Ann Radcliffe, The Italian: or the Confessional of the Black Penitents

In Radcliffe’s Gothic novel, an improvisatore figures among the performers at a town fair in mid-eighteenth-century Italy.

Performer Name:
 
Performance Venue:
 
Performance Date:
 
Author:
Radcliffe, Ann
Date Written:
 
Language:
English
Publication Title:
The Italian: or the Confessional of the Black Penitents
Article Title:
 
Page Numbers:
273
Additional Info:
Ed. Frederick Garber
Publisher:
Oxford UP
Place of Publication:
London
Date Published:
1968

Text:

273 (vol. 3 ch. 1, set at a town fair in Italy in 1758): Here was a band of musicians, and there a group of dancers; on one spot the outré humour of a zanni provoked the never-failing laugh of an Italian rabble, in another the improvisatore, by the pathos of his story, and the persuasive sensibility of his strains, was holding the attention of his auditors, as in the bands of magic.

Notes:

First published in 1797.

Collected by:
AE