange taken by money or other valuable objects (including slaves or meretrices). In these plays the bags of money, or their equivalents, are dramatically equal to the person who is the hero's goal. Plays of identity (Ch. III: Cist., Rud., Amph., Men.) focus on the search to discover who a character is, or on the confusion of identity that results from the fact that two characters look alike. Here the important props serve either to identify the woman in question, or to serve as false tokens of identity, and therefore promote confusion. A concluding chapter defines in greater detail, in light of the analyses of the plays, the relationship between the signifying and mechanical functions, and discusses the varying ways in which the signifying functions are perceived both by characters within the play and by the audience.Ph.D.Classical literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127594/2/8204681.pd
Syllecta classica, 1999
Although Seneca did not write a tragedy titled Sulla, he might easily have done so. Lucius Cornel... more Although Seneca did not write a tragedy titled Sulla, he might easily have done so. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to whom Plutarch applied the Homeric epithet megav lauco" (“very arrogant”), returned to Italy in 84 B.C.E. from a successful campaign in the eastern Mediterranean against Mithridates of Pontus. He defeated the populist forces of Caius Marius and his followers, and imposed his prosenatorial will on Rome, in part by the expedient of slaughtering as many of his opponents as possible, either in battle or through the notorious proscriptions, by which he encouraged the murder of hundreds of his political enemies through the agency of bounty hunters. He subsequently governed Rome as autocrat, then laid down his power and retired to his villa until 79 B.C.E., when, according to Plutarch, he died devoured by worms that emerged in disgusting profusion from his skin.1 His life, particularly as reported by Plutarch, is
Comparative Drama, 1990
This essay examines the dramatic presentation of three stories based on a pattern of error, repen... more This essay examines the dramatic presentation of three stories based on a pattern of error, repentance, death, and resurrection: Puccini's one-act opera Suor Angelica, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and Euripides' Alcestis. More specifically, it examines how those dramas employ the motif of the statue-come-to-life which drives their final scenes. In The Winter's Tale, the supposedly dead woman is returned to her husband by pretending to be a statue that is magically animated. In Alcestis, a promise to make a statue is called to mind as Alcestis returns from the grave to Admetus. At the end of Suor Angelica the Virgin Mary appears in a miracle the libretto does not call for an animated statue of the Virgin, but that is one way the miracle has been staged taking an idea from popular religion and thus connecting the miracle with an established stage object. 1 I will be maintaining the aptness of that method of production for Suor Angelica, both historically and thematically, and then use
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 2, 2010
Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, Mar 2, 1991
Semiotica, 1986
The four plays in this article share a preoccupation with commerce and exchange, that is to say, ... more The four plays in this article share a preoccupation with commerce and exchange, that is to say, with a flow of material objects, usually money. We have already observed such a preoccupation in the Curculio, in Part I of this series of articles (Ketterer \986a). 1 In these plays also the interest in the money continues to be attached to an interest in a woman; the blocking figure is blocking not just the adulescens' will, but also an exchange of some sort. More specifically, the exchange must be initiated by the adulescens or his agent. Exchange initiated by the blocking figure leads not to order, but to more chaos. It is acceptable for the young man and his slave-architectus to obtain the money by whatever means they can to buy the woman. It is not acceptable for the father or soldier to buy her for his own use. There are instances when the father buys the woman for his son, which is all right, for it returns the exchange to the side of the adulescens. But even that can lead to trouble, as when in the Asinaria the father almost ruins the success by demanding the ius primae noctis. What is involved in exchange is money, cloaks, rings, and the like, which is to say, props. And it is often the case that an exchange of props will mark the process toward resolution, or even the moment of resolution itself. Therefore moments of exchange will be important in consideration of the role of props in these plays. The first two plays, Epidicus and Bacchides, are, like Curculio, focused primarily upon the efforts to gain a woman for the young man. The scheme to get the money results in various false exchanges, that is, exchanges in which a party pays out money or goods but gets nothing in return (i.e., the father pays out money, but the son gets the woman). Inequalities are finally rectified in one way or another, and the blocking figure is mollified. The interest is not focused so much on the formation of the new society as upon the machinations of the architectus at the play's center.
