https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6664-2696
Abstract
The Italian classicist Ettore Romagnoli (1871–938) is mostly remembered as a popularizer of ancient drama through his work as a translator for and artistic director of classical performances at the Greek theatre of Syracuse (1914–27). His theatrical productions were inspired by a programmatic aesthetic approach to the study of classical culture called ‘artistic Hellenism’, which aimed at making the Graeco-Roman classics accessible to a broader audience, as well as renewing Italian prose theatre by referring to the example of the ancient chorodidaskalos. This article aims to describe Romagnoli’s attempt to promote his aesthetics in the staging of Greek drama within the cultural framework of Fascism. Even after his dismissal from the artistic direction of the National Institute of Ancient Drama, which he helped to establish in 1925, Romagnoli strove to find the financial support for his project of a ‘Fascist Institute of Classical Drama’. This Institute never became a reality and was probably intended to compete with the classical productions staged at Syracuse, which in the thirties were undergoing a shift in terms of aesthetics and production management according to the new Fascist politics about theatre matters.
In 1933, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Società Italiana Autori ed Editori (Italian Society of Authors and Editors) celebrated at the Argentina Theatre in Rome, Benito Mussolini delivered a well-known speech about the development of a ‘theatre for the masses’.1 At the beginning of his speech, he referred to a ‘crisis of the theatre’, the nature of which had been a matter of debate among Italian theatre critics and practitioners since the end of WW1.2 The causes of the crisis were mostly related to both managerial and aesthetic issues. On the one hand, the low quality of the plays performed, which were mostly of French works, was related to the predominantly nomadic character of the ensembles at that time.3 On the other hand, a few impresarios had a monopoly on production and distribution; in addition, the lack of regular state funding rendered Italian prose theatre, with a few significant exceptions,4 underdeveloped compared to other countries, such as France, Germany, and the Soviet Union, where, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth century, theatrical innovations took place thanks to the establishment of stable theatres and the appearance of directors.5 From the advent of the Fascist Regime, a number of proposals for a renovation of the Italian theatre were directly delivered to Mussolini, testifying to the persistent popularity enjoyed by theatre and the concerns about the crisis it found itself in.6 The 1933 speech was aimed at offering instructions for improving the situation.7
Identifying the main issues as stemming from inequitable access to theatrical venues because of the high prices of the tickets, which the proletariat could not afford, and in the lack of pedagogical purpose in the plays performed,8 Mussolini spurred theatre practitioners to create a theatre for the new Fascist age. This would have an ‘architectonic’ goal of creating structures that could host an audience of fifteen or twenty thousand people at reduced prices and a dramaturgical one, which would emphasize the production of works that could educate crowds of spectators.9 In addition to improving access and enhancing theatre’s pedagogical role, Mussolini’s words aimed at ‘innovation’; that is, an intent to design a ‘would-be fascist theatre’ that would mirror the social-political and aesthetic renewal promoted by the Regime.10
The organizing committee of the Volta Convention on Dramatic Art, held in Rome in October 1934 and hosted by the Classe di Lettere della Reale Accademia d’Italia (Class of Letters of the Italian Royal Academy), assumed most of Mussolini’s indications in developing the five panels that convened at the international conference11: (1) the relationship between theatre and other kinds of performances; (2) the role of the theatre in society; (3) the mass theatre and set design; (4) the theatre in the moral life of the people; and (5) the relationship between theatre and state.12 As a member of the Royal Italian Academy and one of the organizers of the Volta Convention, the classicist Ettore Romagnoli13 was asked to give a public speech on the revival of ancient Greek drama in the present day (Le rievocazioni dell’antico dramma greco). As stated in a letter by the playwright Luigi Pirandello, president of the convention, Romagnoli’s speech avoided the five topics of the conference, instead addressing a field in which the philologist was an expert,14 since he had been the first artistic director of the festival of ancient drama that had been taking place in the open-air theatre of Syracuse since 1914. The Syracusan performances, initially organized by a committee comprised of Sicilian patrons that the Fascist regime transformed into the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico (National Institute of Ancient Drama; INDA) in 1925, had already fulfilled the spatial and dramaturgical goals of the mass theatre.15 From the point of view of Fascist propaganda, they represented a way ‘to strengthen the myth of the legitimate and ideological continuity of the régime with the cultural and political glories of classical Greece and Rome’.16
After a brief introduction about the development of Greek tragedy in antiquity and its present-day revival,17 Romagnoli describes how, in his opinion, Greek tragedy should be staged. The rievocatore (the reenactor, i.e. the person who is in charge of a particular revival), aware of all of the artistic and technical features that characterized an ancient performance, provokes ‘in his [sic] own spirit an image, a vision’, initially influenced by the words, rhythms, and nearly every other element of the ancient drama, but then that vision ‘gradually frees itself, transforms itself, and becomes, in his [the reenactor’s] modern spirit, also modern’.18 Thus, Romagnoli’s speech underlined the essential role played by a single artifex, a competent person well versed in the classics and in the theatrical field, in supervising the organic cohesion (‘unità’)19 of the production of an ancient drama. This person turns out to be modelled on Romagnoli himself, since he was recognized as the most famous rievocatore of ancient Greek drama in Italy, owing to his knowledge as a classicist as well as a man of the theatre.
