Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento
10.6092/issn.2036-1599/6628
Il saggio si occupa di balletti definiti come “fantastici” apparsi nei teatri italiani in epoca risorgimentale. Romanticismo oltremontano e temi fantastici erano una minoranza all'interno di un repertorio vario, che rifletteva le lotte italiane per l'indipendenza. Mentre alcuni di questi balletti erano importazioni (spesso notevolmente adattate) di balletti romantici francesi di successo, molti erano connotati dall’autorialità dei coreografi italiani. Il fantastico appare anche sotto le spoglie di personaggi allegorici all'interno di generi di balli più comuni, in quell’epoca, in Italia. Questo articolo colloca il fantastico nella scena teatrale in Italia e offre un’indagine delle manifestazioni musicali di personaggi soprannaturali nel balletto italiano attraverso lo studio di quattro opere che abbracciano sei decenni: Il Noce di Benevento (1812), Fausto (1849), Bianchi e Negri (1853) e Gretchen (1868). Questa topica musica è una parte importante della partecipazione musicale-teatrale al romanticismo in Italia. Mentre i musicologi si sono in larga parte concentrati sull’opera lirica italiana e gli studiosi di danza sul balletto francese del XIX secolo, questo articolo intende contribuire a colmare questo divario presentando un focus sulla musica italiana per il balletto.
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Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento
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Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento
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                                  Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz



Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their
      music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento


    Beginning in earnest in the 1840s and peaking in the 1850s and 1860s,
ballets with the designation fantastico appeared in Italy’s theaters. Called ballo
fantastico or azione fantastica (often with other modifiers), some of these ballets
were imported versions of the more well known French romantic ballets that
have come to characterize this period in history. Yet many of these fantastic
ballets were Italian choreographers’ own brand of theater, or were so
drastically adapted from imports as to barely resemble their ultramontane
origins1. Typically this period of dance and music history is called romantic,
but for the Italian peninsula 1815-1870 is more aptly described as the
Risorgimento period, since this captures Italy’s wider cultural participation in a
revolution for independence, also hinting as to why French, German, or
Austrian romanticism, including fantastic topics, was less on display in theaters.
Yes, Italian ballets and operas did incorporate fantastic elements, as seen in the
libretti and music, but they were only one strain of entertainment within a
diverse repertoire.
    Ballet in Italy from the so-called romantic period2 has received less attention
1
  See Ornella Di Tondo’s account in Di Tondo, Ornella, The Italian Silfide, in Smith, Marian
(ed.), La Sylphide - 1832 and Beyond, Alton, Hampshire, Dance Books, 2012, pp. 170-232. “Ultra-
montane” could be a derogatory term, rather than simply meaning “beyond the mountains
(Alps)”. See also Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell’s accounting for the differing reception of foreign
romantic ballets and ballerinas in Kuzmick Hansell, Kathleen, Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,
in Opera on Stage, edited by Lorenzo Bianconi, Giorgio Pestelli, Kate Singleton, The History of
Italian Opera, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 279-281. On page 281, Hansell
describes the Romantic ballet in Italy as having «a brief swell that was late in coming - not real-
ly being noticeable until about 1841 - [which] crested gently around 1845-6, and ebbed quickly
away, leaving little trace of its passage». Debra Sowell urges that Italian ballet of period be con-
sidered as romantic on its own terms, rather than defined by French romantic ballet. She gives
an excellent account of Italian romanticism in the ballets of Cortesi and Casati in Sowell, De-
bra H., A Plurality of Romanticisms: Italian Ballet and the Repertory of Antonio Cortesi and Giovanni
Casati, in «Dance Research Journal», vol. 37, n. 1, 2005, pp. 37-55.
2
  The term “romantic” presents problems, especially in the narrative of Italian ballet, because
its historical use does not always match well with current applications to ballet style periods.
For example, Viganò’s ballets were seen by contemporary observers as “romantic”. This ro -
manticism was of course different than the later term romantico, which appeared infrequently in
mid-century Italian ballets as a signifier similar to fantastico. In fact, the same conflict between
localized specific meanings and those more broadly understood exists with fantastico, which
meant one thing in Italian regions, or to writers in specific fields, and something different el -
sewhere. I attempt in this article to adhere to the traits exhibited by primary sources (ballets) la-

                                  «Danza e Ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», anno VIII, numero 8, 2016

                                                                                    DOI: 10.6092/issn.2036-1599/6628
6                                                                                 Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


than that in other regions, most obviously France. This is partly due to the
lukewarm reception in Italy of the French brand of romanticism and the
fantastical topics that were all the rage in Paris—the ballets blancs that have long
dominated historical dance narratives 3. But, it is also the fault of music
historians who have been overwhelmingly concerned with Italy’s operas during
the nineteenth century. Notably, the trend toward the fantastico occurred later in
Italian opera than ballet, with Verdi’s Macbeth of 1847 one of the first native
operas with a dominant fantastic element. Either way, Italian ballets,
autonomous from the operas they appeared with, yet intertwined in the
network of Italian theatrical production, represent a distinct brand of musical
theater, their music and stories reflecting the desires of the public for a
substantial danced-mimed entertainment at the theater 4. Indeed, the arrival of
the fantastic on the Italian musical-theatrical scene is partly due to the
prominence of ballet, where the fantastic first appeared. The musical
presentation of the fantastic on the Italian stage, of primary concern here,
should be of great interest to those seeking to understand this vein of musical
theatrical production.
    Fantastic ballets by name were not in the majority and Italians generally
resisted ballets such as Giselle and La Sylphide in unadulterated form. Instead,
audiences preferred melodramatic plots centered in mythological or historical
topics, with vivid action and abundant pantomime. Cortesi’s (second) La
Sylphide of 1841 ends in apotheosis with the character Love uniting the two
lovers atop Mount Olympus (allegorical characters were commonplace in
Italian ballets and often added to imported ballet plots) 5. In fact, the terms

beled as fantastic, and draw clear comparisons to other sources containing supernaturals or
other uses of related terms (e.g. fantastique). See also, footnote 25. See: Sowell, A Plurality of Ro-
manticisms, cit.. See also: Sowell, Debra Hickenlooper, Romantic Topography and Modern Technology:
Charting the Nineteenth-Century Repertory, paper presented at the Topographies: Sites, Bodies,
Technologies, 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for Dance History Scholars, Stanford
and San Francisco, CA, Monday, June 22, 2009. For further reading on this matter as it stands
in literary criticism, see: Ceserani, Remo, The Boundaries of the Fantastic, in The Italian Gothic and
Fantastic: Encounters and Rewritings of Narrative Tradition, trans. by Jonathan Hensher, edited by
Francesca Billiani and Gigliola Sulis, Madison (NJ), Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007.
3
  As Manuela Jahrmärker and others have shown, Italian opera did not frequently adopt super-
natural characters and themes until the mid-century and after. See: Jahrmärker, Manuela, The-
men, Motive Und Bilder Des Romantischen: Zum Italienischen Musiktheater Des 19. Jahrhunderts , Forum
Musiktheater, Münster, Lit, 2006. The rejection of fairy tale ballets has been noted by scholars
including Jahrmärker and Hansell (see: Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera, cit., p. 272).
4
  For an excellent discussion of the place of the ballet in Italian and French opera theater, see
Sasportes, José, Grand Opera and the Decline of Ballet in the Later Nineteenth Century: A Discursive
Essay, in «Dance Research», vol. 33, n. 2, 2015, pp. 258-268.
5
  Di Tondo, The Italian Silfide, pp. 183-184.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento                7


fantastico and magico, often used to indicate supernatural characters such as
witches, sylphs, or fairies, were loosely applied to some ballets when they
circulated the major theaters, sometimes appearing as a signifier and other
times not. Furthermore, these terms were often combined with any number of
other modifiers, such as fantastico-allegorico or fantastico-comico and so on,
indicating much mixing of categories within works. At the same time, and
throughout the nineteenth century in Italy, the term allegorico was in widespread
use and allegory was a favored element in ballet productions (as in the
adaptations of La Sylphide, mentioned above).
     I propose that allegorico was sometimes a signifier for ballets with
supernatural elements. Perhaps this was a way of including elements that were
beyond the human realm but not altogether fantastic, combining an element
common to Italian ballets with that which was foreign. Possibly this is why a
ballet such as Bianchi e Negri, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s
Cabin (a literary work not often designated as belonging to the realm of the
fantastic) set in the exotic locale of America, would be deemed fantastico despite
its lack of witches, fairies, demons, and other marvels. This ballet’s allegorical
characters and its foreign source (ultramontane but notably not German or
French) were enough to deem this ballet fantastico in a way that was still in line
with Italian audience tastes. Overtly fantastic ballets with witches and willis,
based on Faust or Giselle-like tales, did sometimes find a path to success in their
Italianate forms, such as the mid-century ballet Gretchen. And still, a haunted
locale or allegorical tale could serve in the same capacity as the fantastic, as in
Il Noce di Benevento from the time of Viganò. Four ballets that span eight
decades of performance - Il Noce di Benevento (1812), Fausto (1849), Bianchi e
Negri (1853), and Gretchen (1868) - will serve as examples in this study of Italian
ballet supernaturals and their music.
     Before proceeding to these case studies, we must further address the
meaning and place of the fantastic in Italian musical theater, and more
specifically the supernatural characters that took part. Setting aside specific and
localized uses of terms, it was (and is) broadly accepted that fantastico,
fantastique, or fantasie were signifiers of the supernatural in a wide array of
literary, musical, and stage works, and that these works are exemplars of