Semiotica, 1986
This article and the two that will follow it examine the dramatic use made of movable stage prope... more This article and the two that will follow it examine the dramatic use made of movable stage properties — hand props — in comedies by the Roman playwright Plautus, both as objects of the action and as means of conveying information. The props in question are the objects carried on and off stage during the course of the play. They are distinct from permanent scenery, such as the house doors or the altars of the Roman stage, which are constant throughout the play, and usually, though not always, distinct from costumes and masks which, like scenery, remain permanent for the characters. The plays of Plautus are on their own remarkable for their comic invention and poetic variety, and a study of the stage properties elucidates an important element in their dramaturgy. Just as there are stock characters, there are also stock types of props; and as with the characters, much of the interest and humor lies in the variations Plautus writes on the stock types. Furthermore, these plays come to us from antiquity without stage directions, and all our ideas of the action must come from the lines. Since props must be moved by actors, charting the movements of the props formulates for us the missing directions and helps provide some idea of the stage picture. Beyond their immediate interest, Roman comedies are important for their influence on subsequent drama. Because of their quality, the plays of Plautus, together with those of his younger contemporary, Terence, had a strong formative influence on the development of the comedy of the Renaissance, and their structures and characters have remained detectable in modern drama. A study of the props of these plays, therefore, demonstrates the beginnings of a tradition of stage objects such as Ernest's handbag or the cactus flower that gives its name to Abe Burrow's play.
Renaissance Studies, Jun 1, 1999
Classical sources and thematic structure in the Florentine intermedi of I589 ROBERT c. KETTERER I... more Classical sources and thematic structure in the Florentine intermedi of I589 ROBERT c. KETTERER In 1587 Ferdinando de' Medici, second son of Cosimo I, became grand duke of Tuscany, succeeding his brother Francesco. In a move to strengthen his position and assure continuance of the family line, he negotiated a marriage to Christine de Lorraine, niece of King Henri I11 of France, and his distant cousin through Catherine de' Medici, Christine's grandmother. The wedding was celebrated magnificently, beginning in April of 1589 with Christine's progress from France to Italy. The festivities reached their climax beginning 30 April, with Christine's entry into Florence, which was followed by sixteen days of processions and entertainments.' Central among the entertainments was a performance on 2 May of Girolamo Bargagli's comedy La Pellegrim, revised for the occasion by the author's brother Scipione, and acted by a company of Sienese amateurs who called themselves 1'Accademia degli Intronati. The evening's performance was given further length and importance by the inclusion of six intermedi, staged musical interludes performed as prologue, epilogue, and entr'actes of the spoken comedy. Supplementing spoken comedy with musical tableaux had been the regular practice in northern Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and by 1589 elaborately composed and staged intermedi were an expected part of ducal weddings. The intermedi of 1589, however, set a new standard in magnificence and complexity of design. They were such a success at their premiere that Ferdinando had them performed again, probably twice, during the wedding celebrations.* ' An early version of this paper was presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamam, Michigan, in May of 1992, as part of a panel on the inlmncdi of 1589 organized by Ingrid Brainard. It is indebted from the first to Barbara Russano Hanning's presentation on the intmncdi at The Aston Magna Academy in June 1991. and I wish to thank her for sharing that paper with me. James Saslow was generously receptive to my presentation at Kalamazoo in his definitive new study of the entire wedding celebration, 77u Mcdici Wedding of 1589: FImSnlinc Festival us Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996; referred to hereafter as 'Saslow'). Thii essay in turn profits greatly from his findings, and attempts to expand on them productively. Professor Saslow kindly read a draft of t h i article and made several helpful suggestions. My ideas here are also very much indebted to the work of my colleagues Erling B. Holtsmark on myth and catabasis, and Helena Dettmer on poetic ring structures. Research was carried out with grants from the Renaissance Studies Consortium at the University of Iowa, the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library, and the University of Iowa Office of the Vice President for Research. ' Important scholarly descriptions and discussions of the 1589 intmncdi, in addition to Saslow's (above, note 1). are those of A. M. Nagler, Thcahv Festivals o f h e Mcdici, 2539-1637 (New Haven, 19ffl), 72ff [hereafter,
Semiotica, 1986
Stage properties in Plautine comedy 31 returns from the country where his father had sent him to ... more Stage properties in Plautine comedy 31 returns from the country where his father had sent him to keep him away from Selenium. At line 111, Selenium hands the keys of the house to Gymnasium to close the transfer, with the words, Take the keys; if you need anything while you're here, help yourself. Keys to a house symbolize control. In Plautus' Mostellaria the slave Tranio emphasizes his control over the action of a scene when he ostentatiously performs the act of locking his young master into the house in preparation for an elaborate trick on the young man's father. (Barton 1972: 28 and n. 1) Here in Cistellaria the connotations are different. On the one hand, it symbolizes the fact that Selenium has given up her position as Alcesimarchus' mistress and has rejected that relationship. Since it is a label of the mistress of the house, this transfer makes Gymnasium, for the time being, a substitute Selenium. In this role she will act out Selenium's part, first when an anguished Alcesimarchus comes to plea for her good will and again when