In this essay, Romagnoli’s aesthetic approach to the revival of ancient drama will be discussed with regards to the Fascist Regime’s change of approach towards INDA’s activity before and after the hiatus of 1930. Indeed, between 1927 and 1928, Romagnoli’s pioneering role as artistic director of ‘classical performances’ in Italy seems to have been encouraged by the Fascist government, allowing him to be the leading director of ancient drama productions. However, after a disagreement with INDA arose in 1928,20 Romagnoli was removed from the role of artistic director and his work in the theatre was marginalized, even as he strove to include new artistic projects within the political framework of the Regime. The following analysis will first consider the modern features of Romagnoli’s revivals of ancient Greek drama, derived from his progressive ideas aimed at renovating classical studies according to an ‘artistic’ perspective, which in his opinion suited the Italian genius and would be in competition with the positivistic approach stemming from Germany. Romagnoli’s approach to classical culture contributed, along with examples of contemporary national and foreign productions of Greek tragedies, to the development of the peculiar character given to the classical performances he directed. In the thirties, Romagnoli’s productions of ancient dramas, even if not sponsored by the Regime which instead institutionally favoured INDA, were far from being completely neglected: according to public opinion and in the mind of various artists, they provided the prominent model for staging a classical performance and, to some extent, the benchmark for the Fascist theatre of the masses.
Ettore Romagnoli’s revival of ancient drama
Romagnoli’s notions of ancient performance were influenced by both his previous academic studies on the subject and his experience as an artistic director of classical performances since 1911, when he first produced Greek dramas with his students from the University of Padua.21 In the same year as his theatrical debut, Romagnoli delivered a speech during the Fourth Conference of the Società ‘Atene e Roma’ (Society ‘Athens and Rome’)22 putting forward his ideas about what he called ellenismo artistico (artistic Hellenism), an approach to ancient classical literature that aimed to popularize Greek and Roman culture amongst a broader audience with the help of classicists. Scholars of classical studies, in Romagnoli’s opinion, were not only required to deepen the linguistic and philological aspects of ancient Greek and Roman literature, which was the preferred approach within Italian classical studies derived from positivistic German philology23; they should also have studied ancient music and figurative art in order to possess an overarching view of the context in which Greek poetry originated and be able to interpret and translate it properly and artistically.24 Classicists educated in this method of aesthetic knowledge would produce essays and translations that were more adapted to a non-specialist audience, contributing to a wider dissemination of ancient Greek and Latin heritage by means of artistic and creative skills.
At the end of his speech, Romagnoli, recalled the success enjoyed by contemporary Italian productions of ancient dramas — Oedipus Tyrannus staged by Gustavo Salvini in the Roman Theatre of Fiesole in 1911 and the adaptation of The Oresteia by Antonio Cippico and Tito Marrone produced in 1906 by the Argentina Theatre.25 He then spoke about the revival of the Greek theatre as the most effective means ‘to connect the ancient and the modern world’ and as ‘the real theatre for all the people’.26 It is not surprising to find these kinds of statements in Romagnoli’s speech. Ancient Greek theatre and its revivals produced from the late nineteenth century in ancient Greek and Roman amphitheatres were continuously recalled as experiences departing from bourgeois theatre and addressing an audience of diverse social classes.27 Romagnoli certainly recognized the great potential of such plays in popularizing classical culture in early twentieth-century Italy.
Romagnoli’s 1911 speech introduces some programmatic goals that were achieved in the subsequent years because of his involvement in the production of ancient drama and other cultural activities devoted to the popularization of the classics — i.e. translations of the Greek poets and the publication of essays on the subject of ancient culture targeted at the middle classes.28 Romagnoli’s concept of reviving ancient Greek theatre related to performances in which poetry, music, dance, and the visual arts (set design, costumes, props, etc.) reach a perfect fusion. This idea presents, of course, similarities with earlier theatrical practices in renewing contemporary theatre under the influence of ancient Greek drama, i.e. Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Latin-Mediterranean theatre project.29 In addition, another possible latent influence on Romagnoli’s productions involved ideas on the renovation of the theatre offered at the beginning of the twentieth century by Edoardo Boutet, the theatre critic and first artistic director of the Argentina Stable Theatre in 1905–6.30 Throughout the course of his career, Boutet denounced the predominance of the so-called mattatori, leading actors and actresses who staged only ‘those interpretations which they believe, or which are, suitable for their own glory’31; on the contrary, he conceived of the performance as a product based on a balance of its different composite elements (ensemble, playwright, set design, technical equipment, etc.), an idea that was similar to Romagnoli’s intentions for his own revivals of Greek drama.32 However, it is worth considering one further element that shaped Romagnoli’s approach to staging Greek drama: the paradigmatic role of the ancient chorodidaskalos, who was in charge of the whole mise-en-scène, composing poetry and musical pieces, conceiving the dances and the scenography, and directing the chorus and the actors.
