When Richard Wagner wrote, “We are all Atellans,”1 he was referring to the small town in Southern Italy, Campania, near Naples, where the Atellan fable was developed and out of which grew the commedia dell’arte. He was speaking specifically of the archetypes that resonate for each one of us in the characters of those stories.
The Atellan fable was revisited during the Renaissance by actors who—observing archetypical physicalities in the bumpkins who came down from the hills of Italy into their towns to find work—developed a multilingual form of comic, physical theater (at the time there were over 100 different languages spoken in Italy, including dialects) with characters that were identifiable to every audience member.
Commedia dell’arte was the highest form of theater during the Renaissance. In Renaissance Italian the word commedia means theater, and arte means as a profession; thus, commedia dell’arte means acting as a profession. With the advent of commedia, for the first time in history actors were paid.
Commedia performances were indoors, usually for royalty. Most characters wore masks. There were no scripts. Improvisation was utilized to develop the text. Each actor in a commedia troupe spent his or her life studying and performing his or her character (it was in commedia that in 1560 the first female actor set foot on stage). We see the evolution of commedia through the plays of Shakespeare, Molière, Beaumarchais and Goldoni down through the works of operatic icons such as Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Strauss, Prokofiev, and Mozart into the modern day representations of the Flintstones, the Simpsons, and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Don Giovanni, Figaro, Leporello, Papageno, Don Basilio, Don Curzio, Don Alfonso, Doctor Bartolo, Zerlina, Masetto, Despina, and Susanna are descendants of a coterie of commedia archetypes: foreign imposters, scheming servants, foolish old men seeking young wives, beleaguered lovers, and an entire world of stupid geniuses who have all the brains and eventually drive the action.
During Mozart’s time, the culture of Italy—including commedia dell’arte—was alive. All of Europe felt it, including the young Mozart, who was intrigued by Italian life. In 1770 he described the relaxed lifestyle of Naples: “I wake up at nine, sometimes even at ten and then we go out and then we lunch at an eating house and after lunch we write and then we go out and then we have supper and what do we eat? On ordinary days, half a chicken or a small slice of roast meat, on fast days a little fish and then we go to bed.” 2
About Carnivale in Venice he wrote, “Everyone is masked now and it is really very convenient when you wear a mask, as you have the advantage of not having to take off your hat when you are greeted.” 3 Here he could portray a mischievous servant: “I should very much like to go [to Carnivale] as Arlecchino (but not a soul must know about it)…So I should like you to send me your Arlecchino costume. But please do so very soon.” 4
Mozart would wear that same costume, jump out of a box, and be naughty, cuddle with the wily Colombina, sneer at the braggart Capitano, commiserate with the effusive Pedrolino, and tease the pompous Dottore and the lecherous Pantalone as he collaborated with his friends and the Venetian string players, creating a new and innovative quartet, Music for a Pantomime, K. 446/416d. He had written indications in the margins for commedia dell’arte actors, and he and his friends portrayed those characters.5
Mozart was eventually to be received in Italy with open arms. “I beg you to do your best to get us [back] to Italy…I will gladly write an opera for Verona for fifty zucchini.” 6 He wrote earlier (in 1777), “It is a long way to go to Naples…[but] once I have composed for Naples, I will be in demand everywhere.”7 By 1791, Mozart had written twelve operas in the Italian language and had premiered three in Italy. Four of his most famous works—Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, and Die Zauberflöte—boast characters that were formed out of the most famous Italian theatrical archetypes, those of the Renaissance commedia dell’arte.
Renaissance commedia actors were extremely sensitive to the reactions of the audience, as was Mozart. Commedia actors collaborated with their audience as scene partners, influencing each other in an interdependent ebb and flow that developed the subtle shape and tide of an ever-changing theatrical environment. It is with and for the audience that all of the commedia dell’arte archetypes exist.
Four Main Commedia Archetypes8
The Old Man: Magnifico and Dottore
Magnifico is a merchant, a libidinous old man attracted to young women and especially attached to his money.
Dottore is a braggart, a charlatan, a big but innocuous “old sow,” a sort of horse doctor with special “knowledge” in law and medicine. He goes on endless soliloquies—“verbal, phonetic, linguistic, vocal and respiratory virtuosity, always trying to ‘teach’ somebody something. He constantly falls in love with impossible or inappropriate objects of desire such as servant girls or a female lover and he always pays the consequences.”
The Servant: Zanni (male), Zagna and Servetta (female)
Zanni “is stupid, yet he is a genius; he can’t do the simplest of things, yet pulls off the impossible; he is the one who has to remedy the problem posed by the old man and all the problems that flow from there.”
Zagna “is the female version of Zanni. She has a huge nose, is ugly, has spiky, thick and hard hair and like Zanni, she is concerned with sleep, love and food.”
Servetta “is the first professional manifestation of the actress. She is beautiful and she is unmasked.” Colombina is the most famous servetta. We see her in opera as Despina, Zerlina.
The Lover: Innamorato/a (male and female)
“Young, beautiful, elegant, cultured and refined; the lover is inexpert in life; lovers love each other with grand, idealistic and ineffable passion. The interruption in the flow of feeling between them is unbearable, a pain that destroys them, that drives them mad.”
The Captain: Capitano
“A boaster and a ‘war hero’ who speaks of his ‘conquests’ in unheard of languages. He is an imposter from the neighborhood who poses as Spanish or another, exotic foreigner, in order to make an impression. He brags of his valor, yet he becomes totally petrified at the mere mention of violence.” He is Don Giovanni.
Commedia characters draw on a deep reservoir of images derived from the audience’s ancestral experience, from the collective unconscious. They evoke memory and often resonate for individual audience members in personal characteristics of people they have known. Commedia characters are never alone on the stage. For them, the audience is always present, in all moments.
Perhaps famed British Shakespearean actor, director, and winner of the Laurence Olivier Award Simon Callow best defines the advantages of studying commedia dell’arte, when he says that the purpose “is to create actors who will allow the Commedia’s ancient blood to flow through their veins, who will give themselves over to the vital energies and deep-seated impulses of the characters and make us recognize ourselves while roaring with laughter, appalled and yet somehow enchanted by the human arrangement in all its mad glory.”
Using these archetypes, Mozart understood that, in conjunction with his music, he could impress and speak to the imagination and spirit of his audience in a deeper and more meaningful way.
For more information about commedia dell’arte schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and Philadelphia, visit Maestro Antonio Fava’s website at www.commediabyfava.it or e-mail
commediabyfava@aol.com.
1. Dieter Borchmeyer, Richard Wagner: Theory and Theatre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
2. To Nannerl, Naples, 5 June 1770. Robert L. Marshall, Mozart Speaks (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991).
3. To Nannerl, Verona, Jan 1770. Ibid.
4. To Leopold, Vienna, 22 Jan 1783. Ibid., p. 132.
5. To Leopold, Vienna, 12 March 1783. Ibid.
6. To Leopold, Mannheim, 4 Feb 1778. Ibid., p. 39.
7. To Leopold, Munich, 11 Oct 1777. Ibid.
8. Antonio Fava, The Comic Mask in the Commedia dell’Arte: Actor Training, Improvisation, and the Poetics of Survival (Ars Comica, Italy, 1999). p. 45. To be published in America by Northwestern University Press, 2007; author’s notes from Antonio Fava’s Commedia dell’Arte lectures, Philadelphia, Pa., 2003-2006.
9. Fava, p. 11.
10. Compiled in part from Landon, H.C. Robbins, ed., The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart’s Life and Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1990). pp. 12-33.