Alcesimarchus' father appears and sees Gymnasium in possession of the house. At that point a quarrel ensues which, until the confusion is cleared up, must have looked like a dramatization of the difference of opinion between the father and Selenium. The play's characters thus divide into two conflicting groups. In one group is the father of Alcesimarchus, Selenium's real parents Demipho and Phanostrata, and the slave Lampadio. The opposing group consists of Selenium herself, Melaenis and her servant Halisca, and Selenium's friend Gymnasium and her mother the procuress. This is, of course, a class division, a fact which is important for the play's development (cf. Ludwig 1970: 65-67; Konstan 1983:104). The desire of Alcesimarchus for permanent union with Selenium runs contrary to the proposed marriage of Alcesimarchus to the Lemnian daughter of Demipho. This brings into conflict various combinations of people from the two groups, though until the end, neither group really knows the other, Alcesimarchus the lover appears, after two delayed prologues explain the complications of the plot; he is caught in the middle of the two opposing groups. On the one hand, he wants to resist his father's will, desiring only to marry Selenium. On the other hand, he is held responsible by Melaenis (and because of her, by Selenium; 449ff.), who does not know Alcesimarchus' father, but is prepared to believe that Alcesimarchus" will follow orders from the old man. Alcesimarchus' dilemma is nicely articulated by his first appearance: on learning that Selenium has gone home to her mother, he thinks first of abducting her (frag. II) and then, in essence quarrels with himself, deputizing a slave as his alter ego (233ff.). In the course of the play, however, the slave Lampadio's search results in his locating the procuress and extracting the information that the
Cambridge Opera Journal, Mar 1, 2003
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the models of Greek tragedy and Aristotelian the... more During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the models of Greek tragedy and Aristotelian theory were appealed to repeatedly, first to invent the dramatic genre we call opera, and then in an effort to use theory to rid that genre of what were perceived to be its self-indulgent excesses. This essay argues that despite these theoretical claims, influences from classical Rome were so thoroughly ingrained in European librettists that it was the experience of the Latin that prevailed. Roman subject matter, dramatic structure, philosophical fashion and imperial performance-context produced a musical theatre that was in essence Roman rather than Greek. contemporary, silver Latin, in nearly all their manifestations. Even when early modern theorists asserted the values of classical balance and decorum, they were apt to quote the precepts of Horace's Ars Poetica, precepts that Horace expressed using the genre of verse epistle. The verse epistle was a uniquely Horatian invention in itself, though in fact it was barely distinguishable in style from his satires, a genre which Quintilian called 'all Roman'. 4 But in spite of Horace's call in Ars Poetica for artistic unity, the epistles and satires generally, and the Ars Poetica in particular, are arguably Baroque in movement and open-endedness, rather than classical in balance. 5 Nevertheless, European opera has been held up to a Greek tragic standard from the time of its invention around 1600, at the very threshold of the Baroque, through the libretto reforms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to Nietzsche on Wagner, and the neo-Aristotelian analysis of Kerman's Opera as Drama. The usual story of the invention of opera, suggested by the writings of the inventors themselves, was summarized in 1755 by Francesco Algarotti in his 'Saggio sopra l'opera in musica': 'The intent of our poets was to revive Greek tragedy in all its lustre and introduce Melpomene on our stage, attended by music, dancing, and all that imperial pomp with which, at the brilliant period of a Sophocles and Euripides, she was wont to be escorted'. 6 A recent handbook makes the same point in a more prosaic way: 'In bringing opera to birth, a largely bookish knowledge of Greek repertory was far more significant than a wide practical experience of the Latin'. 7 This essay argues that quite the opposite was true. Throughout the first two centuries of opera's existence, and despite the claims of its theoreticians, patterns of thought and writing flowing from classical Rome were so thoroughly ingrained in European librettists that, whatever they might overtly intend, it was the experience of the Latin that won the day. For that experience informed dramatic expectation, and so, also, the patron and audience response, which in turn directed the efforts of librettists and composers. A word on the boundaries of this discussion is needed. First, it is principally concerned with librettos produced in Italian for the various operatic centres of Europe, since it is that tradition of writing which was so pointedly said to derive 4 'Satura. .. tota nostra est'. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, X.1.93. The claim is an overstatement, as there were of course Greek precedents. See, for example, Kirk Freudenburg, The Walking Muse (Princeton, 1993). But tradition regarded the Roman Lucilius as the inventor of the genre. 5 Gian Biagio Conte, drawing on Horace's own statements, observes of the Satires that 'flexibility and variety are the first characteristic of the style' (Latin Literature, trans. J. B. Solodow [Baltimore, 1997], 303). The indeterminate nature of the 'genre' of Roman satire itself is engagingly described by Kirk Freudenburg in Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), 15ff. On the novelty of the Epistles as well as their similarity to the Satires, see Conte, 312-13. On the multifaceted structure of the Ars Poetica,
Music & Letters, Feb 1, 1999
... in 1699, the same year as II ripudio d'Ottavia; see the listing of operas produced yearl... more ... in 1699, the same year as II ripudio d'Ottavia; see the listing of operas produced yearly in Venice in Claudio Sartori, I libretti ... 5 For the sources, see Ellen Rosand, 'Seneca and the Interpretation of L'lncoronazione di Poppea', Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxxviii ...