In producing classical performances, Romagnoli followed the example of the ancient dramatic poet, while simultaneously revising the original text with an artistic sensitivity to the tastes of a modern audience. His translations pay close attention to their adaptation for the stage: the result being a ‘speakable’ and ‘performable’ text, winnowing down those parts that were unnecessary to the performance, such as substituting choruses with original musical pieces, since the meaning of a chorus would have been more obscure for a non-specialist audience.33 The music was, indeed, another aspect of performance that Romagnoli took into careful consideration, since he intended that the musical compositions would be the most crucial element of the performance of ancient drama.34 Although he wrote the music for some of his plays,35 his collaboration with the composer Giuseppe Mulè on the Syracusan productions from 1921 to 1927 achieved a high level of experimentalism for the purpose of reproducing ancient Greek sounds according to modern criteria.36 At the same time, the work of the artist Duilio Cambellotti as set designer and the choreographies performed from 1922 by dancers of the most representative schools of eurhythmics,37 made the classical performances of Syracuse a model for the renewal of the dramatic art,38 a characterization that was publicly suggested by Count Mario Tommaso Gargallo, president of INDA until 1929.
Thanks to the fusion of artistic elements under Romagnoli’s savvy direction, the revivals of Greek dramas in Syracuse were attended by audiences across every social class39; they were also seen as a pioneering model for renewing contemporary Italian prose theatre.40 Romagnoli never used the word ‘director’, in the sense of metteur-en-scène, to define himself and, even though he did train actors and choruses, the ensembles hired for the Syracusan classical performances adhered to a fixed-role system, typical of Italian theatre at that time, with the main roles assumed by the leading actors and actresses. However, his activity within the productions of the classical performances seems to anticipate the transition from capocomicato (ensembles managed and directed by the leading actor or actress) to a director-centred theatre. As noted above, in assuming the roles of artistic director and translator, Romagnoli reworked the plays, cutting out portions of the text or inserting original scenes, as in the Libation Bearers of 1921. The tragedy was split into two main acts, one performed at Agamemnon’s grave outside Mycenae, the other outside the Atrides’ palace. To underline the change of set and the passing of time, Romagnoli invented an interim scene, a pastoral idyll performed by the chorus and the crowds of extras in the roles of shepherds, handmaids, and guards, accompanied by the professional singer Genì Sadero.41 In this regard, Romagnoli’s classical performances offered a solution for modernizing Italian theatre by demanding that a single person take the responsibility for conceiving and coordinating the entire performance.
Romagnoli’s productions and the Fascist Regime
As the artistic director of INDA, Romagnoli played an active role in gaining the support of the Fascist Regime for the Syracusan Festival. In 1924 Mussolini was invited to attend the classical performances;42 from a letter of Romagnoli to Gargallo we are informed that the former wanted to produce Aristophanes’ Knights and a satyr play, or, alternatively to one of those plays, a ‘real fascist drama’.43 Eventually, the texts staged were the Seven against Thebes and the Antigone, probably because a comedy and a satyr play did not seem particularly apt for the Syracuse audience and, above all, because of the institutional visit of Mussolini himself.44 The presence of the head of the government at the classical performances provided Gargallo with the opportunity to carry out a project that had been in his mind since 1921: an institute devoted to the production of classical performances and to the study of Greek theatre, to be established in Syracuse with state’s financial support.45 To finalize the foundation of the Institute, Gargallo asked Romagnoli to personally contact his friend and then Minister of Education, Pietro Fedele.46 Later, Romagnoli was again involved in broadening the activities of INDA in the direction of supervising and coordinating all of the artistic events in the ancient Italian theatres and archaeological sites, which was the subject of a new decree officially approved in 1927.47
The opening of the Syracusan classical performances on the national scene represented an important milestone for Romagnoli. In 1924 he publicly expressed his intention, once he retired from his occupation as a university professor, to create an ensemble featuring all of the most famous and talented female and male actors for the purpose of staging Greek dramas in Italian open-air theatres.48 Romagnoli saw coordinating the theatrical activities in all of the ancient archaeological venues of the country as the artistic director of INDA as a great personal opportunity. In 1927, together with the performances at Syracuse and also at the Roman theatre at Ostia — where he reprised the INDA productions of Antigone, Seven Against Thebes, and Clouds — Romagnoli staged Euripides’ Alcestis with the Compagnia degli Illusi (Company of the Deluded) in the Roman Theatre of Pompeii and his original play Il carro di Dioniso (Dionysus’ Chariot) in the ancient theatre of Palazzolo Acreide near Syracuse. For the 1928 festival Primavera classica ai Templi di Agrigento (Classical Spring at the Temple of Agrigento), he produced Alcestis, Il carro di Dioniso, Il mistero di Persefone (Persephone’s Mystery), another of his dramaturgical texts, and Pindar’s Olympian Ode 3.
In the following year, he also collaborated on the organization of two more performances based on Roman culture and history, staged in the Greek theatre of Taormina: Plautus’ Miles gloriosus, translated by Romagnoli himself, and Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) by the Italian writer, politician, and Fascist senator Enrico Corradini. Staging a Latin comedy and particularly an original play on the Roman dictator, written by a leading supporter of Italian nationalism, may have had clear propagandistic aims; the press review of Giulio Cesare’s performance addressed the comparison between the Roman dictator and Mussolini and praised the presence of Corradini, who took part in the event along with two representatives of the government, the Minister of Education Pietro Fedele and the parliamentarian Maurizio Maravaglia.49 But beyond the exaltation of romanità, it is possible to identify Romagnoli’s attempt to gain political recognition for his theatrical productions.