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romanticism6. As for music, fantastic topics allowed composers to write
thoroughly illustrative music, even bending musical conventions for theatrical
affect, only for that topical music to become commonplace and even
stereotypical as time passed. Some audience members would only accept
strange sounding music if it correlated with stage action that justified it.
Sometimes modern ears fail to recognize the potency of such music. As for
Italian literature and opera, investigations of the fantastic have, so far, been
conducted in isolation from ballet 7. Italian ballets were not unaffected by the
literary and musical trends across the Alps and magical elements had long been
a part of musical-theatrical and literary works in Italy. By the end of the
eighteenth century, especially on the French and German stage, the
supernatural had gained new prominence in the categorizing of theater works
in which the magic dominated (think of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte of 1791,
Vienna, as a prime example). For Italian ballets, while the use of magic
categorization came later, the supernatural was present already in a few early
nineteenth century ballets, as exemplified here by Viganò’s Il Noce di Benevento.
If we take an even broader definition of supernatural to include God-like
creatures, then mythological and allegorical characters that had long populated
Italian stages would qualify.
    The later use of fantastico in particular may have been less of a generic
limitation than an indication of foreign origin or even a marketing ploy, since
the fantastic was all the rage elsewhere in Europe well before the mid-century 8.
Yet, the use of this subtitle in native Italian works must have indicated
something beyond what was already present on Italian stages, whether
supernatural, ultramontane, or extraordinary (the use of fantastique in France,
on the other hand, indicated a rather specific category in Paris, as has been
shown in Joellen Meglin’s investigation of the ballet fantastique9). Kathleen
6
  See footnotes 2 and 26.
7
  See: Ceserani, The Boundaries of the Fantastic, cit., pp. 37-45. See also: Guarnieri Corazzol,
Adriana, Fantasmi, allucinazioni e seduttrici soprannaturali nell’opera Italiana del secondo ottocento, in Va-
non Alliata, Michela, Desiderio e trasgressione nella letteratura fantastica, Venezia, Marsilio, 2002.
8
  Furthermore, before the term fantastico was in use, other terms sufficed. For example, Vi-
ganò’s Il Noce di Benevento (1812) was allegorico; Cortesi’s first Silfide productions of the 1830s
were mitologico. Sowell sees fantastico as an indication to audiences of a kinship with the French
ballets blancs but calls for more research, writing: «The adjective fantastico indicates the equivalent
of what has become known as the ballet blanc: repertory featuring a magical element or super-
natural creatures such as sylphs, wilis, nymphs, and ondines». Sowell, A Plurality of Romanticisms,
cit., p. 47 and note 12.
9
  Meglin, Joellen A., Behind the Veil of Translucence: An Intertextual Reading of the Ballet Fantastique
in France, 1831-1841, Part One, Ancestors of the Sylphide in the Conte Fantastique, in «Dance
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento                9


Kuzmick Hansell, Manuela Jahrmärker, and Debra Sowell are among the few
scholars to have considered the Italian ballo fantastico in any detail10. They agree
that this term often indicated a special supernatural and foreign-sourced variety
of stage work, and point out that it appeared earlier in ballet than in opera 11. Its
arrival in the late 1830s and throughout the 1840s can reasonably be linked to
the import of foreign supernatural ballets. Yet Viganò’s Il Noce di Benevento
employed allegorico instead, presenting a native Italian witch legend. This will
serve as a reminder that the topoi that later belonged to the fantastic—that is:
demons, witches, and fairies—were already present earlier in the nineteenth
century and the allegorical and mythological date back to the very beginnings
of musical theater12.
     As far as the place of fantastic works in Italian ballet as a whole, they were
only a portion of a considerable output 13. Remember that the practice in the
first half of the century in the main theaters was a gran ballo (usually storico)
between opera acts and a lighter ballo di mezzo carattere at the end of the
evening. Since each ballet was a substantial entertainment of its own, this made
for long theatrical evenings. After the mid-century there was a decline in ballet
numbers (but with more repetitions of a single work) and ballets could be
limited to one per evening. A perusal of theater chronologies gives one an
accurate picture of the proportion of balli fantastici amongst the ballets and
operas given each season at a theater. For example, according to Romani’s
chronology, there were 84 ballets given at La Scala during the decade lasting
from 1840-1849. Of these, 16 were called fantastico14. Across the Italian
peninsula, there were in fact hundreds of unique ballets with the designation
ballo fantastico and azione fantastica from the 1840s through the 1880s (and others
with supernaturals not labeled fantastic), but they were a minority genre.
Somewhere between 35-45 “new” fantastic ballets were produced per decade
Chronicle», vol. 27, n. 1, 2004, pp. 67-129.
10
   See Sowell, A Plurality of Romanticisms, cit., and Hansell, Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera, cit..
Jahrmärker investigates the supernatural more broadly, in both ballet and opera, and across the
entire century, and also discusses painting, literature, and the Scapigliatura movement. See:
Jahrmärker, Themen, Motive Und Bilder Des Romantischen, cit..
11
   Jahrmärker, ivi, pp. 33-34, 40-41, 46.
12
   Jahrmärker makes this point on several occasions. Ivi.
13
   For a still useful survey of the dominant stories in Italian ballet libretti for the period, see:
Cohen, Selma Jeanne, Virtue (Almost) Triumphant, in «The Dancing Times», March 1964, pp.
297-301. See also: Sowell, Debra H., “Virtue (Almost) Triumphant”. Revisited: Of Sylphs and Silfidi,
in «Dance Chronicle», vol. 18, n. 2, 1995, pp. 293-301.
14
   Romani, Luigi, Teatro alla Scala: cronologia di tutti gli spettacoli rappresentati in questo teatro dal giorno
del solenne suo aprimento sino ad oggi, Milano, Coi tipi di Luigi di Giacomo Pirola, 1862, pp. 96-110.

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10                                                                              Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


between 1840-1880, at the major theaters, and these were spread among a great
many choreographers (for example, in the 1850s my list included 30 different
choreographers, and over 18 different cities and theaters). Statistics aside, there
were surges and dips in popularity from theater to theater 15. For example, a
surge of fantastic ballets occurred in 1843-1844 with the imports of La
Sylphide and Giselle. A second surge appeared between 1852-1853.
     Even at the height of popularity of fantastic ballets, the critics were
generally divided16. The evidence suggests tension with the uneven successes
of these ballets, perhaps reflecting the uneasy compromises made by
choreographers in fashioning foreign-sourced topics to Italian ballet norms.
One of the most common themes in criticism of ballets in general was when a
ballet was deemed to have had too much dancing and had failed to advance the
action. This is especially relevant to the French romantic imports and thus
important in assessing the ballo fantastico. It is an oversimplification to claim that
fantastico indicates an Italian ballet genre in the strict sense, but the term was
certainly used intentionally 17. Since Italians sometimes treated supernatural and
fantastic elements with suspicion, especially in German and French iterations,
we might best view fantastico as signifying the influence of foreign elements,
rather than just supernatural substance 18. A benefit of studying the music for
these ballets is to link fantastic scenic-topics to others more familiar to Italian

15
   The designation first appears in the 1830s, with Salvatore Taglioni’s Faust for San Carlo in
Naples (1838) as an early specimen of Italianate origin by a composer who we could consider
an “early adopter” of the fantastic. In the 1840s we see a spike in fantastic ballets. For example,
the years 1843-1844 saw the import and adaptation of Giselle and La Sylphide, with several other
fantastic ballets alongside them, at theaters across Italy. Another surge in fantastic subjects
seems to occur in 1852-1853. The very rough statistics I provide here are based on a database I
created by searching for catalogued libretti with the designation fantastico/a, and eliminating as
many repeats as possible to discern roughly how many unique ballets were created, where they
were given, and by whom they were choreographed. My on-line search included the main col-
lections in the United States at Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Brigham Young
University, and Italian and European libraries and archives that are on-line (a wealth of libretti
can be found at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). This account can not be considered exhausti -
ve, but it is the first step in grasping the placement of fantastic in the repertoire.
16
   Only a sampling of criticism is provided here in the ballets discussed below. See also the cri-
ticism of ballets by Cortesi and Casati in Sowell, A Plurality of Romanticisms, cit.. Many other
scholars cite uneven criticism of French imports. See Di Tondo, The Italian Sylphide, cit.
17
   There are at least two reasons strict categorization might not be at work. First, a ballet might
not always be presented with the same subtitle (or even title) as it moved from theater to thea -
ter. Second, there were ballets with fantastic elements that were not labeled as such.
18
   It is clear that a deeper understanding of Italian ballet sub-genres is needed in music and
dance scholarship. Hansell, Jahrmärker, and others have identified the great need (and difficul-
ties) in studying the music for these ballets. Jahrmärker writes: «Vermutlich muß man gleiches
auch für die musikalische Komponente annehmen, von der oft aber nichts erhalten scheint, in
manchen Fällen nicht einmal der Autor bekannt ist » (Jahrmärker, Themen, Motive Und Bilder Des
Romantischen, cit., p. 40).
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               11


audiences, such as the mythological or allegorical. My intention here is not a
comprehensive genre study of the fantastico, but again, I do suggest that the
terms allegorico and fantastico were entangled during this period. As for the
music, it is apparent that topical music proliferated and was borrowed and
traded between works and composers.
     Out of the many fantastic ballets to choose from, I selected four with
extant musical scores and libretti, from different decades, composers, and
choreographers. All were successful in the theaters. I did not take it for granted
that the music would signify the supernatural – yet, musically specific illustration
of the magical, marvellous, sublime, terrible, and so on had long been
practiced by composers. As shown by David Buch, the musical techniques used
to depict these topics flowed from the stage into instrumental genres during
the Enlightenment19. I have observed that the devices used in early nineteenth
century ballet scores could even resemble earlier Baroque rhetorical devices.
These observations hold true in Viganò’s ballet scores, which drew from
theatrical and instrumental works alike. The sinking motives as the Vestal
Virgin slowly descends into her grave as she is buried alive in La Vestale (1818),
the swirling figures that represent “Il Tartaro” (The Underworld) in I Titani
(1819) and the thunderstorm in Il Noce di Benevento all come from a long
tradition of theatrically illustrative music that continued through the nineteenth
century, passed back and forth between the stage and instrumental music
enjoyed in concert halls, salons, and domestically.

I: Il Noce di Benevento – Fantastic in the guise of an allegorical ballet
with witches and demons
     Viganò’s much-loved Il Noce di Benevento (premiered at La Scala in the spring
of 1812, and given again the next spring) was ahead of its time in terms of the
trend for the fantastic that occurred decades later. Yet, it presents an Italian
fantastic tale at the beginning of a period regarded by many as “romantic” 20. It
is important because we can observe the transalpine influence of magic and
magic plays, stemming from Viganò’s time in Vienna 21. However, this firmly
19
   Buch, David J., Magic Flutes & Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical
Theater, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008. This flow was not in one direction, as ear-
ly nineteenth-century pastiche ballet scores in Italy sometimes included instrumental music to
depict stage events. Viganò’s pastiche scores from his time period in Milan are excellent exam -
ples of this practice.
20
   See footnote 2.
21
   This ballet was first given in Vienna. Its Italian premiere was at La Scala in 1812. Il Noce di

                                            «Danza e Ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», anno VIII, numero 8, 2016
12                                                                                       Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


Italianate tale serves as a reminder that the fantastic was not entirely new on
the Italian stage when it surged in the ballets during the middle decades of the
century (just as Rossini’s Cenerentola can serve as an early operatic fairy tale
example, even if it avoids overt magic in favor of a more realistic telling).
While Il Noce di Benevento did not have the designation fantastico, it gives us a
indication of the early wandering of fantastic subject matter between foreign
and Italian theaters, which perhaps paved the way for Italian ballet’s earlier
acceptance of fantastic than in opera. In this overtly supernatural ballet, which
was commonly called Ballo delle Streghe [Witches’ Ballet]22, two female witches
visit an enchanted tree and meddle in the lives of a couple out hunting. The
allegory is a fable on the triumph of reason over error. Performances stretched
from 1812 (it was given in Vienna previously) to Giulio Viganò’s (brother of
Salvatore) revival in 1822, Serafini’s 1840s restagings, and even a late
production in 1864 by Viganò’s nephew Edoardo. This is an example of how
allegorical and supernatural sometimes link in the Italian ballet, as will be
shown again in Bianchi e negri.