Nineteenth-century music review, Sep 6, 2022
Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia, ossia, La caduta di Baldassare (Cyrus in Babylon, or, The Fall o... more Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia, ossia, La caduta di Baldassare (Cyrus in Babylon, or, The Fall of Belshazzar) was performed during Lent in 1812 at Ferrara's Teatro Comunale. This study examines how the opera's librettist Francesco Aventi synthesized disparate sources that included the Greek historian Herodotus and the Biblical prophets, ancient and early modern prose treatises on the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and baroque operatic representations of imperial power; and how Rossini responded to those sources musically for the particular historical moment in March of 1812. The piece is of interest as the first serious opera for the librettist and the composer both. It displays innovative approaches to classicizing material familiar from the eighteenth-century, as exemplified in Metastasio's Ciro riconosciuto and Sarti's Giulio Sabino, and it presents the secular hero Cyrus as a Christological figure that suffers and then triumphs with divine help. Musically it anticipates developments in Rossini's own Mosè in Egitto and Semiramide. The title “Under cover in Babylon” refers first to Aventi's and Rossini's use of the standard operatic plot device of the disguised lover to motivate Cyrus's entry into the enemy city of Babylon. Second, by calling the piece an “oratorio” and including Biblical material, they disguised an opera as an entertainment appropriate for Lent. Finally, the piece carries possible but subtly expressed messages connected with Napoleonic Italy and the Ferrarese Jewish community.
The more than four hundred years of the operatic genre have produced thousands of works involving... more The more than four hundred years of the operatic genre have produced thousands of works involving Greco-Roman plots, characters, and themes. The musical drama labeled with the imprecise term “opera” maintained an intimate relationship with the classical tradition since its inception. Late Renaissance Italian scholars and artists who created the first operas (drammi per musica) studied and imitated ancient Greek music theory and practice, mistakenly thinking that ancient poetic drama had been sung in its entirety. The result was a wholly new dramatic form. The plots of these earliest productions for the courts of north Italy (Daphne, Euridice, Orpheus, Ariadne) derived from ancient mythological literature, as did most of the lavish French lyric “tragedy” at Versailles such as Phaeton, Perseus, or Theseus. As opera developed and spread throughout Europe, it also incorporated plots and characters from ancient Greek and Roman history and epic. The Habsburg court in Vienna produced titles like The Elements of Epicurus, and The Clemency of Titus, while the commercial productions in Venice for carnival premiered Jason and Agrippina. The tension between box-office appeal of musical spectacle and a desire for effective drama on the Greek model generated an Italian operatic reform around 1700 and the resulting librettos of Metastasio on subjects like Cato in Utica, Dido Abandoned or Artaxerxes defined serious opera for two generations. The second half of the 18th century saw another reform with Gluck’s settings of Euripidean tragedies (Alcestis, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris), and with Cherubini’s Medea, all of which remain in the modern repertoire. In the 19th century, Hector Berlioz adapted Virgil’s epic Aeneid for his Les Troyens (The Trojans), Richard Wagner infused the tragic dramaturgy of Aeschylus in his Ring tetralogy, and the setting for Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida was derived from Greco-Egyptian literary, historical, and archaeological sources. The 20th century saw the von Hofmannsthal/Strauss Elektra, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (in Latin), Carl Orff’s Prometheus (in ancient Greek), William Walton‘s Troilus and Cressida, and more than a half dozen operas based on the story of Medea. The new millennium has begun with ambitious stagings of Aeschylus’s Eumenides for the 2004 Athens Olympics and Europa Riconosciuta (Europa Identified) for the reopening of Teatro alla Scala.
