Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici: modelli dei luoghi teatrali. (Reviews).

Elvira Garbero Zorzi and Mario Sperenzi, eds., Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici: modelli dei luoghi teatrali

Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001. xvi + 220 pp. Lire 45,000. ISBN: 88-222-4992-5.

Although the cover and title page do not indicate it, this is in fact the catalogue to an exhibition of scale models and facsimiles of images illustrating theatrical venues and events in Florence from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The exhibition, mounted in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi (Florence) from 1 April to 9 September 2001, sought to highlight not only the variety and richness of Florentine stagecraft in those three pivotal centuries, but also the fundamental work of Lodovico zorzi, whose premature death in 1983 is still lamented by scholars of the Florentine stage. Fortunately, his widow Elvira Garbero Zorzi, and his daughter-in-law Paola Ventrone have not allowed his memory and his work to fade away; they have been not only tireless promoters of his innovative approach to the history of Florentine theater but also trusted custodians of the scale models constructed more than a generation ago under his learned guidance. The current exhibition and its catalogue are in part a commemoration of Zorzi's earlier work in this area and a reworking of two earlier exhibitions mounted in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi and curated by Professor Zorzi: "Il luogo teatrale a Firenze" (1975) and "La scena del principe" (1980). Scholars in the field, who will recognize the models and many of the images, will thus welcome the re-publication of such old friends and delight in the introduction of new illustrations that shed further light on the history of theater in Florence.

The volume is divided into two sections. The first consists of five short essays that survey the various locations for theater and the development of stagecraft in Florence (17-97); the second is the actual exhibition catalogue, complete with excellent color and black-and-white illustrations of the models and images in the exhibition (117-216). A bibliography of scholarly work in the field, mostly in Italian, acts as a link between the two sections (99-113).

Elvira Garbero Zorzi's introductory article (17-37) surveys the various locations for theater in early modern Florence: the church (and here she focuses in particular on the three traditional foci of fifteenth-century Florentine religious plays: SS. Annunziata, San Felice in Piazza, and the Carmine); the courtyard of Palazzo Medici; the Salone del Cinquecento in the Palazzo della Signoria; the Teatro Medici in the Uffizi; the Teatrino di Baldracca; the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti; the Boboli amphitheater; the Teatro della Pergola; and then, briefly, the church of San Lorenzo where in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries solemn state obsequies were often staged.

Paola Ventrone's article (39-51) focuses on the grandiose religious plays mounted in the fifteenth century in the three churches of 55. Annunziata, San Felice in Piazza, and the Carmine to revisit the vexata quaestio, as she puts it, of the stagecraft used in these productions. After quickly surveying the history of scholarship on this matter, Ventrone tantalizes the reader with the news of her own, forthcoming, edition and translation of the well-known descriptions of these plays by the Russian clergyman Abraham of Suzdal, who saw them when he attended the Ecumenical Council of 1439. On the basis of her new insights into these documents, Ventrone proposes that the famous play of the Annunciation mounted in the Servite church of SS. Annunziata was, in fact, not mounted there at all, but in the nearby Dominican church of San Marco (43-44). This is a revolutionary reinterpretation of the data that will have extensive repercussions in the field; the reader is left wondering, however, why in their own articles in this volume the other collaborators make no mention of her discovery and continue to speak of the Annunciation as if were performed in SS. Annunziata (see 19-20, 58-60, 119, etc.). Perhaps the contributors did not have access to each other's work.

Cesare Molinari's article on "The Empty Stage" (53-66) sketches in very broad strokes the development of the actual stage set from fifteenth-century multiple stage settings (mansions) to sixteenth-century single staging. This reviewer was left somewhat perplexed by the author's comments on the Immaculate Conception when discussing the Annunciation (62) -- two completely different feasts and events -- but otherwise the article is a cogent, brief summary of the question.

Luciano Alberti's article on the genesis of musical theater in Florence (67-82) and Sara Mamone's on theater in the seventeenth century under the patronage of the Medici princes (Giovan Carlo, Mattias, and Leopoldo) illustrate the richness of theatrical activity in that period and point to some of the fine work currently carried out by younger Italian scholars. Mamone's abundant footnotes, for example, provide a fine sampling of such work and many references to recent tesi di Laurea in this area completed under her direction.

The 86 entries (by Elvira Garbero Zorzi, Maria Alberti, and Luigi Zangheri) and the 102 illustrations that constitute the actual catalogue of the exhibition (117-216) will be of invaluable help to scholars of early modern Italian theater for their clarity and the bibliographical cross-references they provide.