Italian origins
     The legend itself is of Italian origins, adapted by Viganò and Giovanni
Gherardini for a ballet in four parts. Even though the story was well-known to
audiences, most scenarios for Il Noce di Benevento cite earlier Italian sources
regarding witches’ gatherings at the famous tree: Del Congresso Notturno delle
Lammie by Girolamo Tartarotti (1749) and Canto 4 of Lorenzo Lippi’s Il
Malmantile racquistato (1688)23. Despite their age, these sources provide some
context for contemporary thinking. In Del Congresso Notturno, Tartarotti links
the practice of witchcraft with the cult of Diana, thus linking classical to the
allegorical. Of course, whether witches or goddess cults, dancing is integral to
Benevento was drafted by Giovanni Gherardini, who also worked with Rossini. See: Sasportes,
José, Storia della danza italiana dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Torino, EDT, 2011.
22
   «Giornaletto, Ragionato Teatrale N. LIX, Milano I. R. Teatro Alla Scala», Giornale teatrale, os-
sia, Scelto teatro inedito, vol. 30, 1822, pp. 453-456.
23
   See: Tartarotti, Girolamo, Del congresso notturno delle lammie libri tre; s’aggiungono due dissertazioni
epistolari sopra l’arte magica, Rovereto, A spese di Giambatista Pasquali Libraro e Stampatore in
Venezia, 1749. This title translates as Nighttime gathering of the witches/nymphs... and it was republi-
shed in 1799. See: Lippi, Lorenzo, Il Malmantile racquistato, Luigi Portirelli Soc. Tipogr. de “Clas-
sici Italiani”, 1807. All scenarios examined for this ballet contained at least these footnotes, and
some later libretti contained many more footnotes explaining the plot. See, for example, Franz
Xaver Süssmayr and Salvatore Viganò, Il Noce di Benevento ballo allegorico, Torino, Onorato De-
rossi Stamp. e Lib. del R. Teatro, 1825; see also: Viganò, Salvatore and Viganò, Edoardo, Il
Noce di Benevento: ballo allegorico in quattro atti: da rappresentarsi nel teatro Vittorio Emanuele nel carne-
vale-quaresima 1864-65, 1864.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               13


the folklore. There is a necessity for the supernaturals in this ballet to dance -
whether witches, fairies, sorceresses, or allegorical characters. Il Malmantile, a
mock-heroic epic poem, likely accounts for the ballet’s light character as a
moral tale24. Finally, this ballet is significant because, while it might be an
anomaly, it certainly represents an early example of a thoroughly Italian
“fantastic” topic, and it was a celebrated work in its day 25. Furthermore, it is a
ballet by Viganò, who in his time was called romantic and carried back to
Milan the influences from foreign stages, perhaps especially in this particular
work26.
     In this ballet, fantasy abounds as allegorical characters mix with witches and
demons. The cast list includes a good witch and a bad witch, Youth, Humility,
Old Age, Caprices in the form of little devils dressed in women’s clothing,
Volubility, Pride and Vanity. One of the sidekicks is Narcissus. The first
24
   The legends about this famous walnut tree apparently date back to the thirteenth century.
The libretti state at the outset that this folklore is well known and cites a few Italian sources
about witchcraft (see note 22). In Del congresso notturne delle lammie, Tartarotti attempts to dispel
beliefs in the supernatural, tracing them to the cult of Diana. “Lammie” refers to pagan nym-
phs, or fairies that resemble witches. One of the best sources that I found for nineteenth cen -
tury use of the word “lammie” was from Leopardi’s Zibaldone, written in the early nineteenth
century, though not published until later. See pp. 979-981 of the translation: Giacomo Leopar-
di, Zibaldone [in English], trans. by Michael Caesar, Franco D’Intino, and Kathleen Baldwin,
New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. In the libretto from Edoardo Viganò’s Torino sta-
ging in 1864, many more footnotes are added. For example, here is a footnote about the good
and bad witches: «Sotto le sembianze di queste due streghe si rappresenta quella disposizione al
bene o al male, che dirige tutte le azioni umane; cioè a dire queste due streghe sono l’immagine
materiale de’ due Genii, l’uno buono e l’altro cattivo, che, secondo l’opinione degli antichi, ac-
compagnano l’uomo dalla culla infino alla tomba Martinazza è qui presa pe[l] Genio benefico, e
Canidia pel Genio malefico» [Under the guise of these two witches is that disposition to good
or evil, that directs all human actions, that is to say these two witches are the material image of
two Genii, the one good and the other bad which, in the opinion of the ancients, accompany
man from cradle to grave. Here Martinazza is the good sorceress and Canidia is the evil sorce -
ress]. See also: Salvatore Viganò and Edoardo Viganò, Il Noce di Benevento, p. 6. Here the wit-
ches are qualified as the good and bad side of human nature (in other words as further allego -
ries, rather than truly supernatural).
25
   Praise was not universal, however. Ritorni had suggestions for improvement (see: Ritorni,
Carlo, Commentarii della vita e delle opere coredrammatiche di Salvatore Viganò e della coregrafia e de’ core -
pei, Milano, Guglielmini e Redaelli, 1838, pp. 54-64. See also the 1826 review of the La Scala re-
vival Il Noce di Benevento [in English], in The Parthenon: a magazine of art and literature, Black,
Young and Young, n. 15, December 1825, pp. 363-365. The author calls the ballet an «absurd
allegory» but has high praise for the music.
26
   Interestingly, Viennese magic plays had an Italian influence of their own through Carlo Goz-
zi (1720-1806). Jahrmärker writes that Gozzi’s fables had faded in Italy by the end of the
eighteenth century, but were quite popular in Vienna, where they were incorporated into the
repertoire of Viennese magic plays: «Trotz des großen Erfolgs der Fiabe konnten sie sich nicht
lange halten; und am Ende des Jahrhunderts war Gozzi in Italien vergessen. Ganz anders
jenseits der Alpen. Dort ließen sich seine Märchenspiele in das Repertoire des Wiener
Zauberspiels eingliedern, etwa in Ferdinand Raimunds Der Verschwender oder Der Alpenkönig und
der Menschenfeind». Jahrmärker, Themen, Motive Und Bilder Des Romantischen, cit., p. 42. The Milane-
se during Viganò’s time were exposed to German literary trends, especially through «Il Conci-
liatore», and Schiller and Shakespeare were adapted in ways seen by contemporaries as “roman-
tic”. See also footnote 2.

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paragraph of the scenario admits to the silliness of superstition itself,
attributing it to «silly women», and stating: «About this vain and superstitious
belief, this story is imagined»27.

Synopsis
     The spectacle opens with a horde of witches and demons, accompanied by
violent storms (storms and witches together are a common trope). The young
huntress Dorilla comes to rest under the walnut tree (the magical tree of the
legend), and while she is sleeping, two witches hover over her, and compete,
both jealously aspiring to possess her. Canidia (the bad witch) wins the fight
with a giant stag, while Martinazza (the good witch) converts a bush into a
great lantern (of Reason) 28. Canidia awakens the beautiful Dorilla, but blocks
her from shooting the enchanted deer, instead kidnapping her with the help of
a Farfarello (a little devil)29, into its bosom. Roberto (Dorilla’s husband), who is
looking for her with his «imbecile» sidekicks30, is likewise captured by the good
Martinazza and brought into the lantern of Reason. In the second Act, Dorilla,
inside of the deer, is courted by Youth, Virility, and Old Age embodied as
three lovers. Roberto can see her and, angry, wants to attack, but is stopped by
the Fairy. Dorilla meanwhile is charmed - Old Age calls upon the Caprices who
present her with riches and clothing, on which she happily spends his money
before dispensing with him and moving on to the other two. Roberto, when he
can again see Dorilla «in the throws of vice» becomes so angry that he throws
himself at her. She, astonished and realizing her error, asks Old Age for
protection (he is thrilled). He threatens Roberto and his companions who
reach for their swords but are immobile because of the witch Canidia. They are
not allowed to see any more (and neither is the audience), as the theatre returns
to the forest of Benevento. In the third act, Martinazza bends the three
Caprices to her will, and uses them to try to aid Roberto in killing the deer

27
   See the libretti cited in footnote 23.
28
   «Ad un cenno di Martinazza si converte un cespuglio in una grande lanterna (simbolo del
lume della Ragione); ed ai commandi di Canidia apparisce dal canto apposto uno smisurato
cervo (col quale è figurato l’Errore): nasce allora una fiera baruffa tra la due maliarde, ma Cani-
dia ne rimane vittoriosa; e Martinazza tra l’onta e lo sdegno si fugge dentro alla sua lanterna,
aspettando tempo e luogo di soggiogare l’avversaria ». Franz Xaver Süssmayr and Salvatore Vi-
ganò, Il Noce di Benevento Ballo Allegorico, Torino, Presso Onorato Derossi Stamp. e Lib. del R.
Teatre, 1825, pp. 55-56. Synopsis and all quotes derive from this libretto.
29
   The term farfarello, indicating a devil or elf-like creature appears in Dante’s Inferno and, almost
contemporary to Viganò, Giacomo Leopardi’s moral tales Operette morali written after 1824.
30
   Foolish sidekicks are common in many types of theater.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               15


(with a drum, a cabbage, and a spear). This fails, and Martinazza tries again by
sending a shepherd with a horn, a butcher with a rope, and a carpenter with a
saw to cut the horns. Canidia responds with the deer spewing fire, forcing only
Roberto to enter the lantern alone. The two fools who had accompanied him
are seduced through vanity into the belly of the deer. Roberto is provided with
a pumpkin, branch of chestnut, and ax, to once again try to defeat the deer.
But Dorilla, realizing the threat and taking the advice of Canidia, disguises
herself as a milkmaid, seducing Roberto to drink the «milk of oblivion». He is
however, able to enter and lead Dorilla back to the laws and duties of reason.
He then defeats the deer, whose demon disappears in the air. Through the
superhuman powers of Martinazza, the forest is transformed to a «delicioso»
garden of Reason, where Canidia is captured in a cage along with the
«imbecile» companions. Dorilla throws herself into the arms of Roberto. The
fourth Act consists of sacred and celebratory dances.