This thesis has two objectives. (1) It develops from semiotic methodology a system for analyzing ... more This thesis has two objectives. (1) It develops from semiotic methodology a system for analyzing the functions of movable stage properties. (2) It employs that system in analyzing the use of props in nine plays of Plautus. Props have two major categories of functions, mechanical and signifying. Mechanical functions include props which are simply scenery (the scenic function), tools, props which are manipulated by the actors to some end, and causative props, which generate action or dialogue rather than being passive recipients of it. A type of causative function is the characterizing function; a prop can cause people to react in such a way as to indicate something fundamental to their characters. The signifying functions, like linguistic signs, build upon one another. At the least, a prop will denote what it is (a staff represents a staff), but dependent upon that denotation can be various levels of connotation. A prop at the connotative level can be either a standardized label of character or circumstance (staffs label old men, lights label nighttime scenes) or symbols, which are more abstract connotative signs of moods, images or themes in the play. The two categories are also interrelated; for example, connotative functions can turn a tool into a causative prop. Furthermore, props can function in groups t form, e.g., a symbol. Two types of plays have been analyzed in the light of this system. Plays of exchange (Ch. II: Curc., Epid., Bacch., Capt., Aul.) focus on the paths of exchange taken by money or other valuable objects (including slaves or meretrices). In these plays the bags of money, or their equivalents, are dramatically equal to the person who is the hero's goal. Plays of identity (Ch. III: Cist., Rud., Amph., Men.) focus on the search to discover who a character is, or on the confusion of identity that results from the fact that two characters look alike. Here the important props serve either to identify the woman in question, or to serve as false tokens of identity, and therefore promote confusion. A concluding chapter defines in greater detail, in light of the analyses of the plays, the relationship between the signifying and mechanical functions, and discusses the varying ways in which the signifying functions are perceived both by characters within the play and by the audience.Ph.D.Classical literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127594/2/8204681.pd
Syllecta classica, 1999
Although Seneca did not write a tragedy titled Sulla, he might easily have done so. Lucius Cornel... more Although Seneca did not write a tragedy titled Sulla, he might easily have done so. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to whom Plutarch applied the Homeric epithet megav lauco" (“very arrogant”), returned to Italy in 84 B.C.E. from a successful campaign in the eastern Mediterranean against Mithridates of Pontus. He defeated the populist forces of Caius Marius and his followers, and imposed his prosenatorial will on Rome, in part by the expedient of slaughtering as many of his opponents as possible, either in battle or through the notorious proscriptions, by which he encouraged the murder of hundreds of his political enemies through the agency of bounty hunters. He subsequently governed Rome as autocrat, then laid down his power and retired to his villa until 79 B.C.E., when, according to Plutarch, he died devoured by worms that emerged in disgusting profusion from his skin.1 His life, particularly as reported by Plutarch, is
Comparative Drama, 1990
This essay examines the dramatic presentation of three stories based on a pattern of error, repen... more This essay examines the dramatic presentation of three stories based on a pattern of error, repentance, death, and resurrection: Puccini's one-act opera Suor Angelica, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and Euripides' Alcestis. More specifically, it examines how those dramas employ the motif of the statue-come-to-life which drives their final scenes. In The Winter's Tale, the supposedly dead woman is returned to her husband by pretending to be a statue that is magically animated. In Alcestis, a promise to make a statue is called to mind as Alcestis returns from the grave to Admetus. At the end of Suor Angelica the Virgin Mary appears in a miracle the libretto does not call for an animated statue of the Virgin, but that is one way the miracle has been staged taking an idea from popular religion and thus connecting the miracle with an established stage object. 1 I will be maintaining the aptness of that method of production for Suor Angelica, both historically and thematically, and then use
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 2, 2010
Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, Mar 2, 1991
Semiotica, 1986
The four plays in this article share a preoccupation with commerce and exchange, that is to say, ... more The four plays in this article share a preoccupation with commerce and exchange, that is to say, with a flow of material objects, usually money. We have already observed such a preoccupation in the Curculio, in Part I of this series of articles (Ketterer \986a). 1 In these plays also the interest in the money continues to be attached to an interest in a woman; the blocking figure is blocking not just the adulescens' will, but also an exchange of some sort. More specifically, the exchange must be initiated by the adulescens or his agent. Exchange initiated by the blocking figure leads not to order, but to more chaos. It is acceptable for the young man and his slave-architectus to obtain the money by whatever means they can to buy the woman. It is not acceptable for the father or soldier to buy her for his own use. There are instances when the father buys the woman for his son, which is all right, for it returns the exchange to the side of the adulescens. But even that can lead to trouble, as when in the Asinaria the father almost ruins the success by demanding the ius primae noctis. What is involved in exchange is money, cloaks, rings, and the like, which is to say, props. And it is often the case that an exchange of props will mark the process toward resolution, or even the moment of resolution itself. Therefore moments of exchange will be important in consideration of the role of props in these plays. The first two plays, Epidicus and Bacchides, are, like Curculio, focused primarily upon the efforts to gain a woman for the young man. The scheme to get the money results in various false exchanges, that is, exchanges in which a party pays out money or goods but gets nothing in return (i.e., the father pays out money, but the son gets the woman). Inequalities are finally rectified in one way or another, and the blocking figure is mollified. The interest is not focused so much on the formation of the new society as upon the machinations of the architectus at the play's center.
