Danza di Venere, pastorale...
| Author | INGEGNERI, Angelo (1550-1613) |
| Typographer | Stamperia Nuova |
| Place and date of printing | Vicenza, 1584 |
| Price | 1900 € |
8vo. (8) leaves, 126 pp., (1) leaf. With the Farnese woodcur arms on the title-page. Old vellum, blue edges, a few wormholes in the last two leaves touching a few letters, extreme outer margins of the first eight leaves a bit gnawn, some light browning and dampstains, nevertheless a fine copy.
FIRST EDITION. The dedicatee, the fourteen years old Camilla Lupi, two whom are also addressed some poems at the beginning (e.g. by Muzio Manfredi and Giovanni Battista Maganza) played the part of Amarilli in a performance of the play in presence of Ranuccio Farnese and the Court of Parma (cf. L.G. Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare‟s time, New Haven, 1989, p. 176). The play was begun with the Accademia degli Olimpici of Vicenza in mind, at the request of one of ist members, Giacomo Rangone, and was finished at the command of the dedicatee‟s mother, Isabella Pallavicina Lupi, marchesa of Soragna, who financed its staging also to prepare her daughter‟s entrance into society. The plot of the drama, borrowed from the story of Cimone in the fifth day of Boccaccio‟s Decameron, is situated in Sicily in a valley near Mount Erice, on the top of which was temple of Venus. The remarkable and innovative aspects of the work are substantially two: the complex structure of the protagonist, compared to the ethereal sheperds of earlier plays and the extensive space given to the chorus. Strategically placed in the middle of the third scene of the third act, the dance of Venus, a branle (circular dance of medival and popular origin, still in use at the opening of festivities in the late Cinquecento) was performed by the chorus with a hymn to the goddess, hence the title of the drama (cf. L. Sampson, Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy. The Making of a New Genre, London, 2006, pp. 104-105). Situated between the classical Aminta (1581) by Tasso and the programmatic Pastor fido (1590) by Guarini Ingegnri‟s pastoral drama was definded as a „miracoloso modello manieristico‟ (cf. R. Scrivano, Manierismi e teatro, in: “La norma e lo scarto. Proposte per il Cinquecento letterario italiano”, Roma, 1980, p. 207).
“La trama della pastorale, ispirata alla storia di Cimone narrata nella quinta giornata del Decameron, è ambientata in Sicilia in una vallata vicino al Monte Erice, sulla cui sommità si erge un tempio di Venere. Gli aspetti più innovativi dell‟opera sono sostanzialmente due: la complessità della figura del protagonista rispetto agli eterei ed astratti pastori dei drammi precedenti e l‟impiego massiccio del coro. Posta strategicamente al centro della terza scena del terzo atto, la danza di Venere, un branle (danza circolare di stampo popolare e di origine medievale, ancora in voga nel Cinquecento come danza di apertura durante le feste), viene eseguita dal coro intonando un inno alla dea” (cfr. R. Puggioni, Introduzione, in: A. Ingegneri, La Danza di Venere, Roma, 2002, pp. 9-35, and especially p. 17).
Poet, diplomatic, theatrical adviser, courtesan. dramatic author, manager of a soap manufactory, and secretary to various nobleman (Alderano Cibo prince of Massa and Carrara, cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, Francesco Mari della Rovere, Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, and Ferrante II Gonzaga) Angelo Ingenieri entered the republic of letters with a translation into Italian of Ovid‟s Remedia amoris. He became a member of the Accademia Olimpica at Vicenza and of the Innominati of Padua. Ingegneri edited with the authorisation of the duke of Parma the first complete edition Torquato Tasso‟s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), with whom he had a longlife friendship. His epical poem Argonautica is dedicated to Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, and the threee books of Del buon segretario to cardinal Aldobradini. He wrote a work against alchemy and on the art of writing letters. But his most important work is Della poesia rappresentativa e del modo di rappresentare le favole sceniche (1598), a seminal work in the history of late Renaissance and early Baroque dramaturgy and theatrical science (M.L. Doglio, Nota biografica, in: “Angelo Ingegneri. Della poesia rappresentativa ”, Modena, 1989, pp. XXV-XXVIII).
M. Cristofari, La tipografia vicentina nel secolo XVI, in: “Miscellanea di scritti di Bibliografia ed erudizione in memoria di Luigi Ferrari”, Firenze, 1952, p. 199, no. 79; M. Bregoli Russo, Renaissance Italian Theater. Joseph Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago (Firenze, 1984), p. 102, no. 352; A. Ingegneri, La Danza di Venere, ed. R. Puggioni, Roma, 2002), p. 34.
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