Macchietta (literally "little spot"; Plural: macchiette) is a form of comedy act which was common in Italian theatre between the late 1800s and the second half of the 1900s.
Style
The "macchietta" consisted in comic musical monologues caricaturing stock characters. It was generally committed to the observation of reality, and it sketched characters featuring particular defects or manias, which were further deformed and exaggerated for comical and satirical effects. Every monologue had some music serving as backdrop for the whole performance and the acting was interspersed by brief couplets sung by the comedian.
[Enzo Giannelli. "Macchietta". Gino Castaldo (edited by). ''Dizionario della canzone italiana''. Curcio Editore, 1990. pp. 954-5.]
History
Macchiette were performed in
café-chantant
(French: lit. 'singing café'), , or , is a type of musical establishment associated with the Belle Époque in France. The music was generally lighthearted and sometimes risqué or even bawdy but, as opposed to the cabaret tradition, not parti ...
s,
revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own dur ...
s and
avanspettacolo, and less frequently as part of more elaborate comedy plays. After a golden age between the late 1800s and early 1900s, the genre apparently went out of fashion around 1920, before being resurrected in an amended and updated form in the 1930s, mostly thanks to the duo formed by Gigi Pisano and Giuseppe Cioffi, who created a series of popular macchiette such as "Ciccio Formaggio", "Mazza Pezza e Pizzo" and "Datemi Elisabetta", which were successfully performed by the most popular comedians of the time.
[
Starting from the 1950s, the genre eventually declined and gradually disappeared together with the decline of avanspettacolo.][
]
Actors
Nicola Maldacea was among the first actors to adopt the genre, and he is regarded as the figure who mostly helped to canonize the macchietta, if not its inventor.Trilussa
Trilussa, anagrammatic pseudonym of Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano SalustriSome biographers as Claudio Rendina report ''Marianum'' as his fourth name (Rendina, p.19) (Rome, 26 October 1871 – 21 December 1950), was an Italian poet, writer and j ...
, Salvatore Di Giacomo
Salvatore Di Giacomo (12 March 1860 – 5 April 1934) was an Italian poet, songwriter, playwright and fascist, one of the signatories to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals.
Di Giacomo is credited as being one of those responsible for ...
and Libero Bovio
Libero Bovio (9 June 1883 – 26 May 1942) was a Neapolitan lyricist and dialect poet.
Bovio was one of those responsible for the rejuvenation of Neapolitan
dialect in plays, poetry and song at the beginning of the twentieth
century. He took ...
as often uncredited authors.[
Other well-known artists specialized in this form of entertainment were the ]Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
-based actor and playwright , the Neapolitans Raffaele Viviani
Raffaele Viviani (10 January 1888 in Castellammare di Stabia, Province of Naples – 22 March 1950) was an Italian author, playwright, actor and musician. Viviani belongs to the turn-of-the-century school of realism in Italian literature, a ...
and (creator of the classical macchietta "La risata"), and the Roman Ettore Petrolini
Ettore Petrolini (13 January 1884 – 29 June 1936) was an Italian stage and film actor, playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is considered one of the most important figures of avanspettacolo, vaudeville and revue. He was noted for his numerou ...
.[
]
Further reading
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References
{{Authority control
macchietta
Theatre in Italy
Theatrical genres