Semiotica, 1986
This article and the two that will follow it examine the dramatic use made of movable stage prope... more This article and the two that will follow it examine the dramatic use made of movable stage properties — hand props — in comedies by the Roman playwright Plautus, both as objects of the action and as means of conveying information. The props in question are the objects carried on and off stage during the course of the play. They are distinct from permanent scenery, such as the house doors or the altars of the Roman stage, which are constant throughout the play, and usually, though not always, distinct from costumes and masks which, like scenery, remain permanent for the characters. The plays of Plautus are on their own remarkable for their comic invention and poetic variety, and a study of the stage properties elucidates an important element in their dramaturgy. Just as there are stock characters, there are also stock types of props; and as with the characters, much of the interest and humor lies in the variations Plautus writes on the stock types. Furthermore, these plays come to us from antiquity without stage directions, and all our ideas of the action must come from the lines. Since props must be moved by actors, charting the movements of the props formulates for us the missing directions and helps provide some idea of the stage picture. Beyond their immediate interest, Roman comedies are important for their influence on subsequent drama. Because of their quality, the plays of Plautus, together with those of his younger contemporary, Terence, had a strong formative influence on the development of the comedy of the Renaissance, and their structures and characters have remained detectable in modern drama. A study of the props of these plays, therefore, demonstrates the beginnings of a tradition of stage objects such as Ernest's handbag or the cactus flower that gives its name to Abe Burrow's play.
Renaissance Studies, Jun 1, 1999
Classical sources and thematic structure in the Florentine intermedi of I589 ROBERT c. KETTERER I... more Classical sources and thematic structure in the Florentine intermedi of I589 ROBERT c. KETTERER In 1587 Ferdinando de' Medici, second son of Cosimo I, became grand duke of Tuscany, succeeding his brother Francesco. In a move to strengthen his position and assure continuance of the family line, he negotiated a marriage to Christine de Lorraine, niece of King Henri I11 of France, and his distant cousin through Catherine de' Medici, Christine's grandmother. The wedding was celebrated magnificently, beginning in April of 1589 with Christine's progress from France to Italy. The festivities reached their climax beginning 30 April, with Christine's entry into Florence, which was followed by sixteen days of processions and entertainments.' Central among the entertainments was a performance on 2 May of Girolamo Bargagli's comedy La Pellegrim, revised for the occasion by the author's brother Scipione, and acted by a company of Sienese amateurs who called themselves 1'Accademia degli Intronati. The evening's performance was given further length and importance by the inclusion of six intermedi, staged musical interludes performed as prologue, epilogue, and entr'actes of the spoken comedy. Supplementing spoken comedy with musical tableaux had been the regular practice in northern Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and by 1589 elaborately composed and staged intermedi were an expected part of ducal weddings. The intermedi of 1589, however, set a new standard in magnificence and complexity of design. They were such a success at their premiere that Ferdinando had them performed again, probably twice, during the wedding celebrations.* ' An early version of this paper was presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamam, Michigan, in May of 1992, as part of a panel on the inlmncdi of 1589 organized by Ingrid Brainard. It is indebted from the first to Barbara Russano Hanning's presentation on the intmncdi at The Aston Magna Academy in June 1991. and I wish to thank her for sharing that paper with me. James Saslow was generously receptive to my presentation at Kalamazoo in his definitive new study of the entire wedding celebration, 77u Mcdici Wedding of 1589: FImSnlinc Festival us Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996; referred to hereafter as 'Saslow'). Thii essay in turn profits greatly from his findings, and attempts to expand on them productively. Professor Saslow kindly read a draft of t h i article and made several helpful suggestions. My ideas here are also very much indebted to the work of my colleagues Erling B. Holtsmark on myth and catabasis, and Helena Dettmer on poetic ring structures. Research was carried out with grants from the Renaissance Studies Consortium at the University of Iowa, the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library, and the University of Iowa Office of the Vice President for Research. ' Important scholarly descriptions and discussions of the 1589 intmncdi, in addition to Saslow's (above, note 1). are those of A. M. Nagler, Thcahv Festivals o f h e Mcdici, 2539-1637 (New Haven, 19ffl), 72ff [hereafter,
Semiotica, 1986
Stage properties in Plautine comedy 31 returns from the country where his father had sent him to ... more Stage properties in Plautine comedy 31 returns from the country where his father had sent him to keep him away from Selenium. At line 111, Selenium hands the keys of the house to Gymnasium to close the transfer, with the words, Take the keys; if you need anything while you're here, help yourself. Keys to a house symbolize control. In Plautus' Mostellaria the slave Tranio emphasizes his control over the action of a scene when he ostentatiously performs the act of locking his young master into the house in preparation for an elaborate trick on the young man's father. (Barton 1972: 28 and n. 1) Here in Cistellaria the connotations are different. On the one hand, it symbolizes the fact that Selenium has given up her position as Alcesimarchus' mistress and has rejected that relationship. Since it is a label of the mistress of the house, this transfer makes Gymnasium, for the time being, a substitute Selenium. In this role she will act out Selenium's part, first when an anguished Alcesimarchus comes to plea for her good will and again when