Doubling and Allegorical Dramaturgy in the Operas of Francesco Cavalli
Short description
In the seventeenth century, it was common for actors and opera singers to play more than one character in a show. But how did the performers execute these quick and wondrous transformations, both gesturally and vocally? How did the spectators respond? And how and why did the dramatists use doubling to generate allegorical meanings? Doubling is integral to understanding Early Modern practices of acting, singing, spectating, and playwriting, and it may provide today’s theatre and opera companies with a tool that allows them to produce old stage works in ways that generate new dramaturgical possibilities. Taking the 27 surviving operas by Venetian composer Francesco Cavalli (1602–1676) as its case study, the project examines the practice of doubling from the perspective of an Early Modern understanding of allegory.
About the project
In the seventeenth century, it was common for actors and opera singers to play more than one character in a show, whether the performance took place in, say, England or Italy. But how did the performers execute these quick and wondrous transformations, both gesturally and vocally? How did the spectators respond? And how and why did the dramatists – who very often directed their own works – use doubling to generate allegorical meanings?
Taking mid-seventeenth-century Venetian opera as its case study, the project will examine the practice of doubling systematically from the perspective of an Early Modern understanding of allegory, which it posits was the overall conceptual framework for engaging intellectually with works of art during the period – including stage performances. In 1585, the Italian poet Torquato Tasso referred to allegorical images as dissimili similitudini (‘dissimilar resemblances’), which exactly fits what happens when two characters are doubled by the same performer: they resemble each other, and yet they are not the same; and so, doubling can serve as a key to allegorical layers of a drama that might otherwise remain inaccessible.
Conceiving of the allegorical image as a resemblance rather than a representation has major implications for how we view Early Modern theatre. It invites the spectators to engage in a playful yet philosophical examination of their own aesthetic responses. This idea of allegory provides theatre and opera scholars with a new theoretical framework for understanding Early Modern theatrical communication.
Doubling is not just integral to understanding Early Modern practices of acting, singing, spectating, and playwriting; it is also useful for today’s practitioners, as it will provide theatre and opera companies with a tool that allows them to produce Early Modern stage works in ways that are both economical and that generate new dramaturgical possibilities, challenging established readings of well-known works as well as standard notions of scenic-vocal performance practices.
The project aims to enhance our understanding of:
a) the connection between the Early Modern doubling practice and allegorical dramaturgy, which is a novel way of theorising seventeenth-century spectating and dramaturgical thinking;
b) singing and acting in the seventeenth century, and specifically the demands that doubling made on the skills of performers, and how it was used to showcase those skills;
c) the composition and hierarchies of seventeenth-century opera companies, including the rise of the virtuosa, the female opera singer, as well as other lines of roles.