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The poets Statius and Lucan are both said to have written pantomimes, and this chapter considers the relationship of pantomime art to poetic texts. The chapter underlines the importance of the enunciated narrative to the performance. The chapter considers a wide range of evidence about the libretti of pantomime, from disparaging comments on the quality of the words composed specifically for the pantomime dancer, to the alleged small fragments embedded in authors including Petronius. The chapter considers the possible reasons for the apparent wholesale loss of the words which accompanied pantomime, and discusses what sort of poetry and verse forms would have been most suitable; in adapting the text for a tragedy, for example, monologue would have proved much more practicable than stichomythia. The performance evidence relating to Bathyllus and Pylades, the pantomime dancers credited with introducing the art form in the reign of Augustus, is given detailed attention.

This chapter concentrates on the themes chosen for the earlier pantomimes performed in Rome at the time of Augustus' public endorsement of the medium. It suggests that the literary sources can be usefully supplemented by thinking about two aspects of Augustus' relationship with pantomime that have hitherto received little attention. The first is the particular myths and symbols that Augustan propaganda utilised in Public Relations activities, such as the Roman Games, and architectural decoration (Apollo, Mars and Venus, the Danaids and the Niobids); the second is the incorporation of pantomime in festivals held in his honour, such as the Augustalia and the Sebasta Games held in Naples.

This chapter looks at the sources that assert that three sequences from the Aeneid were performed in pantomime—those dealing with Dido, Turnus, and the katabasis to the Underworld (tales dealing with love, death, violence, and vivid spectacle): Macrobius, for example, says that the love story of Dido and Aeneas is kept alive by the incessant gestures and songs of the actors; whilst Augustine suggests that the majority of his readers would be familiar with the episode between Aeneas and Anchises in the Underworld through performances of it in the theatre. Panayotakis argues that Virgil's poetry was important to the development of pantomime and of Latin literary aesthetics. This chapter engages with the issue of pantomime libretti.

The strong visual appeal of Ovid's Metamorphoses has long invited comparison with the pleasures of pantomime, most influentially in a publication by Galinsky. In the study of Ovid's references from exile to his poetry being ‘danced in the crowded theatres’, this chapter argues in detail that the obvious text for pantomime realisation is the Metamorphoses, rather than the Heroides (as has occasionally been claimed); through close attention to the detail in Ovid's poetry, it explores how the subject‐matter of that epic, with its compact vignettes of action, emotive rhetoric, exotic settings, and underlying emphasis on bodily transformation, must have been suggestive to pantomime dancers. Furthermore the chapter argues that there is plenty of action which could easily be represented through movement, gesture, and basic stage props. The discussion incorporates the crucial evidence of Jacob of Sarugh about pantomime performances of the myth of Apollo and Daphne. This chapter engages with the issue of pantomime libretti.

This chapter offers a challenge to the classification of Seneca's tragedies as ‘rhetorical tragedies’ or declamations. Although the idea that Seneca's tragedies might have been partially danced had been suggested as early as the 1920s, the chapter argues that Seneca's tragedies contain several types of passage that point precisely to the character of a fabula saltata (‘danced story’), and that this suggests that even if Seneca did not write them specifically for pantomime performance, that is as libretti, he may have been influenced by the new aesthetics and conventions of the popular medium in the composition of these scenes. He may have been visualising, as he wrote, a theatrical performance with dance and music rather than a recitation. He may have hoped that his new kind of tragedy, suited to the taste of the Neronian period, could offer a substitute for the popular genres of theatre.

In the development of the study of the affinity between parts of Senecan tragedy and what we know about the texts (libretti) danced in pantomime, the author of this chapter (a trained dancer herself) looks at three features in the dramas that have often been criticised: their loose dramatic structure, running commentaries on another participant's actions, and lengthy narrative set‐pieces. In close readings of key texts from several plays, including Troades, Agamemnon and Hercules Furens, the chapter shows how apparently intractable problems related to the possibility of staging the plays disappear entirely if pantomimic performances formed part of the entertainment; moreover, the very verse construction, rhythm, and style display features that would offer great potential for choreographic realization by a dancer. This has important implications for our understanding of Seneca's dramaturgy.

There is a possibility that one pantomime libretto based on a canonical tragedy does in fact survive. The candidate is a Latin hexameter poem, preserved only in a Barcelona papyrus, on the theme of Alcestis' death, familiar to the ancient world above all from Euripides' Alcestis. The metre of the poem is shared by the Aeneid, which is known to have been performed by pantomime dancers, and the theme, the death of Alcestis, is known from other sources to have attracted practitioners of the medium. Moreover, the structure of the narrative, which entails five separate sections devoted to five characters in the myth, culminating in the protracted death of the heroine, offers exactly the successive changes of role and emotive vignettes that would facilitate a pantomime performance. The chapter suggests some criteria of style that could be used to assess the suitability of verse for danced realization, and offers a brief account of a modern Italian experiment in recreating the art of the pantomime through a danced realization of this very text.