Alcesimarchus' father appears and sees Gymnasium in possession of the house. At that point a quarrel ensues which, until the confusion is cleared up, must have looked like a dramatization of the difference of opinion between the father and Selenium. The play's characters thus divide into two conflicting groups. In one group is the father of Alcesimarchus, Selenium's real parents Demipho and Phanostrata, and the slave Lampadio. The opposing group consists of Selenium herself, Melaenis and her servant Halisca, and Selenium's friend Gymnasium and her mother the procuress. This is, of course, a class division, a fact which is important for the play's development (cf. Ludwig 1970: 65-67; Konstan 1983:104). The desire of Alcesimarchus for permanent union with Selenium runs contrary to the proposed marriage of Alcesimarchus to the Lemnian daughter of Demipho. This brings into conflict various combinations of people from the two groups, though until the end, neither group really knows the other, Alcesimarchus the lover appears, after two delayed prologues explain the complications of the plot; he is caught in the middle of the two opposing groups. On the one hand, he wants to resist his father's will, desiring only to marry Selenium. On the other hand, he is held responsible by Melaenis (and because of her, by Selenium; 449ff.), who does not know Alcesimarchus' father, but is prepared to believe that Alcesimarchus" will follow orders from the old man. Alcesimarchus' dilemma is nicely articulated by his first appearance: on learning that Selenium has gone home to her mother, he thinks first of abducting her (frag. II) and then, in essence quarrels with himself, deputizing a slave as his alter ego (233ff.). In the course of the play, however, the slave Lampadio's search results in his locating the procuress and extracting the information that the
Cambridge Opera Journal, Mar 1, 2003
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the models of Greek tragedy and Aristotelian the... more During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the models of Greek tragedy and Aristotelian theory were appealed to repeatedly, first to invent the dramatic genre we call opera, and then in an effort to use theory to rid that genre of what were perceived to be its self-indulgent excesses. This essay argues that despite these theoretical claims, influences from classical Rome were so thoroughly ingrained in European librettists that it was the experience of the Latin that prevailed. Roman subject matter, dramatic structure, philosophical fashion and imperial performance-context produced a musical theatre that was in essence Roman rather than Greek. contemporary, silver Latin, in nearly all their manifestations. Even when early modern theorists asserted the values of classical balance and decorum, they were apt to quote the precepts of Horace's Ars Poetica, precepts that Horace expressed using the genre of verse epistle. The verse epistle was a uniquely Horatian invention in itself, though in fact it was barely distinguishable in style from his satires, a genre which Quintilian called 'all Roman'. 4 But in spite of Horace's call in Ars Poetica for artistic unity, the epistles and satires generally, and the Ars Poetica in particular, are arguably Baroque in movement and open-endedness, rather than classical in balance. 5 Nevertheless, European opera has been held up to a Greek tragic standard from the time of its invention around 1600, at the very threshold of the Baroque, through the libretto reforms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to Nietzsche on Wagner, and the neo-Aristotelian analysis of Kerman's Opera as Drama. The usual story of the invention of opera, suggested by the writings of the inventors themselves, was summarized in 1755 by Francesco Algarotti in his 'Saggio sopra l'opera in musica': 'The intent of our poets was to revive Greek tragedy in all its lustre and introduce Melpomene on our stage, attended by music, dancing, and all that imperial pomp with which, at the brilliant period of a Sophocles and Euripides, she was wont to be escorted'. 6 A recent handbook makes the same point in a more prosaic way: 'In bringing opera to birth, a largely bookish knowledge of Greek repertory was far more significant than a wide practical experience of the Latin'. 7 This essay argues that quite the opposite was true. Throughout the first two centuries of opera's existence, and despite the claims of its theoreticians, patterns of thought and writing flowing from classical Rome were so thoroughly ingrained in European librettists that, whatever they might overtly intend, it was the experience of the Latin that won the day. For that experience informed dramatic expectation, and so, also, the patron and audience response, which in turn directed the efforts of librettists and composers. A word on the boundaries of this discussion is needed. First, it is principally concerned with librettos produced in Italian for the various operatic centres of Europe, since it is that tradition of writing which was so pointedly said to derive 4 'Satura. .. tota nostra est'. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, X.1.93. The claim is an overstatement, as there were of course Greek precedents. See, for example, Kirk Freudenburg, The Walking Muse (Princeton, 1993). But tradition regarded the Roman Lucilius as the inventor of the genre. 5 Gian Biagio Conte, drawing on Horace's own statements, observes of the Satires that 'flexibility and variety are the first characteristic of the style' (Latin Literature, trans. J. B. Solodow [Baltimore, 1997], 303). The indeterminate nature of the 'genre' of Roman satire itself is engagingly described by Kirk Freudenburg in Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), 15ff. On the novelty of the Epistles as well as their similarity to the Satires, see Conte, 312-13. On the multifaceted structure of the Ars Poetica,
Music & Letters, Feb 1, 1999
... in 1699, the same year as II ripudio d'Ottavia; see the listing of operas produced yearl... more ... in 1699, the same year as II ripudio d'Ottavia; see the listing of operas produced yearly in Venice in Claudio Sartori, I libretti ... 5 For the sources, see Ellen Rosand, 'Seneca and the Interpretation of L'lncoronazione di Poppea', Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxxviii ...
