Columbina (Italian: Colombina, [1] meaning "little dove"; French and English: Colombine) is a stock character in the commedia dell'arte . [2] She is Harlequin's mistress, [2] a comic servant playing the tricky slave type, and wife of Pierrot. Rudlin and Crick use the Italian spelling Colombina in Commedia dell'Arte: A Handbook for Troupes. [3]
The role of the female servant was originally that of an entr'acte dancer. [4] Women were not allowed to be part of the story that was being played out on stage, but they were allowed to have a dance in-between the action. Eventually these women became the buxom and gossipy servants of characters that were already allowed on stage, and then, later, the counterparts to the Zanni characters. [4] [5] [6] Columbine was very down to earth and could always see the situation for what it actually was. She was also sometimes portrayed as a prostitute. She was very infrequently without something to say to or about someone. [7]
She is dressed in a very short ragged and patched dress, appropriate to a master of the arts. These characters were usually played unmasked, but with bonnets and metal chokers. [6] She was also known to wear heavy makeup around her eyes [8] and carry a tambourine, [9] which she could use to fend off the amorous advances of Pantalone. Columbina was sometimes chased after by Arlecchino (also known as Harlequin) or was close friends with him. There is record of Columbine using numerous disguises to trick or seduce Harlequin. Where most other characters are content with one disguise, Gheraldi's Colombine has several different disguises to confuse Harlequin and to keep the audience on their toes. [10]
She was often the only functional intellect on the stage. [6] [11] Columbine aided her mistress, the innamorata , to gain the affections of her one true love. She is sometimes the lover of Harlequin, but not always. They sometimes engage in sexual activity, but not always. [12] She may be a flirtatious and impudent character, indeed a soubrette.[ citation needed ]
In the verismo opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, the head of the troupe's wife, Nedda, playing as Colombine, cheats on her husband, Canio, playing as Pierrot, both onstage with Harlequin and offstage with Silvio.
Although Colombine is one name associated with the female servant prostitute character archetype, other names under which the same character is played in commedia dell'arte performances include Franceschina, Smeraldina, Oliva, Nespola, Spinetta Ricciolina, and Corallina Diamantina. [4] [7] [13] Colombina became the most common name used to describe the sobretta character, especially as Colombine in France and in England. [14]
One of the actresses who made this character famous was Silvia Roncagli, the first woman recorded doing a seretta role named Francheschina in about 1570. [6] One of the first women to play the role named Colombina was Italian actress Isabella Franchini Biancolelli. [15] Her granddaughter, Caterina Biancolelli, was one of the most famous serettas whose name was Colombina. [6] She played the part about 1683. [16]
There is record of the French playwright Molière having attended many performances of the comédie italienne, or commedia dell'arte. He is even referenced in a performance by Angelo Costantini of his show Une Vie de Scaramouche, which refers to the writer and poet. [9] This might suggest that the servant character in many of Molière's plays, such as Dorine in his play Tartuffe, might be based on this particular character archetype from the commedia dell'arte.[ citation needed ]
Harlequin is the best-known of the comic servant characters (Zanni) from the Italian commedia dell'arte, associated with the city of Bergamo. The role is traditionally believed to have been introduced by the Italian actor-manager Zan Ganassa in the late 16th century, was definitively popularized by the Italian actor Tristano Martinelli in Paris in 1584–1585, and became a stock character after Martinelli's death in 1630.
Zanni, Zani or Zane is a character type of commedia dell'arte best known as an astute servant and a trickster. The Zanni comes from the countryside and is known to be a "dispossessed immigrant worker". Through time, the Zanni grew to be a popular figure who was first seen in commedia as early as the 14th century. The English word zany derives from this character. The longer the nose on the characters mask, the more foolish the character.
Brighella is a comic, masked character from the Italian theatre style commedia dell'arte. His early costume consisted of loosely fitting, white smock and pants with green trim and was often equipped with a batocio or slapstick, or else with a wooden sword. Later he took to wearing a sort of livery with a matching cape. He wore a greenish half-mask displaying a look of preternatural lust and greed. It is distinguished by a hook nose and thick lips, along with a thick twirled mustache to give him an offensive characteristic. He evolved out of the general Zanni, as evidenced by his costume, and came into his own around the start of the 16th century.
Lazzi are stock comedic routines that are associated with commedia dell'arte. Performers, especially those playing the masked Arlecchino, had many examples of this in their repertoire, and would use improvisatory skills to weave them into the plot of dozens of different commedia scenarios. These largely physical sequences could be improvised or preplanned within the performance and were often used to enliven the audience when a scene was dragging, to cover a dropped line or cue, or to delight an expectant audience with the troupe's specialized lazzi.
Pantalone, spelled Pantaloon in English, is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia dell'arte. With his exceptional greed and status at the top of the social order, Pantalone is "money" in the commedia world. His full name, including family name, is Pantalon de' Bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the Needy'.
Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell'arte, whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne. The name is a diminutive of Pierre (Peter), via the suffix -ot. His character in contemporary popular culture — in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall — is that of the sad clown, often pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim and, more rarely, with a conical shape like a dunce's cap.
