Staging the Pastoral: Tasso's Aminta and the Emergence of Modern Western Theater (review)

Maria Galli Stampino eschews the typical literary approach to Tasso's canonical pastoral play Aminta (composed 1573; printed 1580/1), whereby it is related to the author's virtually contemporaneous Gerusalemme liberata and his oeuvre generally. Instead, as part of a growing interest in historical performances, her book focuses on the performative status of Aminta and its reception by audiences in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when modern Western theater was emerging.

The core of Stampino's study consists of micro-reconstructions of two important and surprisingly well-documented stagings of Tasso's Aminta: in Pesaro during carnival 1574 (chapter 2) and for a dynastic wedding in Parma 1628 (chapters 3–4). These repeated performances of the same text are treated as "embodied," lived events (26). Each is subjected separately to detailed critical analysis of audience(s), organizers, performers, theater spaces, music (for Parma), and the festive and sociopolitical context, to shed light on "the complex dynamics constituting the foundations of the meaning-making process" (17). Stampino argues that her approach is "'archeological' in a Foucauldian sense, but not 'antiquarian,'" in that it aims to "re-present past events [fifty-four years apart], not to bring them back to life" (29). This non-teleological, but historically nuanced, attitude encourages reflection on our understanding of early performance texts and the modern theater experience. Despite what the title might suggest, this study is therefore less concerned with the shadowy history of early stagings of pastoral drama generally, or of Aminta in particular — many of which were private (and thus little documented) courtly or academic affairs in aristocratic gardens. (This is the case of the hypothesized "first" in Ferrara 1573, which is only discussed tangentially [238–40].) Close analysis of textual aspects and the dramaturgical structure of Aminta are similarly less of issue, except insofar as they affect how the play was adapted for performance and resonated on the court stage.

Throughout, the analysis of the performance-events draws on an impressive range of sources, including rare and newly uncovered archival documents (especially in the case of the hitherto little-studied Parma performance). These are quoted extensively with helpful, if occasionally slightly literal, English translations (somewhat inconveniently placed in endnotes). Stampino's scholarly reconstructions will provide theater historians with valuable details on early modern practices of designing, organizing, and executing courtly productions in these less-known Italian cultural centers. They also give a broader insight into the workings and (self)-representation of early modern courts, particularly during the ideologically charged period of carnival (chapter 2) and when contracting dynastic marriage alliances (chapter 3).

Most importantly, this study casts new light on the "horizon of expectations" of early modern theater audiences and on how they and the organizers drew meaning from these "events." For this, primary sources are scrutinized using theoretical perspectives drawn from social and cultural history, anthropology, performance studies, semiotics, and literary criticism. (The force of the arguments is however probably better gained by skimming some of the lengthy quotations from secondary sources in the notes.) Attention is paid particularly to the spatial dynamics of performances, the perceived significance of bodies appearing on- and off-stage, and (slightly less successfully) the use of current rhetorical strategies, as well as to the concepts of referentiality and novelty. Such theoretical issues, signaled in the introduction, emerge where relevant in the reconstructions, but their full examination against the historical material is deferred to chapter 5. This concluding chapter relates the issues to general theatrical and cultural trends in the period (including aspects of opera), and to modern theater practices.

The final chapter also offers the most direct discussion of how meaning was gained from the performance of Tasso's Aminta. A thorough introduction to the playtext's historical, textual, and critical status (and, briefly, its...