The performances held in Agrigento and Taormina were produced by local committees without the involvement of INDA. Romagnoli assumed the role of artistic director for both and his productions gained the government’s support. In the case of the Festival in Agrigento, the posters collected in Ettore Romagnoli’s archive show that Mussolini gave his patronage to the festival (Alto Patronato S.E. Mussolini). In Taormina the committee for the production of classical performances received funding that enabled the involvement, in addition to Romagnoli, of Giuseppe Mulè and Duilio Cambellotti as part of the artistic crew. Though the ministerial decree of 1927 assigned to INDA the responsibility of coordinating the theatrical and cultural activities within the ancient Italian archaeological sites, it seems that Romagnoli took on this commitment directly because of his role as artistic director-in-chief of the Institute; by doing so, he obtained the recognition of the government for those productions.50 However, other members of the INDA committee could not agree with him: they believed that the ministerial decree allowed them to officially approve or disapprove any performances in the ancient Italian theatres and archaeological sites, and Romagnoli’s theatrical enterprises were seen as being in competition with the Syracusan performances, especially with respect to the revenue derived from tourism.51
The announcement of the end of the collaboration between Romagnoli and INDA reflected the internal debate that occurred within the Institute: a press release published in December 1928 in the Bollettino dell’Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico (Bulletin of the National Institute of Ancient Drama) stated that on 22 November 1928 the new Minister of Education, Giuseppe Belluzzo, had removed Romagnoli from his position as INDA’s artistic director. The official reason was related to his ‘activity’, which did not allow him to devote the time necessary to the performance of his duties as artistic director of the festival. However, in the same press release, Romagnoli was also blamed for not involving INDA in the organization of the performances staged in Taormina and Agrigento:
Our Institute, if called to collaborate, or at least asked about how it should have been done, would have organised [the performances] quite differently. Certainly, it would have prevented Corradini’s Giulio Cesare and Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus from being staged together, nor would it have allowed certain inappropriate adaptations in the ancient monuments. With the new provision and clearly divided attributions and responsibilities, it will be possible to do better for the interests not of individuals, but of the art.52
Although the press release mentioned future opportunities for involving Romagnoli again, he was never called back as artistic director of INDA and, as already mentioned, Count Gargallo was dismissed from his position one year later. The new president, Biagio Pace, professor of Archaeology and History of Classical Art in Pisa and member of the Fascist party, promoted a ‘collegial’ organization for the subsequent performances: there would no longer be one artistic director but a collective direction by the members of the Institution. In Pace’s opinion, this choice suited the role of ‘national institution’ that INDA had acquired in 1925, and avoided any claim of exclusive authorship over the classical performances by one person, as had happened under Romagnoli’s artistic direction.53 In an interview,54 Pace also described the new production management of INDA’s performances, which involved staging them every three years in order to allow the artistic crew to organize the plays much further in advance than previously.
The new leadership of INDA decided, first of all, to assign the translations of the Greek plays chosen (Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon) by means of a public competition open to everyone, which was won by a teacher, Giulio Garavani, and a lawyer, Armando Marchioni. This caused one of the pillars of Romagnoli’s revivals of Greek tragedy to collapse; that is, the equal importance of the artistic director and the translator, a classicist who, educated according to the above-mentioned ellenismo artistico, knew how to competently and artistically adapt the original text for the modern stage. Unpublished documents, letters, and newspaper articles from Romagnoli’s archive reveal that, according to some professional actors, the translations of the 1930 INDA performances were not adequate for the stage. Maria Laetitia Celli, the leading actress of the 1924 and 1927 Syracusan performances and initially chosen for the roles of Iphigenia and Cassandra in the 1930 tragedies, resigned from her contract because her role in Iphigenia in Aulis was reduced in favour of the character of Clytemnestra. She appealed to the Royal Italian Academy,55 denouncing the many deficiencies of the production: the unsuitability of Garavani’s and Marchioni’s translations for the stage; the cuts to Iphigenia’s lines in the eponymous play56; Cambellotti’s poster showing Clytemnestra as the main protagonist of both tragedies; and the lack of a ‘competent technical Director’.57 The actor Oscar Andriani, who collaborated along with his ensemble in Romagnoli’s later performances,58 published an article in which he described the difficulties encountered by the artists involved in the new INDA productions caused by the quality of the translations and the lack of a true coordinator,59 i.e. an artistic director in the sense in which Romagnoli conceived that role.
