Paris! I love this city and never tire of visiting. This time, I was fortunate to be staying at a friend’s very charming apartment on the Île Saint-Louis. This is the little sister island next to the Île de la Cite, where Notre Dame has been standing guard over Paris for the past 850 years. Connected by bridges to the “continent”, as the locals call the rest of Paris, this tiny island has a definite village feel and it is very easy to forget that one is in fact in a major metropolitan city.
Yesterday, I stumbled upon the Musée Carnavalet in the heart of Le Marais. This free museum houses an impressive collection of art, artifacts and furnishings and traces the development of Paris through the ages. Over 100 galleries offer something for everyone.
I was particularly pleased to find several characters from one of my favorite Hermès scarves, the La Comédie Italienne, here.
The La Comedie Italienne Hermes pays homage to Commedia dell’arte, an ancient form of Italian theater. Originating in Rome during the sixteenth century, the earliest recorded performances featured outdoor shows with temporary stages and backdrops. These improvisational comedies relied on recurring characters and themes, with storylines unfolding spontaneously. Commedia dell’arte rapidly gained popularity.
A significant innovation of Commedia dell’arte was the inclusion of female actors. This marked a stark contrast to Elizabethan theater in England, where women were prohibited from performing on stage. In Shakespearean plays, female roles were traditionally portrayed by young men or boys.
Below I found some of the Characters as Statues from these popular plays and from my beloved scarf:
Arlequin, or Harlequin, arguably the most beloved character in Commedia dell’Arte, must have been a whirlwind of energy, a mischievous jester whose unpredictable antics and perhaps unexpected wit would have surely delighted audiences.
Pantalon, in contrast, was a cunning and rapacious Venetian merchant, though he was often deceived.
Brighella, a master of deception, was the skillful plotter…
In 1797 the Commedia dell’arte was outlawed during Napoleon’s occupation of Italy as critics of the regime used their exaggerated masks to hide their identities while criticizing Napoleon’s regime and fueling political agendas. It would take almost two hundred years for the Commedia dell’arte to be reborn in Venice in 1979.
The the Commedia dell’arte exerted a profound influence not only on theater, politics, and history, but also on the world of music. This is evident in works as diverse as Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Schumann’s Carnaval, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka, as well as of course, in the incomparable work of Philippe Ledoux.
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