Context and music
     This ballet is dominated by supernatural characters and their music, even
while the fable demonstrates a celebration of reason 31. Unlike Rossini’s roughly
contemporary Cenerentola (Rome, 1817), which was also based on a fairytale,
this work’s witches and fairies are not turned into realistic characters (the role
of the Fairy Godmother in Cenerentola is turned into a more realistic
philosopher). Furthermore, the witches have their own specialized music,
mostly by Franz Xaver Süssmayr32. Some of this music far outlasted the ballet,
with one selection becoming the main theme upon which Paganini set his
famous orchestral variations titled Le Streghe Opus 8, of 1813 [The Witches, also
known as The Witches’ Dance]. The theme was then used in the ballet La Sylphide
(Taglioni, Schneitzhoeffer, Paris, 1832) to signify Madge the witch. Thus, as
David Buch observed for the previous decades, we have an example of
theatrical music migrating to the instrumental musical world (and then, of
course, back to the theater in a fantastic French ballet!).
31
   I have set aside the obvious symbolism and, to modern sensibilities, the gendered representa-
tions in this tale (“silly” female superstition, male Reason, female vice and vanity, wild nature
tamed into a garden of reason, and so on) in order to focus on musical rendering of the wit-
ches.
32
   Franz Xaver Süssmayr, famous for his completion of Mozart’s Requiem, was an Austrian
composer who worked with Viganò during his time in Vienna. Apparently he supplied the mu-
sic for the danced portions of Il Noce di Benevento, while Viganò himself may have written some
of the mime music.

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     The ballet opens with a Congiura delle Streghe e Diavoli [Conspiracy of the witches
and devils] (see Example 1 below33). It is marked Grave, with many dotted
rhythms and frequent shifting between forte and piano, all which lend it a
mysterious but comic quality. To modern sensibilities this music may seem
tame, but consider this review, likely of the 1822 revival in Milan, which
describes this scene with musical detail:

               A uniform succession of notes performed on the oboes, violins, and
           violincellos, comically represents the harsh accents of the witches, whose
           hobbling motions are marked by the second violin and bass. Next comes
           the dance of the witches, one of the most admired pieces in the whole
           ballet... A storm suddenly arises, and the witches take flight. 34

     The quick flourishes that slide into the opening and closing chords suggest
a storm, and indeed these flourishes swirl in the third number «Temporali»
(very much resembling Baroque storm music, Jean-Philippe Rameau comes to
mind). Following the opening congiura is a Contraddanza delle streghe [Witches’
contradance], shown in Example 2 below. It is initially a cheerful affair in duple
meter, E-flat major, retaining the key of the opening. To modern ears again
this might not seem overly demonic, but this theme would go on to become
the musical material for Paganini’s variations and was borrowed by
Schneitzhoeffer for La Sylphide’s witch, Madge. Its witchy appeal certainly
resonated with audiences outside of Milan as this seemingly cheerful bit of
music, at least in the first section, ended up having a long life associated with
witches35.




33
   Examples 1-3 were transcribed from: Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Salvatore Viganò, and Giulio
Viganò, Il noce di Benevento: ballo al[l]egorico, Biblioteca di musica, anno 3, classe 2, Milano, Ricor-
di, 1822 (John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection, Harvard Theatre Collection).
34
   «Parthenon», cit., p. 363.
35
   Paganini’s variations were reduced for piano and for violin solo, which may have been the
primary form in which they were transmitted. In later iterations, the theme of this dance was
often presented in a minor key, as in some of Paganini’s variations. Though this number ap-
pears only once in Il Noce di Benevento (as far as can be discerned from the published piano sco-
re) and is in major, the theme appears in minor during certain parts of Taglioni’s and Schneitz -
hoeffer’s La Sylphide of 1832, where it is still easily recognized, but is transformed into a recur-
ring theme for Madge the witch. Paganini’s Witches Dance is still published and used today as a
teaching piece in the violin repertoire (and is specifically part of the Suzuki violin method).
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               17


Example 1: Il Noce di Benevento (Viganò, Süssmayr), Congiura delle
Streghe e Diavoli.




Example 2: Il Noce di Benevento (Viganò, Süssmayr), Contraddanza
delle streghe.




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     Note the rhythmic character of the Allegretto with dotted rhythms mixed
with triplets (perhaps briefly suggesting a tarantella?). The sforzandi on the
second beat in the second part, which hover on diminished and minor
harmonies, provide a dissonant contrast to the cheerful opening, suggesting
the more sinister nature of these supernatural characters. It is noteworthy that
this is one of the first events of the ballet, signifying that it is expected that
witches will dance when they gather. Witches’ Sabbaths and gatherings are
well-documented on the European stage during the nineteenth century, and
reaching back into history, with a rich iconography that often depicts women,
sometimes scantily clad, together with demons, gathering at night in wild
places36 (see the scene depicted in Figure 1). We will see that this scenic-topic
repeats in later ballets (and operas).
     Later in the ballet, an Agitato (number six of the piano score) is a danced
contest between the two witches in a quick 3/4 time and F-minor, praised in
1822 by the same author cited above as «very original»37. The character of this
is urgent and punctuated by sforzando markings. See Example 3, below.

Example 3: Il Noce di Benevento (Viganò, Süssmayr), n. 6, Agitato,
Contesa delle due streghe [Argument of two witches].




36
    Famous contemporaneous examples of Witches Sabbaths abound, from Goethe’s Faust
(Part I, 1808) and its many spawn. Witches gather in Berlioz’s Sinfonie Fantastique (1830) or the
ballet La Sylphide (1832). Shakespeare’s Macbeth was 200 years old and still a favorite on the Eu-
ropean stage, with its Italian operatic stage debut in Verdi’s Macbeth of 1847. In the 1830s, the
polygraph Defendente Sacchi wrote about witches in Le Streghe. Dono del Folletto alle Signore pre-
sentato da D. Sacchi, Milano, Manini, 1830?. In the opening is a vivid description of a nighttime
witches’ Sabbath. This reads much like a description in a libretto, but there is nude obscene
dancing, as described in the description preceding Figure 1 below.
37
   «Parthenon», cit., p. 363.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               19




     This music must have accompanied the action where the two witches fight
over the sleeping Dorilla. The waltz feel, if we can call it that, is disrupted by
the accents and sforzandi, again on beat two of each measure. The rhythmic
consistency of the opening phrases leads to more agitated figures. While
Example 3 ends in suspense on a half cadence and pause (m. 39), this is only


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midway through the number38. The music continues on in similar fashion, with
internal repeats, before culminating in Canidia’s victory. This music is
rhythmically consistent and relatively normal in its initial phrasing (see how
measures 1-4, 5-8, and 9-12 behave as equal phrases, melodically, harmonically
and rhythmically similar). For the most part, this music is regular enough to be
a dance (relative to the irregular features of typical action and mime music), yet
it accompanies the action. In imagining this scene then, the witches’ fighting is
dance-like, regulated by the music, and the section long enough to have been a
major event, not passed over but relished for many measures. Even if the
music contains markers of supernatural (minor key, off-beat accents, a build in
tension), the danced feel normalizes the scene, and marks dancing again as
something that witches do (thus, dancing is natural to supernatural beings).
This notion is further supported by the use of the contraddanza earlier
(Example 2) for the same characters. Was that dance perhaps carried out using
the figures and formations of social country dance, still popular in Italy during
the nineteenth century and familiar to those in the audience? Finally, the
composition of witch music is not overly dark, underlining the light character
of this ballet, especially in opposition to the more epic and serious music in the
tragic coreodrammas of Viganò. These examples do well to demonstrate the
musical-scenic topics of witches and storms from the first three decades of the
century, for a native Italian fantastic ballet by one of the century’s most
influential choreographers, with music by a well-known Austro-German
composer (Viganò’s ballets for La Scala usually mixed Italian composers with
borrowed works from across the Alps and new specially composed music).
The ballet was given in the decades after Viganò’s death in 1821. Ricordi
published the music discussed here in a piano reduction with Giulio’s 1822
staging at La Scala. Even later restagings of Il Noce di Benevento occurred in the
1840s and 1860s.
     As an aid to visualizing this ballet, and to bridge the gap between the
imagery of witches on the Italian peninsula between the early and mid-decades
of the nineteenth century, when the ballet Fausto was presented on stage,
consider the illustration and description from Defendente Sacchi’s Le Streghe.
Dono del Folletto alle Signore presentato da D. Sacchi published in Milan around 1830
38
  A common trait of Italian ballet scores of this period is for each number to link to the next.
Closed forms are avoided but pauses also abound, especially within the mime music.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               21


as a literary compendium of the supernatural. The illustration (see Figure 1)
matches well with iconography of witches’ Sabbaths that appeared on Italian
stages and beyond. Sacchi wrote about witches much like descriptions found in
libretti, except here there is nude, obscene dancing:

                   In un lato bolle una pentola immane sopra un fuoco ardente; in un
               altro le streghe si gittano ignude, menano danze oscene, portando in
               mano una candela accesa, e a certe cadenze sospendono il ballo e vanno
               a baciare maestro Leonardo. In un angolo più appartato si confondono
               amori nefandi di streghe, di folletti, di maghi, nè si conosce parentela o
               rispetto conjugale.39




      Figure 1: Illustration from Defendente Sacchi’s Le Streghe (1830?) showing a witches’ Sabbath.40

39
   Sacchi, Le Streghe, p. 15 [On one side bubbles a huge pot on a burning fire; on the other the
witches throw themselves into it naked, leading obscene dances, carrying in their hands a bur -
ning candle, and on certain cadences they suspend the dance and go to kiss master Leonardo.
In a secluded corner the nefarious loves of witches, goblins, and magicians mingle, knowing
neither kinship or conjugal relation].
40
   Le Streghe, dono del Folletto alle signore presentato da Defendente Sacchi, [1831], Frontispiece. Engra-
ving. General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations. Used with permission.

