Panzanaro, Valentina. "Monumentality and Magnificence: Dance and Dramaturgy in Seventeenth-Century Roman Visual and Musical Sources."

Panzanaro, Valentina. "Monumentality and Magnificence: Dance and Dramaturgy in Seventeenth-Century Roman Visual and Musical Sources." In Noble Magnificence: Culture of the Performing Arts in Rome 1644-1740, edited by Anne-Madeleine Goulet and Michela Berti, 381-395. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2024.

URL: https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.141475 (Open Access)


Abstract:
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Roman operatic production was characterized by the insistent presence of scenes – prologues, intermezzi, and, above all, choreographed dancing – that required the creation of complex stage machinery for operatic productions. In this new vision, stage sets represent an idealized urban and architectural world that expresses monumentality, a concept that implies a quality that is as eternal as it is spiritual and ephemeral; testimony of a cultural heritage to be handed down to future generations. The engravings that accompanied opera librettos give us a clear idea of stage scenery through glimpses of cities, palazzi, gardens, or sumptuous courtyards: backdrops to dramaturgical performances of recited, sung, and danced scenes. Based on these considerations, this study analyses the choreographed dances present in Roman operatic productions to reconstruct their dramaturgy through a comparison of all available sources – librettos, musical scores, and visual representations that in some way allude to the presence of balli, since explicit descriptions of the dance steps do not exist. This essay considers both the figurative aspect of dance as expressed in the engravings printed with some librettos, and the strictly musicological aspect of instrumental dance music (which on the stage is materialized as ballet) in relation to the text in the libretto: both poetry and stage directions. From this perspective, this study will seek to better understand the dramaturgy of Roman ballets by re-situating them within the scenic system meant to create the effect (or effects) of monumentality. Its ultimate goal is to examine the close relationship between the concepts and messages expressed in the stage sets, and those expressed in the libretto text, in the music, and in the staging of the ballets.