Nineteenth-century music review, Sep 6, 2022
Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia, ossia, La caduta di Baldassare (Cyrus in Babylon, or, The Fall o... more Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia, ossia, La caduta di Baldassare (Cyrus in Babylon, or, The Fall of Belshazzar) was performed during Lent in 1812 at Ferrara's Teatro Comunale. This study examines how the opera's librettist Francesco Aventi synthesized disparate sources that included the Greek historian Herodotus and the Biblical prophets, ancient and early modern prose treatises on the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and baroque operatic representations of imperial power; and how Rossini responded to those sources musically for the particular historical moment in March of 1812. The piece is of interest as the first serious opera for the librettist and the composer both. It displays innovative approaches to classicizing material familiar from the eighteenth-century, as exemplified in Metastasio's Ciro riconosciuto and Sarti's Giulio Sabino, and it presents the secular hero Cyrus as a Christological figure that suffers and then triumphs with divine help. Musically it anticipates developments in Rossini's own Mosè in Egitto and Semiramide. The title “Under cover in Babylon” refers first to Aventi's and Rossini's use of the standard operatic plot device of the disguised lover to motivate Cyrus's entry into the enemy city of Babylon. Second, by calling the piece an “oratorio” and including Biblical material, they disguised an opera as an entertainment appropriate for Lent. Finally, the piece carries possible but subtly expressed messages connected with Napoleonic Italy and the Ferrarese Jewish community.
The more than four hundred years of the operatic genre have produced thousands of works involving... more The more than four hundred years of the operatic genre have produced thousands of works involving Greco-Roman plots, characters, and themes. The musical drama labeled with the imprecise term “opera” maintained an intimate relationship with the classical tradition since its inception. Late Renaissance Italian scholars and artists who created the first operas (drammi per musica) studied and imitated ancient Greek music theory and practice, mistakenly thinking that ancient poetic drama had been sung in its entirety. The result was a wholly new dramatic form. The plots of these earliest productions for the courts of north Italy (Daphne, Euridice, Orpheus, Ariadne) derived from ancient mythological literature, as did most of the lavish French lyric “tragedy” at Versailles such as Phaeton, Perseus, or Theseus. As opera developed and spread throughout Europe, it also incorporated plots and characters from ancient Greek and Roman history and epic. The Habsburg court in Vienna produced titles like The Elements of Epicurus, and The Clemency of Titus, while the commercial productions in Venice for carnival premiered Jason and Agrippina. The tension between box-office appeal of musical spectacle and a desire for effective drama on the Greek model generated an Italian operatic reform around 1700 and the resulting librettos of Metastasio on subjects like Cato in Utica, Dido Abandoned or Artaxerxes defined serious opera for two generations. The second half of the 18th century saw another reform with Gluck’s settings of Euripidean tragedies (Alcestis, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris), and with Cherubini’s Medea, all of which remain in the modern repertoire. In the 19th century, Hector Berlioz adapted Virgil’s epic Aeneid for his Les Troyens (The Trojans), Richard Wagner infused the tragic dramaturgy of Aeschylus in his Ring tetralogy, and the setting for Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida was derived from Greco-Egyptian literary, historical, and archaeological sources. The 20th century saw the von Hofmannsthal/Strauss Elektra, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (in Latin), Carl Orff’s Prometheus (in ancient Greek), William Walton‘s Troilus and Cressida, and more than a half dozen operas based on the story of Medea. The new millennium has begun with ambitious stagings of Aeschylus’s Eumenides for the 2004 Athens Olympics and Europa Riconosciuta (Europa Identified) for the reopening of Teatro alla Scala.