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II. Fausto: archetype of supernatural drama in its Italian ballet versions
     No discussion of supernatural in the theater would be complete without
Faust. This legend was attempted many times as a ballet in Italy, by different
choreographers, and each time with different music. Salvatore Taglioni
presented his Faust ballet (azione fantastica, with music by Robert Gallenberg and
others) in Naples in 1838, with a tragic ending for Faust, little success with the
public, and problems with censors. Jules Perrot fashioned the topic for La
Scala in 1848 as the fantastic element was in full swing amidst revolutionary
turbulence, but again with little success (Faust, gran ballo fantastico with music by
Giacomo Panizza and others, Margherita was danced by Fanny Elssler,
Mefistofele by Perrot). Antonio Cortesi’s Fausto of 1849 was the most
successful (premiered at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence, with music by Luigi
Maria Viviani). It was remounted in the following decades 41. Both Perrot’s and
Cortesi’s ballets resulted in piano reductions, but Cortesi’s Fausto reduction was
of the entire ballet, rather than «pezzi scelti» or chosen pieces42. There were
several other Faustian ballets by other names 43. Indeed, the mixed fates of
these attempts illustrate the Italian ambivalence toward even the most popular
fantastic tale of the nineteenth century 44.
     By the late 1840s Cortesi was experienced at adapting French fantastic
ballets for the Italian stage, having presented successful versions of La Sylphide
and Giselle that decade45; he had also created many grand historic-dramatic
41
   Later productions, for example, took place at the Teatro Regio, Torino, Carnevale 1851-1852
(alongside another shorter ballet and at least two different operas, Margherita was danced by
Carolina Rosati) and the Teatro Pagliano, Carnevale 1861-1862, as well as other theaters. The
piano reduction of Viviani’s score, completed by Ermanno Picchi, was published by Ferdinan-
do Lorenzi, Florence, in 1852. Francesco Ramaccini mounted a Faust ballet in 1850, likely Cor-
tesi’s version. Some of Panizza’s music for Perrot’s Faust, which was more successful outside of
Italy, was published in 1848 as piano reductions of selected pieces (many of which involve the
supernatural characters) and again in 1883. Some of this music was also adapted for pedagogi-
cal uses (see, for example, Oesten, Theodore, Faust, Ballet Von Panizza. Joyful Strains, 12 Bagatelles
on Favorite Melodies, Free from Octave Passages & Carefully Fingered & Arranged Foe [Sic] the Use of
Teachers by Theodore Oesten, Boston, Oliver Ditson, 1855).
42
   Fortunately, the autograph full score for this ballet is also available, and digitized via Internet
Culturale (www.internetculturale.it). Viviani, Luigi Maria, Fausto (Fausto/Ballo Fantastico in Cinque
Grandi Quadri/del Coreografo/Antonio Cortesi/Con Musica di/Luigi M. Viviani/Pergola L’Autunno del
1849), Autografo. In Manoscritti musicali di pregio. Firenze, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica
Luigi Cherubini, 1849.
43
   Other Faustian ballets included: Elda o sia Il patto degli Spiriti (1843) by Armand Vestris and
Kardinuto by Antonio Monticini (1845).
44
   Those interested in a contemporary literary account of all things supernatural might consult
Sacchi, Le Streghe. See also footnote 37. There is, of course, a section on Faust (Il dottor Faust
and Margherita di Milano, pp. 21-26).
45
   For an excellent discussion of La Sylphide’s Italian versions and reception, and especially of
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               23


ballets, in line with mainstream Italian tastes stemming back to Viganò’s
coreodrammas. Furthermore, his Fausto was mounted on heels of Verdi’s
Macbeth (also premiered at Florence’s Pergola) in 1847 with its prominent
witches, which were unusual in Italian opera. Verdi was well aware that the
choice of a fantastic topic would be new 46. Of course, as Jahrmärker points
out, the balli fantastici of the 1830s and 40s were precursors to the fantastic in
Verdi’s Macbeth. It cannot be dismissed as merely a side note that the musical
and visual tumult of the opening witches’ gathering was already somewhat
familiar in the Italian ballet stage by the time of Macbeth’s premier (along with
the rich history of foreign operas and ballets containing this kind of scenic-
topic)47.

Faust adapted
     Just as Cortesi had done with Nourrit’s libretto for La Sylphide, he
streamlined Perrot’s 1848 libretto. Even though these two libretti are obviously
related (and both end in the usual Italian ballet apotheosis—Faust and
Margherita are united at the end of Cortesi’s Fausto), there were some major
changes in the ballet that went beyond cutting characters and extraneous
material from the plot. A comparison of the two Faust libretti shows that
Cortesi adhered to the typical outlines of an Italian ballet libretto, centering the
drama on the love story with a virtuous, happy ending. Perrot’s synopsis is
more of a novella, rich in detailed description and dialogue and numbering
over twenty pages, while Cortesi’s was half that length. Of higher literary
quality than the typical Italian synopsis, Perrot’s version is somewhat more true
to Goethe’s poem. Cortesi’s is a true synopsis, though still containing many
elements that betray its foreign inspiration, such as more dialogue.
     What stands out the most between the two is the clarity of the denouement
Cortesi’s adaptation, see Di Tondo, The Italian Silfide, cit. For further examples of Cortesi’s Ita-
lian ballets and a discussion of their Romantic elements, see Sowell, A Plurality of Romanticisms,
cit.
46
   Verdi decided on a fantastic topic on the heels of the success of foreign-sourced operas such
as Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable and Weber’s Der Freischütz in the earlier 1840s, through the same
impresario Alesandro Lanari, who first contracted with Verdi to create an opera of the fanta-
stic genre. See: Verdi, Giuseppe, Macbeth, The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, edited by Philip Gossett
and David Lawton, Series I, Vol. 10, Chicago, Milano, University of Chicago Press; Ricordi,
1983, pp. xi-xii.
47
   See Jahrmärker, Themen, Motive Und Bilder Des Romantischen, cit., pp. 112-119 and also footnote
n. 130. Verdi employs sylphs and ondines in the danced portions, unlike Shakespeare. Verdi’s
critics, citing Meyerbeer’s Robert Le Diable and Weber’s Der Freischütz, ignored the closer-to-
home fantastic Italian ballets that shared the stage with Italian opera during the 1840s (Jahr-
märker, Themen, Motive Und Bilder Des Romantischen, cit., p. 114).

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in Cortesi’s Fausto. The differences between Perrot and Cortesi are significant:
in Perrot’s, a flame burns Faust’s pact with Mefistofele, while in Cortesi’s the
actions of Margherita triumph over the devil. In fact, this is depicted quite
clearly in the cover of the piano reduction for this ballet (Figure 2 below). We
see a wild mountainous landscape in which Margherita wards off Mefistofele,
holding a cross in front of her, as she stands between Faust and the demon,
grasping Faust’s hand. Clearly, she is in charge of her own (and apparently
Faust’s) salvation. She has the moral high ground. Furthermore, in Cortesi’s
adaptation of the plot, she is not pregnant and has not murdered her mother,
brother, and baby. She is only temporarily found guilty of killing her father—it
was actually Mefistofele. Most surprising, but typical of Italian ballet, is the
happy ending achieved as Margherita’s virtue and piety move Faust to pray with
her. Ultimately they are saved and Mefistofele is cast into hell. She is reunited
with her father and then agrees to marry Faust despite his age. The ending is
hardly tragic.




Figure 2: Cover of Fausto in piano reduction (Cortesi/Viviani)48.

48
   Fausto: ballo fantastico del coreografo A. Cortesi. Rappresentato nell S. e R. Teatro della pergola. Con mu -
sica composta dal Mo. L. M. Viviani. La riduzione per piano del Mo. E. Picchi, ca. 1850-59 . Cover. Mu-
sic Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations. Used with permission.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               25


Faust music
     In Fausto’s score by Luigi Maria Viviani, several numbers involve witches and
infernal spirits. It can be no coincidence that the opening Preludio (shown in
Example 4) bears great similarity to Verdi’s Preludio to Macbeth (1847), which
also opens with witches gathering in the woods. The full manuscript score for
Fausto confirms that the musical gestures and orchestration are quite similar,
with brass under the stage blasting G-minor fanfares, countered by the
orchestra with high piercing gestures in the winds and strings 49. This is clearly
music fit for hell, witches, demons and the like. It is hard not to think that this
music is a purposeful quotation of Verdi, a technique that was celebrated in
pastiche ballet scores earlier in the century 50. The music for the witches in
Verdi’s Macbeth is likewise purposefully distinct. Tame-sounding to Verdi’s later
critics, contemporary audiences found it just right and favored the witches’
choruses51. This witch music, though relatively new in topic for Italian opera,
comes from the same family as ballet witch music already present on the Italian
stage. It is no wonder that Viviani copied Verdi, creating an intertext and
continuing the cross-fertilization between opera and ballet that stretches back
to the pastiche scores of Viganò’s ballets.
     The sinister Verdian prelude music for Fausto sets the scene and is followed
by the Introduzione where the witches and infernal spirits celebrate a Sabbath
with dances (see Example 4, again) 52. Foreboding tremolos, chromatic
passages, syncopated dissonances and swirling motives portray these
supernatural characters, similar to the music found in Il Noce di Benevento much
earlier (but more in minor keys and more dissonant). In number five of Fausto,
titled Ridda Infernale [Infernal turmoil], where the witches make a potion for
Fausto to drink and become rejuvenated, similar swirling motives are heard.

49
   See Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth, full score, the section beginning at measure 11 for comparison:
Verdi, Macbeth, edited by Gossett and Lawton, pp. 1-2. See: Viviani, Fausto, Autografo, Preludio.
50
   Verdi instructed his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, to set the witches’ choruses in a man-
ner «triviali, ma stravaganti ed originali» as cited in Albright, Daniel, The Witches and the Witch:
Verdi’s Macbeth, in «Cambridge Opera Journal», vol. 17, n. 3, 2005, pp. 232-233, fn. 9. Albright
concludes that this approach was the nineteenth century version of “camp”.
51
   Albright, ivi, p. 223. See also: Rosen, David and Porter, Andrew, Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook
[in English]. American Institute for Verdi Studies. 1 ed., New York, W.W. Norton, 1984.
52
   Luigi Maria Viviani, Antonio Cortesi, Ermanno Picchi, Fausto: ballo fantastico [piano score], Fi-
renze, Ferdinando Lorenzi, 1852 (Harvard Theatre Collection, John Milton and Ruth Neils
Ward Collection); alternatively at the New York Public Library (Gift of Lillian Moore): Viviani,
Luigi Maria, Fausto; ballo fantastico del coreografo A. Cortesi. Rappresentato nell S. e R. Teatro della Per -
gola. Con musica composta dal Mo. L. M. Viviani. La riduzione per piano del Mo. E. Picchi [piano sco-
re], Firenze, F. Lorenzi [185?].

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When he drinks it in the next number (n. 6), the music depicts the potion
traveling down his throat with quickly descending passages in the melodic line
(all shown in Example 4).

Example 4: Fausto (Cortesi, Viviani, 1852), examples from Preludio n. 1,
Introduzione, n. 5 Ridda Infernale (opening), and n. 6 (m. 1-8).
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Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               29




     All of this music is typical of Italian ballet’s witches, devils, and hell as
scenic-topics at the mid-century, with driving rhythms, minor keys, offbeat
sforzandi, dynamic extremes, swirling gestures, chromatic passages, and a liberal
use of dissonant harmonies for affect. Number 6 also shows the illustrative
nature of music for pantomime, which constituted the majority of action in
the Italian ballo - a trait not emphasized here due to the selection of witches’
dances for discussion thus far.

