Sep 22, 2023
Read a mostly good article the other day about the assignment of the final line in Pagliacci and while I agree fully with the conclusion (that "La commedia è finita!" only makes sense when assigned to Tonio) I definitely snickered a lot at the suggestion that the metatheatricality of the piece was very modern. I will acknowledge I don't know much about tragedy in early Italian drama but you could do a play (opera not really being a thing yet) with the exact plot of Pagliacci in Jacobean London and nobody would bat an eye.
#they didn't have actresses in jacobean london but they knew that the commedia in italy had them#and plays about jealousy leading to stabbiness often got set in italy#the clown show#but doctor...#pagliacci#i can't actually tell who says it on the cav/pag recording i have#which is the 1965 karajan#possibly me being anglocentric again but#metatheatricality is as old as theater itself