Il Capitano is one of the four stock characters of commedia dell'arte. He most likely was never a "Captain", but rather appropriated the name for himself.
Harlequinade is an English comic theatrical genre, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "that part of a pantomime in which the harlequin and clown play the principal parts". It developed in England between the 17th and mid-19th centuries. It was originally a slapstick adaptation or variant of the commedia dell'arte, which originated in Italy and reached its apogee there in the 16th and 17th centuries. The story of the Harlequinade revolves around a comic incident in the lives of its five main characters: Harlequin, who loves Columbine; Columbine's greedy and foolish father Pantaloon, who tries to separate the lovers in league with the mischievous Clown; and the servant, Pierrot, usually involving chaotic chase scenes with a bumbling policeman.
Il Dottore, commonly known in Italian as Dottor Balan or simply Balanzone, is a commedia dell'arte stock character, in one scenario being an obstacle to young lovers. Il Dottore and Pantalone are the comic foil of each other, Pantalone being the decadent wealthy merchant, and Il Dottore being the decadent erudite. He has been part of the main canon of characters since the mid-16th century.
Columbine may refer to:
The Servant of Two Masters is a comedy by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni written in 1746. Goldoni originally wrote the play at the request of actor Antonio Sacco, one of the great Harlequins in history. His earliest drafts had large sections that were reserved for improvisation, but he revised it in 1789 in the version that exists today. The play draws on the tradition of the earlier Italian commedia dell'arte.
Pedrolino is a primo ("first") Zanni, or comic servant, of the commedia dell'arte; the name is a hypocorism of Pedro (Peter), via the suffix -lino. The character made its first appearance in the last quarter of the 16th century, apparently as the invention of the actor with whom the role was to be long identified, Giovanni Pellesini. Contemporary illustrations suggest that his white blouse and trousers constituted "a variant of the typical Zanni suit", and his Bergamasque dialect marked him as a member of the "low" rustic class. But if his costume and social station were without distinction, his dramatic role was certainly not: as a multifaceted first Zanni, his character was—and still is—rich in comic incongruities.
Carnaval is a ballet based on the music of Robert Schumann's piano suite Carnaval, Op. 9, as orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov and Alexander Tcherepnin. It was choreographed by Michel Fokine to his own libretto, with costumes designed by Léon Bakst, and premiered in Pavlovsk on 5 March 1910.
Tristano Martinelli, called Dominus Arlecchinorum, the "Master of Harlequins", was an Italian actor in the commedia dell'arte tradition. He is probably the first actor to use the name "Harlequin" for the secondo ("second") Zanni role.
Commedia dell'arte was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is also known as commedia alla maschera, commedia improvviso, and commedia dell'arte all'improvviso. Characterized by masked "types", commedia was responsible for the rise of actresses such as Isabella Andreini and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. A commedia, such as The Tooth Puller, is both scripted and improvised. Characters' entrances and exits are scripted. A special characteristic of commedia is the lazzo, a joke or "something foolish or witty", usually well known to the performers and to some extent a scripted routine. Another characteristic of commedia is pantomime, which is mostly used by the character Arlecchino, now better known as Harlequin.
Caterina Biancolelli (1665–1716) was an Italian actress in the commedia dell'arte style of theater. She was one of the earliest actresses to play the role of Colombina, and one of the most famous.
Each character in commedia dell'arte is distinctly different, and defined by their movement, actions, masks, and costumes. These costumes show their social status and background.
Commedia dell'arte masks are a type of mask worn by performers of the Italian form of theatre, commedia dell'arte. Masks are an integral part of the performance, and each character wears a particular mask design. All masks were originally leather, but are now more commonly made of neoprene. They are an extension of the actors and their costumes, hair, and accessories. The masks create an entirely different face for the people wearing them. Masks in commedia dell'arte speak of the types of characters that each represents, saying that they are an unchanged type.
Divadlo za bránou is a 1936 stage work in three acts by Bohuslav Martinů with his own libretto; the first act is a ballet pantomime ; acts two and three are entitled opera buffa. The work is a mixture of theatrical styles: ballet and pantomime, opera buffa and folk dance and music from Czechoslovakia. He aimed to employ texts "once the vehicle of genuine folk theatre" to emphasize the theatrical principle rather than what he described as "a musical libretto" where music simply accompanies the nuances of the drama. The title refers to a place of entertainment outside the gates of a city, such as where a travelling troupe might perform.
The Arlecchino is an award that is awarded annually in the form of a bronze statue by a jury of the Dutch Association of Theater and Concert Hall Directors (VSCD) as a prize for the most impressive male supporting actor role of the Dutch theater season. The prize bears the Italian name of the character Harlequin, and was first awarded in 1964. The figurine has been designed by Eric Claus since 2005. Previous designers were Nic Jonk, and Pépé Grégoire.
Columbine, Character in Italian comedy, the mistress of Harlequin (Arlecchino)
... certainly not 'Columbina'—who never existed anywhere.
Media related to Colombina at Wikimedia Commons| Authority control databases: National |
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