Faust choreography
     Lacking choreographic records, there is some evidence that the spectacles
of dances that involved witches and other infernal creatures were quite
elaborate and reflected the swirling music with swirling patterns on stage. For
example, the danced portions of Arrigo Boito’s opera-ballo Mefistofele (La Scala,
1868, rev. Bologna, Teatro Comunale, 1875), according to Ornella Di Tondo,
includes one such dance involving supernumeraries, choirs, nine little witches,
twenty-four female witches, twenty-seven wizards, and twelve elves (there was
also a band on stage). According the «disposizione scenica » (published staging
manual) by Ricordi in 1877, these groups «follow various configurations
(aligning, moving, and stopping in concentric or divergent lines, diagonals,
whirling or arching circles and spirals) very actively taking advantage of the
stage space vertically and horizontally... »53.
     Boito was known to have admired the ballets of the choreographer
Giuseppe Rota (a prominent Italian choreographer like Cortesi). Though the
53
 Di Tondo, Ornella, Italian Opera Staging Manuals (Disposizioni sceniche) and Ballet. An Example:
Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, in Die Beziehung von Musik und Choreographie im Ballett Buch, edited by
Michael Malkiewicz and Jörg Rothkamm, Berlin, Vorwerk 8, 2007, p. 161.

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choreographer of the danced portions of Mefistofele is unknown, it is likely that
these parts were similar to large corpo di ballo scenes in Italian ballets. Later in
Mefistofele, the witches again perform a dance during a chorus that is
«animatissimo, con salti e gruppi pittoreschi » (highly animated, with leaps and
picturesque groups)54. The formation of many tableaux, similar to what Marian
Smith describes in the French ballet 55, clearly indicates that this was also a
choreographic approach used in Italy, at least for the opera-ballo, and likely for
the Italian ballet beyond the era of Viganò (in whose ballets the picturesque
tableaux are famous). The instructions for Mefistofele specifically indicate that
the choreography should follow the intensity of the music:

                 Keep in mind that the beginning of the movements are not casual,
             but instead support and correspond to the musical effects realized by the composer.
             The choreographer does not need to study the steps as much as he needs
             to realize big movements and lines, and picturesque groups; they are
             witches and demons that make a group of devils and so they must stay
             in character; this also applies to the choir.56

     Why was Cortesi’s ballet successful? It was adapted to the audience
expectations of the time. Cortesi’s Fausto is an innocuous Faust. While
Mefistofele may meddle, and the human characters may have some flaws, they
do not willingly commit horrible acts. This is especially true of Margherita. In
this way Italian audiences could, just like Faust, have it both ways - that is to
say, they could have their Faust drama, replete with witch dances and colorful
music and scenic display, but also have the love story in which virtue triumphs
and the social order is maintained57.

IV. Bianchi e negri: historic-allegoric-fantastic ballet based on Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
     Giuseppe Rota’s ballet Bianchi e negri, with music by Paolo Giorza, premiered
at La Scala on November 10, 1853 58. Over the following two decades, it was
performed at the main Italian theatres, including the Apollo in Rome, La

54
   Ivi, p. 162.
55
   Smith, Marian Elizabeth, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, Princeton Studies in Opera,
Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 2000.
56
   Quoted and translated by Ornella Di Tondo from Boito’s Mefistofele, 163, from the Disposizio-
ne scenica per l’opera Mefistofele di Arrigo Boito compilata e regolata secondo le istruzioni dell’autore da Giu-
lio Ricordi, Milano, Ricordi, n. 45401, 1877.
57
   This was a lasting archetype for ballet scenarios. See Selma Jeanne Cohen’s libretti analysis in:
Cohen, Virtue (Almost) Triumphant, cit.
58
   Bianchi e negri was but one title. Others include: Giorgio il negro, La Capanna dello Zio Tom, and
variations of these. Additional musical numbers were provided by Marco Aurelio Marliani, Ce-
sare Dominicetti, and Signor Olivieri.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               31


Fenice in Venice and San Carlo in Naples. Based on Stowe’s critique of
American slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a piece of historical fiction, this ballet
appeared directly on the heels of her novel’s European successes and before
the American Civil War. It was aligned with the final stages of the Italian
Risorgimento, its themes of social justice tapping into the revolutionary
fervor59.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a ballet
     The complexity of Stowe’s narrative was difficult to match in any theatrical
version, yet the story is fitting for stage drama and theatrical versions of Uncle
Tom proliferated in America and Europe. The Italian ballet versions retain the
novel’s strong anti-slavery and pro-Christian themes, but the story is
compressed into a structure of two or three parts of several scenes. There are
a smaller number of characters. The resulting libretto adhered more to Italian
ballet norms than Stowe’s novel. While there were variations to the libretto as it
was staged at different theaters, the overall story remained relatively the same 60.
As was common, allegorical scenes form the opening and closing of the ballet.
At the opening, the character of Nature creates two races, black and white,
which are supposed to live in harmony. The white enslaves the black but
Nature restores brotherly love. After this allegory, the action proceeds in a
series of scenes containing the mime and dance. The slaves are persecuted, and
the protagonist (usually called Giorgio) vows to free all slaves. The slaves

59
   I explore Risorgimento themes in this ballet in: Risorgimento Themes in Italian Ballets of the Nine-
teenth Century, paper presented at the symposium Italy and the Dance: Dance in Italy, Italian Dance in
Europe 1400-1900, for Barbara Sparti (1932-2013), 25-29 May 2016, Burg Rothenfels am Main,
Germany. It is published in the proceedings: Risorgimento Themes in Italian Ballets of the Nineteenth
Century, in Tanz in Italien: Italienischer Tanz in Europa 1300-1900, Für Barbara Sparti (1932-2013) 4.
Symposium für Historischen Tanz, Burg Rothenfels am Main, 25-29 Mai 2016, Tagungsband,
edited by Uwe Schlottermüller, Howard Weiner and Maria Richter (“fa-gisis” Musik- und
Tanzedition: Freiburg, 2016), pp. 43-56. In one instance the ballet was banned after Rota and
Giorza inserted the Marseillaise at a performance in Milan, inciting the crowd to riot, according
to the music critic, journalist and patriot, Leone Forty (Fortis) writing under the pseudonym
“Doctor Veritas” in the January 1, 1877 issue of «Illustrazione Italiana». See: Doctor Veritas
[Leon Fortis], Conversazione, in «L’Illustrazione italiana», n. 2, 1877, pp. 22-23. For more discus-
sion of the ballet’s role in the Risorgimento, and more broadly, Italy’s evolving views of Amer -
ica, see: Körner, Axel, Uncle Tom on the Ballet Stage: Italy’s Barbarous America, 1850-1900, in «Jour-
nal of Modern History», vol. 83, n. 4, 2011 and also: Körner, Axel, Masked Faces. Verdi, Uncle
Tom and the Unification of Italy, in «Journal of Modern Italian Studies», vol. 18, n. 2, 2013, pp.
176-189.
60
   I have analyzed libretti from many different productions and found two versions or version-
families of libretti. In one of these, Christian themes are subdued, with the Codex of Truth re-
placing the bible. These secularized versions may have been an attempt to avoid censorship.
See: Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz, PhD Dissertation: Nineteenth-century Italian Ballet Music Before Na-
tional Unification: Sources, Style and Context, University of Oregon, 2010, pp. 427-433.

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gather to study a banned book but are persecuted by an evil master. Taking a
notable turn toward melodrama, the plot at this point includes the slave
master’s unwanted advances on the «beautiful slave», who is already married to
Giorgio and has children61. They plan their escape, flee, and are discovered and
betrayed in a grand market scene that included character dances. Giorgio is
recaptured and put into a warehouse full of sleeping slaves. He has a vision
that includes the allegorical character played by the star ballerina, sometimes as
«Religion» or «Music, Poetry and Dance», other times called «Il Genio
dell’Umanità sotto le spoglie di Enrichetta»62. The protagonist then breaks the
bonds of slavery itself, freeing all slaves. This lieto fine features allegorical
characters joining the cast in a final danced celebration. Stowe’s complexities
are boiled down into singular, stock characters. This allows the story to assume
the narrative forms common to the Italian stage. Love and virtue are
challenged, but all ends with happy resolution. The necessary ingredients for a
typical Italian ballet are present63.

Genre confusion
     The ballet was usually labeled allegorico or storico. In a few cases, however, it
also took on the label fantastico64. It seems hardly to fit into the picture painted
thus far of the fantastic ballet in Italy. Yet, Italians largely preferred ballets with
non-fantastic plots. Remember, La Sylphide was sometimes billed mitologico
rather than fantastico (including Cortesi’s La Silfide of 1837, or the even earlier

61
   According to several libretti and the musical score: Giorgio’s wife Dellay, also a slave, makes
her entrance, fleeing the advances of Legrey, the plantation owner. Legrey attempts to isolate
Dellay «from [her] family, so that [he can] more easily bend her to his will ». When alone with
the «pretty slave», he renews his «impassioned declarations of love» accompanied by threats,
which she refuses with dignified repulsion, guided by the principles of honesty and love for
her husband. This intrigue is not present in Stowe’s novel, but it does further establish the need
for escape, which is analogous to the opening chapters of Stowe’s book. Injustice and intrigue
are accentuated by adding Legrey’s sexual advances on Dellay and his fracturing of the slave
family. In addition to the musical score, see also libretti from productions in 1858, 1858, 1862,
1863, 1871 and 1875.
62
   Most commonly called simply “Enrichetta”, the character is explained as both Enrichetta
and the “Genius of Humanity” in the Torino libretto from 1857-1858. See: Rota, Giuseppe,
Bianchi e Negri: Azione Mimico-Storica-Allegorica in Tre Parti e Sei Scene: Da Rappresentarsi al Teatro
Regio Nel Carneval-Quaresima 1857-58, 1857.
63
   See Selma Jeanne Cohen’s study on plot archetypes in Italian ballet libretti from 1766-1865.
Cohen found Italian ballet plots to be quite homogenous with specific sub-genres/archetypes.
This plot archetype is that of the triumph of virtue over adversity. Cohen, Virtue (Almost)
Triumphant, cit., p. 299.
64
   The libretti with this designation are: Giorgio il negro: ballo allegorico fantastico (Teatro Apollo,
Rome, 1858-1859); Giorgio il negro: ballo allegorico fantastico (Trieste, 1858); I bianchi e i negri: ballo al-
legorico fantastico (Teatro Bellini, Palermo, 1871); Bianchi e negri: ballo allegorico-fantastico (Teatro Re-
gio, Torino, 1875).
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               33


La Silfide: ballo magico-mitologico by Luigi Henry 1828). In a sense, Bianchi e negri’s
historic and allegoric tale of the triumph of virtue fits well into the mainstream
of Italian ballet for the period. What, then, made this ballet fantastic? As in the
earlier nineteenth century where ballets containing supernaturals might be
labeled allegorico or mitologico, this ballet is the reverse—what is truly a
(contemporary) historic topic about social justice, bookended by the requisite
allegorical scenes, was labeled fantastico only in some cases. Lacking willis,
sylphs, witches and demons, this ballet’s fantasy came from the allegorical
characters such as «Nature» and the «maga benefica» or good fairy: variously
named the «genio di humanità» or «Enrichetta» (see Figure 3 below). Perhaps
derived from the Stowe’s first name Harriet, which was given in Italian editions
of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Enrichetta, or based on Stowe’s Evangeline, this
character appears in many of the Italian ballet adaptions. She is one key to
understanding how this ballet could be fantastico. The famous ballerinas
Caterina Beretta and the American Augusta Maywood danced the role, which is
pictured in the costume design shown in Figure 3.




