Expressing the Most Secret Vibrations of the Soul: Viganò’s Coreodramma in Focus

The Italian choreographer Salvatore Viganò (1769-1821) is known as the inventor of a short-lived but highly successful form of danced drama which his biographer Carlo Ritorni has baptized coreodramma. In this paper, I would like to take a closer look at this genre, especially at the innovations in scenography, costumers, and lighting that characterise it. I will examine a number of coreodrammi by Viganò and Gaetano Gioia, in order to explore what distinguishes them from previous and contemporary forms of dramatic story ballets, especially the ballo pantomimo. In my analysis of the ballets, I will focus in particular on the choice and the respresentation of the subjects, the selection of the music, the role of the corps de ballet, and the relationship between pantomime and dance. 

I. Julia Bührle (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3) studied Comparative Literature, History of Art, and International Relations in Stuttgart, Paris, and Oxford. In 2014, she completed her Franco-German PhD entitled Literature and Dance: the Choreographic Adaptation of Works of Literature in Germany and France from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (published in 2014). She also authored a biography of the dancer Robert Tewsley (Robert Tewsley: Dancing beyond Borders / Tanz über alle Grenzen, bilingual English-German, 2011). Besides, she has worked for UNESCO, the Munich Ballet and the Paris Opera, and she took part in the BBC documentary The King Who Invented Ballet: Louis XIV and the Noble Art of Dance (2015). Following a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and New College, Oxford, she is currently writing the first global history of ballet adaptions of Shakespeare's works.