Though the critics’ opinions about the artistic achievements of the INDA performances of 1930 were divided, it is a matter of fact that the new direction of the Syracuse Festival lacked the character of the old one, which featured the presence of Romagnoli and his coordination of the various components of the performance following his own artistic perspective. The actor Franco Liberati was actually in charge of directing the productions of the Syracusan plays, but Biagio Pace clearly referred to the collaborative work of the various artists involved. However, the main issue, according to detractors,60 lay in the lack of unity among the artistic and technical elements upon which Romagnoli insisted. After a silence of five years following his dismissal as INDA’s artistic director, in 1933 Romagnoli expressed his point of view about how to properly stage an ancient drama according to modern tastes:
What should be the work of the one who aspires to a revival of an ancient drama? Starting from a perfect understanding of the text and from a precise knowledge of everything that concerned ancient theatre, to evoke in his [sic] own spirit a complete image of that dramatic vision. A complete image with respect to the verse, the music, the dance figures, the set design. And to realise that [vision] with the practical means at his disposal. Work, therefore, of absolute artistic creation, and not of simple execution.61
One can infer that the article from which this quotation is taken precisely reflects Romagnoli’s statements about the role of the rievocatore in his later speech at the Volta Convention. They take on a more powerful meaning when one reads them in the light of the quarrel documented in the newspapers over the 1930 and 1933 classical performances at Syracuse:
This unity of conception and expression is, therefore, the fundamental character of the Greek drama […] an inalienable postulate for a revival that enables us to enter the sphere of art, and not to amuse oneself playfully or trick oneself into the fields of dilettantism or business. One must be the artist who, possessing the tools for a perfect knowledge of ancient drama (from linguistics to ancient music and archaeology), is able to produce in his [sic] spirit a vision to be realised on stage. […] And the illusion that one can proceed with this very delicate artistic task with the same mind and methods appropriate to an economic or social organisation, is fatal, however common: president and vice, secretary and vice, a poet who translates, a musician who writes the melodies, a star […] who invents the dances, a set designer who takes care of the scenes, a dressmaker for the costumes, an artistic director for the text adaptation, a stage manager for the movements, a leading actor for the acting […]. And the more distinguished each of the collaborators are, the greater the individual personalities, the stronger their disagreement and their negative impact on the production.62
It is clear that Romagnoli expressed his critical position at the Volta Convention in order to defend his way of performing ancient dramas within an institutional context while he was in the presence of experts of the Italian and international theatre.63
An unrealized project: the ‘Fascist Institute of Classical Drama’
As stated above, Romagnoli lost his position as the artistic director of INDA because his intense theatrical activity in 1927 and 1928 had not been approved by the Institution, in particular regarding the performances in Agrigento and Taormina. However, a draft letter now in Romagnoli’s archive,64 probably written after his dismissal from the Syracuse Festival, reveals further details about his intentions to continue his theatrical career in other ways (Figures 1 and 2). The letter has no identified recipient, but Romagnoli uses the title Eccellenza (Your Excellency) to address this person.65 He thanked the letter’s recipient for the donation of 150,000 lire for the purpose of producing two performances of ancient drama that were to be staged in Rome under his artistic direction. However, Romagnoli made a further proposal: that the recipient would donate more money, ca. 200,000 lire, to cover the expenses of his long-dreamed-of project of an Istituto fascista del dramma classico (Fascist Institute of Classical Drama).
Typewritten draft of Ettore Romagnoli’s letter about Istituto Fascista del Dramma Classico (Fascist Institute of Classical Drama), p. 1. Courtesy of Accademia degli Agiati, Fondo Romagnoli, Biblioteca civica ‘G. Tartarotti’, Rovereto.
Typewritten draft of Ettore Romagnoli’s letter about Istituto Fascista del Dramma Classico (Fascist Institute of Classical Drama), p. 2. Courtesy of Accademia degli Agiati, Fondo Romagnoli, Biblioteca civica ‘G. Tartarotti’, Rovereto.
This project involved the foundation of a theatrical ensemble engaged in performing Greek and Roman plays in both indoor and open-air theatres. Romagnoli describes the activities to be performed in one year under his direction: during the summer, he would begin the production of five or six new plays, preparing in advance the scenography, the costumes, and the props in collaboration with young artists that would work for free; in autumn, he would direct the rehearsals with an ensemble of about fourteen young actors, while someone would be instructed by Romagnoli himself to look for available indoor theatres in the main Italian cities, along with local musicians and others who would take part in the performances as extras, and who would also promote the events; in winter, the ensemble would tour the indoor theatres, while another person would promote the plays that would be staged in the main open-air theatres and archaeological sites66 with the help of local committees; during the spring and early summer, the ensemble would perform the plays in the available open-air theatres — with the significant exception of Syracuse.
In the letter, Romagnoli is trying to secure the financial support needed to bring to life his dream of directing a theatre ensemble skilled in the performance of ancient drama by framing the project in the terms of fascist cultural propaganda: in doing so, he seems to be committing to a personal project that would derogate from the INDA’s prerogative of coordinating cultural activities in the Italian open-air theatres and archaeological sites. Romagnoli’s proposal did not represent an isolated case in Italian academia. Fascism gained the political support of Italian university professors through an oath of loyalty introduced in 1931: once taken, it would grant a variety of benefits — from an immediate freedom to travel and study abroad, as remembered with ‘cold cynicism’ by linguistician Giacomo Devoto,67 to the right to participate in cultural politics.68 Thus, a ‘modus vivendi’ was established in Italian universities and the Regime even allowed antifascist professors to maintain their professional career in exchange for political passivity.69 Regarding Romagnoli, who already in 1925 was listed among fascist intellectuals,70 this may have meant political support (as happened with the performances in 1927–8) that would have allowed him to freely stage classical dramas in competition with INDA’s.