Figure 3: Enrichetta, from Bianchi e negri, costume design by Del Buono for the 1862 production at Teatro
San Carlo, Naples65.
65
  Filippo Del Buono, Enrichetta, from I Bianchi e I Neri/Ballo del Corea[!].O/Gius. Rota/1862, 1
cartella, figurini: acquerello e tempera, cartoncino e carta (watercolor and tempera, cardboard
and paper), 1862. Digitized by www.internetculturale.it. Used with permission. To be clear, this
production was not labeled fantastico, but a study of the libretti shows that of the two versions
of “libretto families”, the Naples production fits the second version and belongs to the family
of productions that was more often categorized as fantastico. The role was danced by Giovani-

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34                                                                                    Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz




     The second key to this ballet’s fantastic features is in the allegorical scenes
that form the opening and closing of the ballet, a common trait for Italian
ballets of the time. The libretto for Palermo, 1871, provides the clue,
describing the opening allegory as a Scena unica, quadro allegorico fantastico66. This
opening allegorical scene, appearing in most productions, features the character
of Nature who creates two races, black and white, that are supposed to live in
harmony. The white enslaves the black but Nature restores brotherly love. The
costume design is depicted in Figure 4 below. It makes sense then to explore
the music for the scenes in this ballet that were seen as fantastic.




Figure 4: The allegorical character of Nature in Bianchi e negri, costume design by Del Buono for the 1862
production at Teatro San Carlo, Naples67.

     The opening allegorical tableau Il Caos, Preludio e Introduzione, sets a serious
tone with a gloomy contrapuntal elaboration in C minor. Following a
suspenseful preparation on diminished tremolos, an Allegro breaks forth in
swirling figures and chromatic lines that simulate the “dividing elements”.
Snippets of melody poke out from this texture as the conflict between white
na(?) Adamoli. Caterina(?) Beretta also danced in this production (questions marks indicate
that the first names are not given in this synopsis — I have made reasonable guesses). Costu-
mes for Beretta's pas de trois with Adamoli and a male dancer were similarly white, and more
elegantly decorated.
66
   Paolo Giorza and Giuseppe Rota. I Bianchi e i Negri: Ballo allegorico fantastico in due parti e sei sce-
ne: da rappresentarsi nel R. Teatro Bellini l’anno teatrale 1870–71, 1871.
67
   Filippo Del Buono, La Natura, from I Bianchi e I Neri/Ballo del Corea[!].O/Gius. Rota/1862, 1
cartella, figurini: acquerello e tempera, cartoncino e carta (watercolor and tempera, cardboard
and paper), 1862. Digitized by www.internetculturale.it. Used with permission.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               35


and black figures begins 68 (see Example 5 below). The music is setting the
scene and preparing the audience for the central conflict of the ballet, but this
scene is not based in reality. While not necessarily linked to witches, storms, or
hell, this music fits that scenic-topic especially when compared to similar
musical settings of hell-like Tartaro or other nebulous places inhabited by
spirits or mythological characters.69 It was described in such terms at the time:

                  For the scene of chaos, the stage was full, [it] took all the
               wings from the stage, filled the immense space with a curtain —
               with layers of different colors— in the back [of the stage], a dim,
               vague light, which was used to make palpable the vast and
               nebulous shadows of the scene. — The effect was immense.70

Example 5: Il Caos, Preludio e Introduzione from Bianchi e negri




68
   This allegory is varied in its presentation between the two version families of libretti (an exa -
mination and close comparison of the many libretti for this ballet yielded two groups or fami-
lies). One account states: «Rising from Earth are two small children one white and the other
black. In contest over a fruit the white child knocks down the black one [and] subjects him to
his servitude; after such an allegory the darkness returns and the ballet begins».
69
   Ertz, Nineteenth-century ballet music, cit., pp. 265-305.
70
   Fortis, Conversazione, pp 22-23. The entire passage, given here, recounts the ballet’s participa-
tion in Risorgimento fervor in the 1850s: «Tolse al palco scenico tutte le quinte - riempì
quell’immenso spazio di velo - a strati di tinte diverse - in fondo una luce vaga, incerta che ser -
viva a rendere palpabili quelle tenebre immense, e nebulose della scena. - L’effetto fu immenso.
Ma quel ballo aveva un altro effetto... Ad un certo punto gli schiavi neri si strappavano i collari
e li sollevavano in atto di minaccia verso i loro aguzzini - in quel momento si sentiva fremere
nell’orchestra quattro battute della Marsigliese. - Era Rota che le aveva volute. L’azione combi-
nata con la musica produsse l’effetto di un fulmine. Il pubblico scattò in piedi - fa una insurre -
zione di applausi. - Eravamo ai crepuscoli forieri del 59. - Il successo fu tale che la polizia proi-
bì il ballo per qualche tempo» [For the scene of chaos, the stage was full, [It] took all the wings
from the stage, filled the immense space with a curtain - with layers of different colors - in the
back [of the stage], a dim, vague light, which was used to make palpable the vast and nebulous
shadows of the scene. - The effect was immense. But that ballet had another effect... At a cer -
tain point the black slaves tore off their shackles and raised them in an act of threat against
their tormentors - in that moment one heard quivering in the orchestra four bars of La Mar-
seillaise. - It was Rota who had wanted these. The action combined with the music produced
the effect of lightning. The audience jumped to their feet – there was an insurrection of ap -
plause. - We were in the twilight before ’59. - The success was such that the police forbade the
ballet for some time].

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     The next location of the fantastic is in the ultimate scene of the ballet,
which features a mime-dance number for the star ballerina (the section is called
Danzante allegorica). The main protagonist, a slave, has been captured and is
back under the ownership of his master. He is kept in a large warehouse full of
sleeping slaves. He wants to liberate himself and all of his companions from
misfortune. He falls asleep and has a vision. Thus, dancing is justified through
his fantasizing an allegory of Music, Poetry and Art (or Religion, depending on
the libretto). The vision music is labeled as both a mimed scene and a danced
allegory. The otherworldly nature is immediately apparent in the arpeggiated


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38                                                                Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


flourishes that strongly suggest harp. Here is where our prima ballerina,
dancing an allegorical role, enters. As described in the music and some libretti,
«Giorgio... stands at the feet of the symbolic figure of Religion who points to a
book in which it is written that all men are equal». A rolling accompaniment
with an ornate melody in F major accompanies what must have been either an
elaborate solo or pas de deux. This could by sylph music, as the trills recall the
fluttering of wings (or feet), and the lofting melodic gestures suggest an
ethereal being. The opening to this music is in Example 6.

Example 6: Bianchi e negri, n. 11, Larghetto, Scena mimica danzante-
allegorica (m. 1-17).
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               39




      Many scenarios mention music as part of the vision, as a «moving melody
softens his heart», and «Music, Poetry and Dance inspire him to the knowledge
of beauty, and unite in harmony to refine him; in this solemn moment of
rapture the sleeping companions awaken and all together raise up prayers of
thanksgiving to Heaven...». Some libretti actually include a song with lyrics.71
Thus, the allegory conveniently provides justification for both dance and
music, as they inspire the breaking of his bondage. Apotheosis is achieved, and
the vision provides an excuse for a non-human character, performed by the
prima ballerina, to enter the stage and dance.
      It is likely that this is the scene as performed by Amalia Ferraris that so
impressed one writer who exclaimed that through the good and graceful
Amalia as the «Genio di Humanità» the charm of the dance was able to
regenerate the two races: «…the eye is enraptured to follow the rapid leaps, the
strong steps, the voluptuous movements of the head, the sweet pose of her
person, the academic poses and the lively and elegant embroidery of the feet
of this sylph...»72. Here, in the critic’s description of an allegorical character, we

71
     There is no indication of song and lyrics in the musical score.
72
     See: «Teatri Arti e letteratura», anno 34, vol. 65, 1856-1857, Tip. Government della Volpe al

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40                                                                                   Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


find concrete evidence of the link between fantastic and allegorical, through
the role and execution of the prima ballerina and the structural placement
within the drama. Though the best dancers were often described as sylphs, it is
this portion Bianchi e Negri that further opened the door to the designation of
fantastic. Giorza’s sylph-like music takes part in this linkage.


