- Performer Name:
- Metastasio
- Performance Venue:
- Performance Date:
- Author:
- Date Written:
- Language:
- English
- Publication Title:
- The New Monthly Magazine
- Article Title:
- The Drama of Italy
- Page Numbers:
- 53: 338-340, 345
- Additional Info:
- Ed. Theodore Hook
- Publisher:
- Henry Colburn
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Date Published:
- 1838
Text:
[338] The first tragedian who, in any sense of the expression, deserves the name, of whom the annals of modern Italy make mention, is Albertino Messato. He flourished in the very beginning of the fourteenth century, and has left behind him two pieces, both written in Latin, and both composed strictly on the classical model. We refer especially to him as the framer of this species of literature in Italy, because, of the many farces that were enacted there, all were but the spontaneous efforts of improvisatores, while the Mysteries were without plan, or arrangement, or plot, and sought to accomplish little else than the gratification of the [339] sense of sight. But Albertino Messato's was a flight of a loftier order, and it did not entirely fail.
[…]
While Tragedy thus lingered on the outermost threshold of the classical tastes, the progress of Comedy towards order was neither more rapid nor more brilliant. As has been said already, it aimed during the dark ages at no higher rank than mere pantomime, and was regarded, par excellence, as the sport of the people, to whom spectacle was much more attractive than the most brilliant wit. In process of time, however,—that is to say, in the thirteenth century,—the custom of improvising arose; and then all classes of persons affected to discover in this mimicry ample source of amusement. Next came the period of the revival of what was called a purer taste; […] The people [of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century], and not a few of the lay nobles, adhered still to the mimes, whose gross indecencies passed current as amazing efforts of genius among men incapable of relishing a higher order of wit. At the same time it is fair to add that, about the close of the fifteenth century, the mimes took for a season much higher ground. Flaminio Scala, himself a comic performer, laid then the foundation of the regular Italian comedy, by introducing the practice of writing out the plot of each mime, and leaving to the actors no wider license than was necessary to aid in filling up the details. […]
[340] We do not know that any good end would be served were we to continue this outline of rude endeavourings. Enough is done when we state, in few words, that during many ages the drama of Italy vibrated between the absurdity of the mimes and the imitations of the classical stage […]
[345] Yet the regular and classic drama was not that to which the genius of Metastasio leaned. He possessed in an extraordinary degree the talent of improvising—he was a lyrist of nature's making. When rendered, by his patron's death, independent in his circumstances, he accordingly resigned himself to the cultivation of a talent, which has earned for him a renown that will endure as long as the language of Italy continues. His great object seems to have been to form a union between the dignity of tragic sentiment and the beauty of musical embellishment, which was still so popular. He entirely succeeded in this, and has in consequence been described by Rousseau as "Le seul poète du coeur, le soul génie à qui appartient l'art de l'en exciter les enchantemens des harmonies poétiques et musicales." Nay, even Voltaire himself, a critic of higher and more fastidious taste, as well as of stronger national prejudice, pronounces him worthy of being brought into competition with the author of "The Cid" himself. Our own opinion is, that wherever such comparison is instituted, the purest and simplest taste will give the preference to the Italian; for though, strange to say, Corneille's power of declamation is not possessed by Metastasio, the improvisatore—yet in the conception of character, as well as in the perfect keeping of its delineation, the latter evinces a depth of genius that leaves his rivals far behind.
Notes:
- Collected by:
- CB