The fact that Romagnoli did not achieve this aim, despite his full recognition as a fascist scholar,71 could be a symptom of a shift in the Government’s stance towards a tighter control over cultural institutions: if, in the Twenties, the alignment of theatre practitioners to the Fascist Regime was quasi-unanimous, allowing the coexistence of different movements and approaches, by the end of that decade the increasing social and cultural oppression influenced theatre towards a generalized conformism.72 Thus, the aesthetics adopted by INDA’s new direction, intended to promote ‘absolute, anonymous, and collective’ performances73 and freed from the personalism of the single regisséur,74 would have been closer to the intentions of the Regime than Romagnoli’s.
Conclusion
Whilst Romagnoli’s project of Istituto Fascista del Dramma Classico never materialized, he managed to stage Alcestis and Il mistero di Persefone in 1929 and 1930 at the Villa Reale in Monza and the Licinium in Erba.75 According to Romagnoli, the latter performance embodied his ideas about staging Greek drama for the modern stage — all of its artistic aspects had been conceived by a single author.76 Since 1913 Romagnoli had written original plays, mostly comedies on various subjects, but in the case of Il mistero di Persefone he produced a serious script, reworking the myth of Persephone’s abduction by the god Hades and Demeter’s desperate search for her daughter. The performance was conceived as a modern revival of the ancient mysteries that, following the accounts of Pseudo-Psellus,77 Sopater,78 and Galen79 mentioned in studies published by Jane Ellen Harrison,80 consisted of non-spoken pantomimes of Greek myths staged before an audience, serving as a model for the later development of Greek tragedy. Thus, Romagnoli divided Il mistero di Persefone into seven tableaux vivant, combining poetry, music, and mimic dance in such a way as to make each element meaningful to the narrative.81 Compared to the Syracusan classical performances, in which Romagnoli’s artistic direction, though crucial, depended on collaboration with other artists, Il mistero di Persefone could be interpreted as the point of arrival of his ideas concerning the modern revival of Greek tragedy: by filling the roles of both poet and musician, as well as director of the performance and of the entire artistic crew, he was truly emulating the ancient chorodidaskalos.
In 1936 and 1937 Romagnoli privately staged other classical performances (Libation Bearers and Oedipus at Colonus), together with some of his own plays, in Malesco (Val Vigezzo, near Novara) with the collaboration of the local citizens.82 As a representative of the Royal Italian Academy, Romagnoli publicly took part in the celebrations for the two thousandth anniversaries of the birth of Virgil (1930) and of Horace (1935) and in the inaugurations of the Italian Institutes of Culture in Budapest, Szeged, and Malta. In short, his career as a classicist within the Fascist Regime was greatly favoured, despite the fact that his role as a man of the theatre and a rievocatore of successful ancient dramatic performances in Italy had been drastically reduced.83
As part of a broader programme of popularizing ancient Greek culture, Romagnoli’s classical performances aimed at high-level artistic outcomes. He paid careful attention to the mise-en-scéne and its adaptation, as a proper regisséur would have done. At the same time, he wanted to reach a wider audience in order to satisfy the demands of fascist propaganda. Initially, the Regime seemed to guarantee him the opportunity to perform his works in various archaeological venues but, after the disagreement described above occurred in 1928, the government allowed INDA to stage classical performances within the ancient Greek and Roman monuments with a revised approach to the production system, which mirrored the Government’s change of mind in theatrical affairs. However, INDA’s performances of the early thirties did not seem to fully convince the audience. Thus a number of theatre critics and practitioners looked up to Romagnoli’s classical performances as the preferred way to stage revivals of ancient Greek plays within the Italian theatre and as a model for the development of the mass theatre as Mussolini had described it in 1933.84
Acknowledgements
The research for this article was financed by national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT, I.P., in the framework of the CECH-UC project: UIDP/00196/2020. I would like to thank Giovanna Di Martino, Eleftheria Ioannidou, and Patricia Gaborik, who read in advance the present study and gave valuable comments to improve it. Many thanks also to Maria Teresa Lojacono Romagnoli, Angela Romagnoli, and the institutions that allowed me to consult unpublished documents: Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati, Archivi storici of Biblioteca civica ‘G. Tartarotti’ in Rovereto, and Archivio Fondazione INDA (AFI).
References
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR
Sara Troiani received her PhD in Greek Language and Literature in 2020 from the University of Trento and is currently post-doctoral researcher at the Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos and Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. Her interests of research relate to Ancient Greek Music, New Dithyramb and Reception of Ancient Drama from antiquity to the present day. She is the author of the book Dal testo alla scena e ritorno, Ettore Romagnoli e il teatro greco (Trento 2022) and the developer of the database Thespis — CECH, a digital archive of modern plays of ancient dramas in Portugal.81
Footnotes
Part of this speech is reported in the Introduction; the speech is available in full in Forges Davanzati (1933: 191).
See Pedullà (1994: 47–121).
Pedullà (1994: 66).
