''Macchietta'' (English: "little spot"; : ''macchiette'' or ''macchiettas'') is a form of
comedy
Comedy is a genre of dramatic works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium.
Origins
Comedy originated in ancient Greec ...
act which was common in
Italian theatre
The theatre of Italy originates from the Middle Ages, with its background dating back to the times of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, in southern Italy, the theatre of the Italic peoples and the theatre of ancient R ...
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-chantants'',
revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatre, theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketch comedy, sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural pre ...
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
Nicola Maldacea (29 October 1870 – 5 March 1945) was an Italian actor, comedian and singer, well-known for his expertise in the theatrical genre of 'macchietta', where he was one of the pioneers. In the golden years of the café-chantant in Ita ...
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
Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano SalustriSome biographers as Claudio Rendina report ''Marianum'' as his fourth name (Rendina, p.19) (26 October 1871 – 21 December 1950), known by the pseudonym Trilussa (an anagram of his last name), was an Italia ...
, Salvatore Di Giacomo 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 ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
-based actor and playwright , the Neapolitans Raffaele Viviani
Raffaele Viviani (10 January 1888 – 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, and his works touch on seamier elements of the ...
and (creator of the classical ''macchietta'' "La risata"), and the Roman Ettore Petrolini.[
]
Further reading
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References
{{Authority control
macchietta
Theatre of Italy
Theatrical genres