Making and Marketing a Theatre Couple in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Giovan Battista Andreini and Virginia Ramponi
The present study is the first treatment of the careers of two professional actors as a couple in early modern Italy. It examines the success achieved by Giovan Battista Andreini (1576-1654) and his wife Virginia Ramponi (1583-ca.1631) as a result of the self-representation and marketing strategies they devised and adopted. Their careers are considered as a unicum; two faces of a single product to be sold on the market: the professional theatre couple. This thesis presents a pair of mirrored images: it looks at specific moments of the careers of Andreini and Ramponi from both his perspective and hers, in order to define their individual contributions to the success they enjoyed together and to show that their achievements were the result of a synergy. Against the historical background of post-Tridentine Italy, this study illustrates their literary, performative, iconographic and epistolary tactics as both a reaction to the opposition to professional performers led by Counter-Reformation clergy and a response to the promotion of professional performers led by academicians. By exploring Andreini and Ramponi’s engagement with Counter-Reformation thought, their relation with cultural and political institutions, their power and artistic networks, this study offers a new perspective on the historical and cultural context of early modern Italy. In revealing the leading role of Ramponi in the company of which the Andreinis were part, and the impact of her international prestige in the reception of professional performers, it aims to enrich the scholarly discourse on the agency of women in early modern Italy. By looking at the career of the comici as a couple, it writes a new chapter in the social history of early modern theatre which opens up new avenues of research on professional theatre.
Commedia dell'Arte, Theatre, Giovan Battista Andreini, Virginia Ramponi, Early modern Italy, Theatre couple
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