Pedullà (1994: 70) lists the following theatres: Luigi Pirandello’s Teatro dell’Arte (1924–8), Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti (1922–31), Teatro del Convegno (1924–31), Teatro della Sala Azzurra (1924–5), and Teatro della Piccola Canobbiana (1924).
Pedullà (1994: 70).
Pedullà (1994: 97–9). In 1931 the theatre critic Silvio D’Amico was invited to discuss with Giuseppe Bottai, the Minister of Fascist Corporations, his proposal for a systematic renovation of the theatre, the main objectives of which were ‘to ensure theatrical seasons of an adequate level in the most important cities, provide Rome and Milan with great dramatic theatres, give more space to Italian authors, train new “interpreters” of the scene – actors, set designers, régisseurs –, educate a new audience and update the theatre culture of the country’ (Pedullà 1994: 106; all the translations from Italian are mine). Though D’Amico’s proposal deeply influenced Italian theatre in the thirties and after WW2, the Regime carried it out only with respect to the training of actors and directors, creating the Reale Accademia d’Arte Drammatica (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) directed by the critic himself. See Pedullà (1994: 110).
Fried (2014: 111).
Gaborik (2021: 195–6).
See also the Introduction to this issue for further details.
Gaborik (2021: 196).
Fried (2014: 113) states that the topics of the 1934 Volta Convention were reprised both from the aforementioned Mussolini’s speech and Silvio D’Amico’s debate concerning the crisis of the Italian theatre.
On the 1934 Volta Convention, see the Introduction to this issue; Fried (2014).
Letter from Pirandello to Romagnoli, Castiglioncello (Livorno), 6 September 1934-XII (Archivi Storici dell’Accademia dei Lincei, Tit. VIII, Busta 24 Fasc. 46/24). See Fried (2014: 87).
Fried (2014: 84).
Thompson (1996: 106).
Romagnoli (1935b: 5–7).
Romagnoli (1935b: 9).
Romagnoli (1935b: 10).
See infra.
Before 1913, when he began staging Greek plays in collaboration with professional ensembles at the Roman theatre of Fiesole and at the Palatine Stadium in Rome, Romagnoli directed an amateur company of undergraduate students in Aristophanes’ Clouds and Euripides’ Bacchae, Alcestis, and Cyclops. See Troiani (2020a). A first attempt to stage the very same plays, with the exception of Alcestis, was made in 1911 for the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy; Romagnoli was asked to perform these classical plays at the Palatine Stadium, but the events were cancelled. See Romagnoli (1958: 505–8).
The Society ‘Athens and Rome’, founded in 1897, gathered the most prominent Italian classicists and other intellectuals with the aim of promoting ancient Greek and Roman culture amongst non-academics. See ‘Statuto’, Atene e Roma, 1 (1898), 48–50.
See La Penna (1983).
Romagnoli (1917: 70–4). Artistic Hellenism is not opposed to the philological approach derived from the Altertumswissenschaft (Romagnoli 1917: 75–7); in fact, Romagnoli was educated according to the method of German philology under the mentorship of the philologist Enea Piccolomini and the archaeologist Emanuel Löwy. However, in the following years, he aligned himself with an aesthetic criticism that was already implicit in some assertions by other philologists like Giuseppe Fraccaroli. See in this regard Varanini (2021). Romagnoli directly attacked German philology during the crucial years of WW1 in the pamphlet Minerva e lo scimmione (1917), whose final sentence, ceterum censeo philologiam esse delendam, contains both a political and cultural meaning: because philology was so closely connected to Germany, Italy needed to dismiss the foreign enemy and its methodology, establishing a new one based on its own genius. The quarrel, dubbed ‘antiphilological’, involved many Italian philologists, among whom were Girolamo Vitelli and Giorgio Pasquali. The latter, in his famous pamphlet Filologia e storia (1920), sought to explain the continuity of the Italian genius from the Renaissance to the present, demonstrating how Italian humanists adopted the same philological approach as that contained in German scholarship but never organized it methodologically. See Pasquali (1971). A general overview with further bibliography is offered in Troiani (2022: 25–67).
Romagnoli (1917: 126–37).
Cf. Introduction and Di Martino in this issue.
See Troiani (2022: 101–3) on this hypothesis. According to Cucchetti (1964: 15), the two belonged to the same group of intellectuals in Rome and Romagnoli (1917: 128) refers to Boutet as ‘my friend’ when talking about the above-mentioned Oresteia, which was produced under Boutet’s artistic direction.
Boutet (1909).
See Barbina (2005) for in-depth research about Boutet.
Romagnoli (1917: 110–1).
See Troiani (2020b). Romagnoli composed the music for the performances of Aristophanes’ Clouds (1911 and 1927), Euripides’ Bacchae (1912), Cyclops (1913; 1927) and Alcestis (1913; 1927); Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1914) and Libation Bearers (1936); and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (1922), Trackers (1927) and Oedipus at Colonus (1937).
Cf. Casali (2022) and in this issue.
Gargallo (1934: 72–3).
Gargallo (1934: 87–8).
See Ioannidou in this issue for a description of Mussolini’s official visit to Sicily.
AFI b. 45, fasc. 1, undated letter from Romagnoli to Gargallo.
Treu (2006: 351).