This chapter explores questions regarding the audience, ticket sales, attendance figures, and the patronage of opera in Venice. Opera boxes are viewed in this chapter not so much as a form of income for the theater, but as a means of displaying social status. For several theaters, especially S. Aponal, surviving records and accounts allow for a study of the boxholders, and audiences consisting of a mix of Venetian patricians, Venetian cittadini and businessmen, and foreigners can be observed. Ambassadors, moreover, had special privileges in the granting of opera boxes. The chapter concludes with an examination of opera and patronage, making reference to previous theories of public opera espoused by Claudio Annibaldi, Lorenzo Bianconi, and Thomas Walker. The book concludes that opera in Venice was made possible only through the participation of a wide range of artisans, merchants, cittadini, and patricians, nearly all of whom risked losing money on this expensive entertainment.

The libretto of this Morality is a free adaptation of John Bunyan's allegory. The text is chiefly from Bunyan, with additions from the Psalms and other parts of the Bible. The words of Lord Lechery's song in Act Three are by Ursula Wood. For stage purposes a good deal of adaptation and simplification of the original has been necessary: thus, The Pilgrim's Progress's early domestic happiness has been omitted; his two companions, Faithful and Hopeful, do not appear; there are only three Shepherds; and Mr By-Ends has been provided with a wife. For this purpose the libretto has utilized the escape, described later, from Doubting Castle. Incidentally, the name Pilgrim is used throughout the libretto as being of more universal significance than Bunyan's title.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Salieri's opera, or, rather, Casti's libretto, which holds the key to the origins of musical formalism in the late 18th century, and to the origins of the focus of this book — the ancient quarrel between music and literature. It argues that the first wave of musical interpreters of the new absolute music, faced with the phenomenon of a rapidly growing instrumental repertoire, turned to the familiar, if somewhat less than commonplace practice of writing words to precomposed music, for their interpretive method. What was heard by these interpreters in absolute music was wordless drama. And, as interpreters, they became the composers' (sometimes unwelcome) librettists. But while narrative, dramatic interpretations may have been the more abundant, critics and theoreticians were also struggling with another concept of absolute music that would lead to Hanslick's formalism, and other formalisms to come. It was the concept of absolute music as a pure sonic structure with no secret or underlying meaning at all.

This chapter begins by tracing the old and widespread association of music and language through the history of traditional opera to the early 20th century. It then discusses some of the specific uses of words in music: storytelling, the libretto, and musical dramaturgy. Modern treatments include both linear and non-linear storytelling, the dynamics of subject matter often including contemporary news events and personalities as well as social situations. Spoken text with music (“melodrama”) and the issue of whether music itself can tell stories are discussed. The chapter ends with a section on “no sense or nonsense”, or how music theater sometimes moves away from storytelling to found text, and even to abandon words completely.

This chapter details Harold Prince's main motive for undertaking the show: the degenerative sociopolitical climate of Berlin in the thirties and the moral questions this provoked even in a contemporary audience. The chapter traces the gradual evolution of the Joe Masteroff libretto, showing radical differences in the three versions (second, rehearsal, final) that are found in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The differences extend to the music, characterization, dramatic incidents, and expressionistic devices, with an ever-increasing focus on private lives shaken by events in the public world. Taking up the final version, the chapter analyzes the musical's structure, and it ends with Harold Prince's struggle to find the central metaphor for the show.

This chapter provides a detailed examination of the show's music and lyrics (including material cut from the final version) by John Kander and Fred Ebb. The examination includes potted biographies of the composers as well as an account of their collaboration on this musical, with details about the problems linked to characterization and incident. The main argument is that the songs comment on the book scenes but without being limited to commentary. They are in the mood of the story, and their primary purpose is point of view. They are entertaining even as they reflect the moral decline of Germany and many of the characters, and they draw attention to their theatrical artifice (including camp, which is examined in a historical gay context). Accordingly, the four basic elements of camp (irony, aestheticism, exaggeration, and humor) are analyzed as found in the musical

Harold Prince wanted to shake up facile assumptions about fascism and guilt, and he quickly scored a coup in rehearsals by drawing a parallel between the racial unrest and persecution of black Americans at the time and the street gang thuggery of Nazi Germany. Prince achieved a symbolic edge after breaking down barriers between musical stylization and realistic drama. This chapter explores Prince's rehearsal methods that sought to elicit spontaneity and authenticity. It presents specific examples of the director's use of rigorous textual analysis and his attention to practical matters, such as the shape and color of a prop, the beats and tempi of speech and song, the spatial relationships between decor and actors, subtext, and the total stage picture. Actors' concerns, as well as those of choreographer Ron Field and composers John Kander and Fred Ebb, are highlighted, as are problems with the musical's structure, leading to a radical change before the Boston opening and that city's critical reception.