Gothic Survival and Revival in Bologna

IN THE carnival of 16941 the Teatro Malvezzi in Bologna put on a first performance of a new opera named La Forza delta Virtu, which must have caused some raising of eyebrows among a public accustomed to the ordinary theatrical fare. Its music by G. A. Perti seems to be lost and we are not prepared to pass on the libretto by Domenico David. The stage sets, however, designed by the native painter Marcantonio Chiarini (1652–1730) were quite sufficient to initiate a new epoch in the history of the theater in Italy, for the artist had broken with two conventions which had been taken for granted since the sixteenth century. In one of his sets he had abandoned the principle of frontal symmetry universally adhered to in all theatrical designs of the time, replacing it by an irregular scena al angolo;2 and in another he had even given up the principle of Italian post-Renaissance art that any reproduction of past forms must cleave to Roman antiquity, for this stage set was Gothic.