Gargallo (1934: 59).
Ettore Romagnoli’s archive, ‘Varie INDA. Statuto. Questione modifiche’ Dossier, undated letter from Romagnoli to Gargallo.
R.D. no. 320 of 17 February 1927.
Romagnoli (1958: 512).
Mussolini’s patronage of the festival in Agrigento and the financial support given to the performances in Taormina probably reflected the cultural propaganda of the Regime, from its advent in 1922, that it would fund pre-existing cultural institutes, as well as new ones, in order to exercise bureaucratic control over and restrict any antifascist propaganda. See, in this regard, Scarpellini (2004: 30).
‘Notiziario’, Bollettino dell’Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, December 1928, pp. 41–2.
Cf. Tribuna, 11 February 1930, quoted also in Ettore Romagnoli’s archive [L’Arciere] (1933).
Ettore Romagnoli’s Archive, Preslinenza (1933).
Cf. Ettore Romagnoli’s Archive, Celli, M. L., Alla Eccellentissima Accademia d’Italia sedente in Roma, Rome, 17 March 1930. See also Troiani (2022: 238–40).
The lines to which Celli refers belong to Iphigenia’s monody, which was split between the character and the chorus, and to the Messenger’s speech narrating the death of the protagonist. Cf. Alla Eccellentissima Accademia d’Italia sedente in Roma, p. 6. Regarding the cuts to the Messenger’s speech, the philologist Nicola Festa (1930) stated that the decision was taken for philological reasons, i.e. some critics considered the text to be spurious. In replying to Festa, Celli (1930) reported Weil’s arguments (Sept tragédies d’Euripide, Paris 1879) about the Euripidean authorship of the lines, affirming that in a revival the cuts to the text should have been taken either by the original author or by the artistic director, neither of which were present in the case of the INDA production of Iphigenia.
Alla Eccellentissima Accademia d’Italia sedente in Roma, p. 6.
See Troiani (2022: 134); Appendix A in this issue.
Andriani (1934).
Romagnoli (1933: 3).
Romagnoli (1935b: 10).
Romagnoli’s subtle accusation directed towards INDA was not approved by Pirandello who, having read the speech in advance, asked him to delete the last paragraph because it explicitly criticized ‘an Institute of the government’. Cf. Letter from Pirandello to Romagnoli, Castiglioncello (Livorno), 6 September 1934-XII (Archivi Storici dell’Accademia dei Lincei, Tit. VIII, Busta 24 Fasc. 46/24); Fried (2014: 86–7).
The letter is present in two copies (one handwritten and one typewritten).
According to the R.D. of 16 December 1927, no. 2210, the title ‘Eccellenza’ belonged to several categories of persons, from politicians to military officers to public cultural figures (such as the members of the Italian Royal Academy).
The places listed are Rome (Palatine Stadium, Caracalla’s Baths, Colosseum), Ostia, Agrigento, Taormina, Cagliari, Gubbio, Fiesole, Pompeii, Palazzolo Acreide, and Verona.
Cf. Devoto (1974: 39–40).
See Canfora (1980: 66–75). The quasi-unanimous consensus given to the Fascist regime by Italian professors depended on different bases and regarded choices made by single individuals. Cf. Belardelli (2005: 31–2); Napolitano (2022: 41–2, and ibid. fn. 3 for further bibliography). On consensus in the cultural realm, see Turi (2002: 49–75).
On 29 March that year, the Convegno degli intellettuali fascisti (Convention of Fascist Intellectuals) took place in Bologna. Romagnoli was a participant and signed the Manifesto degli intellettuali del fascismo (Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals) written by Giovanni Gentile. Cf. Piras (2017: 193).
Napolitano (2022: 61) mentions Romagnoli’s engagement as founder and editor-in-chief of the ‘hyper-nationalist’ enterprise Collezione Romana (Romanorum Scriptorum Corpus Italicum), published by Società Anonima Notari (Notari Anonymous Society) between 1926 and 1934, and aimed at providing editions of Latin texts with up-to-date Italian translations. The anonymous introduction to each of the volumes, written accordingly to Romagnoli’s ideas and terminology as noted by Piras (2021: 48), appeals to the Roman cultural heritage and underlines the ‘Italianness’ of the collection in the choice of the director, the translators, and the graphic design, which was entrusted to Duilio Cambellotti.
Scarpellini (2004: 129).
Bordignon (2012: 98).
Cf. Pace (1933: 86–7).
The Mistero di Persefone was also staged on 28 May 1932 at Teatro Littorio in Milan. Cf. La Danza, numero unico di saggio (June 1932).
See Romagnoli (1935a).
Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus, 51–68, p. 101 Gautier.
Rhet. Graec. 8, pp. 113ff. Walz.
UP 7.14.576 Helmreich.
Filipponi (1928: 210–14); Romagnoli (1929). Film footage of this play shot by Istituto Luce can be watched here: https://patrimonio.archivioluce.com/luce-web/detail/IL3000051722/1/il-mistero-persefone.html?startPage=0.
Despite this, Romagnoli’s translations were frequently used in classical performances (cf. Appendix A).
In this regard, see Ettore Romagnoli’s archive, Frescura (1934).