IV. Romantico-fantastico German-French influence and the Italian
willis in Gretchen
     If the term fantastico were not an adequate signifier of French or German
supernatural import, then adding romantico would surely serve to identify its
genre. In Gretchen: ballo romantico fantastico by Luigi Danesi with music by Enrico
Bernardi and various composers (1868 and after) we have a(nother) successful
Italian parallel to Giselle, but with its German origins emphasized 73 (this was
one of several Giselle-like ballets that were mounted in Italy 74). In fact this
ballet can serve as evidence of the fantastic taking hold. If fantastic subjects
had not succeeded on some level with Italian audiences, why bother
appropriating Giselle, again, at all? With performances and restagings in each
decade from the 1860s through the 1880s,75 this ballet successfully combined
fantastic elements and pure dance on the one hand, and the Italian preferences
for melodrama and pantomime, on the other.
     Gretchen is at once an obvious intertext to its famous sibling ballet blanc, in a
German setting. In this ballet the deceived lover, an orphan girl named
Gretchen, has died apparently of heartbreak. Her deceiver, the prince Arnold
does not know. When the court jester relays this at the wedding of Arnold to
Hildegard, he flees into the woods and kills himself in despair (note the lack of
apotheosis, which is in contrast with Casati’s Giselle-like Lo Spirito Danzante of
185176). A number of character dances and solos, pas de deux, and group dances

Sassi, 1856, pp. 95-96.
73
   Jahrmärker has also noted the intertextuality of Giselle and Gretchen, providing a synopsis of
Danesi’s ballet, and further noting the dominance of mime, the emphasis of German origins,
the influence of Shakespeare, and the ballet’s general success. Jahrmärker, Themen, Motive Und
Bilder Des Romantischen, cit., pp. 79-82.
74
   Sowell shows how Casati’s Lo Spirito Danzante of 1851 is also an Italian Giselle. Sowell, A
Plurality of Romanticisms, cit., pp. 49-50. Gretchen is very similar to the ballet Ilda (1868, and after)
also by Danesi with music Bernardi. Both contain a Willi ballabile in a «Selva Nera».
75
   This ballet traveled to Lisbon in 1869 and was also given post unification, in the 1870s and
by Coppini after Danesi in the 1880s; it was sometimes called “storico-fantastico”. Some per-
formances were: Teatro Ciniselli, Milan, 1868; La Fenice Venice, 1872; Vittorio Emanuele di
Torino, 1875; San Carlo, Naples, 1876-1877, and La Scala, Milan 1885.
76
   Sowell, A Plurality of Romanticisms, cit., pp. 49-50.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               41


occur throughout and the Willi’s nighttime gathering, which is an extended
ballabile occurring in the second half. Danesi noted at the end of his preface
that he had taken the German mythology and ancient Nordic poetry, and made
it his own, lightening the fantastic elements—in order to «advance the
action»77. Again, we see the striving of the choreographer to balance
competing elements, that of the action and mime versus that of the pure
dance and fantasy.
     A reviewer as late as 1885 wrote a glowing report of the ballet at La Scala,
especially praising the dancing that reminded him of Rota, the setting, and
lighting effects (even though the writer was somewhat surprised by the ballet’s
success). Calling it a «fantastic melodrama transported into choreography», the
writer praised the music as «spontaneous, with excellent melodies» and an
«exuberance of fantasy» (it avoids polyphony), while noting that the gifted
composer, Bernardi, had written music of fifty-two ballets and «is not yet old».
This critic dares anyone to disagree: «Se vi par poco, negatemi quanto dissi»78.
     The «danza fantastica delle Willi, la selva nera» [fantastic dance of the Willi,
the black forest], especially noted in the above review, occurs in Act VI. As one
might expect, an ethereal and tremulous Andante sostenuto with a soaring violin
solo depicts these supernatural beings in their spooky setting. The flourishes in
the solo line are marked «a piacere» and frequently consist of improvisatory,
odd-numbered note groupings juxtaposed over a steady accompaniment in the
pianist’s left hand. A middle Agitato section seems to indicate a new action
involving the willis, followed by several more changes in meter, tempo, and
texture, which include a waltzed section and a galop-like closing. Thus, this
ballabile contains several distinct sections, some of which likely contained
action, mixed in with the ballroom dance types more associated with the long
tableau of Romantic ballet second-acts. Since this is the first ballet I have
discussed with such an arrangement, I have included Table 1 to show the
sections and their features. Then, in Example 7 below I provide the beginning
of each musical section79.
77
   See for example, the Milanese libretto of 1868: «La mesta leggenda fu dalla mitologia ale-
manna illeggiadrita di tutto quel fantastico, di cui tanto si piacque l’antica poesia nordica, ed il
coreografo ne fece suo prò, nella persuasione che ne avrebbe avvantaggiato l’azione» (p. 8).
78
   See: Il Teatro illustrato e la musica popolare: Ritratti di maestri ed artisti celebri, vedute e bozzetti di scene,
disegni di teatri monumentali, costumi teatrali, ornamentazioni, ecc., ecc. anno 1-12 (n. 1-144), gen. 1881-
dic. 1892, vol. 5, March 1885, p. 39.
79
   Bernardi, Enrico, Gretchen; ballo romantico fantastico del coreografo Luigi Danesi. Musica dei maestri
Bernardi e Scaramelli. Riduzione per pianoforte di Ettore Contrucci, Firenze, Bratti Sciabilli, [1855?]

                                            «Danza e Ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», anno VIII, numero 8, 2016
42                                                                             Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


 Tempo           Meter      Musical Texture                        Key             Measures
 Andante         4/4        tremolos, soaring violin, free         D major         1-23
 sostenuto                  flourishes, many fermatas
 Agitato         4/4        varied – possibly action/mime          A minor         24-46
 Mosso           2/4        accented unison or homophonic          ~ F minor       47-76
                            lines, march-like, possible action
 Andante         6/8        arpeggiated accompaniment,             B major         77-90
                            soaring melody, likely danced
 Moderato,       3/4        waltz- or mazurka-like                 G major -       91-106
 con grazia                 accompaniment and regular              modulates       107-114
                            phrases, many internal changes                         115-130
                            of texture and some repeats,                           131-144
                            likely danced                                          145-160,
                                                                                   161
 Allegretto      4/4        galop-like accompaniment, perky        A major         162-182
 sostenuto                  melody, likely danced
Table 1: Danza fantastica delle Willi - la selva nera from Gretchen.

Example 7: Gretchen: ballo romantico fantastico (Danesi, various
composers, 1855), Act VI, Danza fantastica delle Willi... la selva nera, by
Enrico Bernardi (beginnings of each new section).




(NYPL). Note the questionable publication year of 1855 recorded for this source, since the
ballet premiered in 1868. Additional pieces were added to the 1885 performance at La Scala,
and published in piano reduction by Ricordi that same year.
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               43


Agitato




Mosso, with «Banda sotto il palco» [Band under the stage], and Andante




                                            «Danza e Ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», anno VIII, numero 8, 2016
44                                                                 Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz




Moderato and Allegretto sostenuto




     This music, especially the opening Andante sostenuto and the later Andante, is
obviously ethereal and the link is clear between it and Giorza’s music for the
Genio di Humanità in Bianchi e negri. Note the sweeping arpeggiated flourishes,
rolling accompaniment, and soaring melodies. This group of dances in Gretchen
likely contained some action within the scene, but also showed the trend felt at
the mid-century and thereafter where the ballabile gained greater importance
and could constitute a long string of dances, usually placed in the latter half of
the spectacle, and often ending with a galop. This practice, along with the
advertising of the danced portions in the scenarios, indicated the importance
Scoring the ballo fantastico: supernatural characters and their music in Italy’s ballets during the Risorgimento               45


of academic dancing in attracting the audience. Yet, the reviews still show
mixed feelings toward too much dancing and too weak of a plot (and vice
versa as the decades passed). This also perhaps reflects the limiting and
transitioning of ballet production that was occurring at the same time in Italian
theaters (there was greater need to advertise the dances), yet too many
repetitions of the same ballet were tiresome. In 1873, a reviewer in the
«Gazzetta musicale di Milano» wrote that the audiences were beginning to
show signs of discontent with the «vain reproductions of the ballet Gretchen...
Only two ballets in a long season is [too] few»80. Even though the ballabile, pas
de deux, etc. were highlighted, pantomime and engaging action scenes were still
important features of ballet, as even the libretti for Gretchen make clear.


     These four ballets demonstrate that the fantastico had many guises in Italian
ballets, and that the inclusion of fantastic elements met with success when
adapted to mainstream practices in Italian ballet: love stories where virtue
triumphs and the social order is restored. The appearances of supernatural
characters in Italian ballets varies also in scope, from stories where the fantastic
dominates to those in which allegorical characters make a few “fantastic”
appearances. Indeed, the prevalence of allegory in Italian ballet provided
another avenue for the fantastic to be adapted. The most common thread is
that these ballets take their sources in part from foreign materials (with the
exception, to some extent, of Il Noce di Benevento) and contain supernatural
characters. The fact that witches, demons, fairies, allegories, and sylphs must
dance makes their inclusion convenient for theatrical danced drama. Each
ballet revels in the dancing and miming of its supernaturals, whether it is a
witches’ Sabbath, the meddling of Mefistofele, the intervention of a good
sorceress to free the slaves (and humanity), or the graceful dances of Willis.
These sections are seen as highlights, making their music more notable also
(much like arias are more remembered than recitatives in opera). In particular
the fantastic music was most widely discussed in reviews and was enjoyed
outside of the ballet by those who acquired the piano reductions. Furthermore,
many other generic witch and sylph dances proliferated in the instrumental
80
  «La Gazzetta Musicale di Milano», vol. 28, Milano, Ricordi, p. 105, signed “D.E.P.”. In Italian:
«Il pubblico comincia a dar segno di malcontento per le soverchie riproduzioni del ballo Gret-
chen come per l’addietro il fece coll altro ballo la Fata Nix - Due soli balli in una stagione lunga
son pochi e finiscono coll’annoiare anche i più furenti amateurs delle silfidi da quadriglia».

                                            «Danza e Ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», anno VIII, numero 8, 2016
46                                                                   Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz


music market of the nineteenth century. Yet, the fantastic in Italian ballet is
tempered by the desire for a strong narrative executed with plentiful mime,
virtuous characters, and apotheosis. The prevalence of pantomime in Italian
ballet meant that human and supernatural characters alike must dance and
mime, and the plots had to be more than a thinly veiled excuse for long
stretches of dancing. Since the dances for the top ballerinas, ballerinos, and
mimes were justified by the inclusion of fantastic and allegoric characters,
these practices included the use of highly illustrative music, a practice predating
Viganò and stretching into the post-Risorgimento period. Finally, witch, devil,
sylph, and willi music first made inroads to the nineteenth-century Italian stage
through ballet, predating these characters’ arrivals in native Italian opera at the
mid-century.
     This research shows that the fantastic, as a part of hundreds of Italian
ballets, was a significant part of Italian musical-theatrical context, even if it was
a minority genre category. Thus any wider consideration of the fantastic on the
Italian stage must take into account ballet and should including ballet music in
addition to Italian and foreign opera. Instead of comparing Verdi’s witches in
Macbeth only to the fantastic in foreign operas, and equating Italian ballet’s
fairies (and genies: «maga benefica», «il genio di humanità») to the French
sylphs, I propose we look at the entire evening of theatrical entertainment
anew and consider the Italian landscape more inclusively. We must consider
cross-genre relationships between Italian opera and ballet, the adaptation and
recycling of topics and music, and also investigate cultural priorities that
shaped both repertories on Italian stages. This can only help us move away
from the paradigm that elevates the canonic French romantic ballet and Italian
opera amidst diverse national and regional practices on European stages for
the nineteenth century. Italians participated in Romanticism on their own
terms. Romantic traits such as the fantastic were mixed with many other
themes on Italian stages. Instead of seeing this as a lack of embrace of
Romanticism we might do well to simply include Italy’s theatrical and cultural
history more fully in the broad international narrative of nineteenth-century
ballet and opera, as part of a plurality of intersecting approaches to romantic
era theater.
