Gennaro Sacco, the Famous Coviello, and His Three Plays
Abstract
This article analyzes three plays published by Gennaro Sacco, a dell’arte actor-playwright who visited the Polish royal court in 1699. Sacco became famous for his role as Coviello. He initially performed in Naples, then in the northern part of the Apennine Peninsula, and, like many Italian actors, he offered his talent to various European rulers (in Celle, Warsaw, Madrid). We hardly know anything about his stay at the Warsaw court of king Augustus II; there are no sources that would reveal the repertoire or the names of troupe members. What is extant, however, is the dramatic text of Commedia smascherata, ovvero i comici esaminati, published in Warsaw. The analysis of this play against the background of its two predecessors, published by Sacco in Italy more than a decade earlier, contributes to our knowledge of role structure, distribution, and variation in dell’arte theater. It also helps identify the impact of local conditions on the work of travelling Italian dell’arte artists.
Keywords:
Gennaro Sacco, Coviello, commedia dell’arte, comic types, repertoire, character variation, role distributionReferences
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Authors
Jolanta Dygulj.dygul@uw.edu.pl
University of Warsaw Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9373-9327
Jolanta Dygul - PhD, Assistant Professor of Italian Literature in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Warsaw. In her research, she focuses on the reception of Italian literature and culture in Poland, as well as Italian literature and the history of Italian theater and drama.
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