Abstract EN:

The second half of the eighteenth century represents a period of research and experimentation in dramatics that manifest themselves, within the theater’s programs of the Comédie-Italienne. These experimentations materialize in approximately sixty unpublished Italian plots, directed by the actors-authors of the Italian company between 1760 and 1779, year of the “suppression” of the Italian genre. Sorting through periodical sources, that include summaries of the evening performances and performances’s telling, and theater’s registers, which give the access to the acting company, this thesis intends to recreate the company’s repertoire of Italian plays. The intention is also to study the dramatic art of this Parisian show during the second half of the eighteenth century. From the 1760s, the experience of the stage, the creative and representative modalities of the commedia dell’arte slide towards closed dramaturgies inside a mixed repertoire French and Italian. It generates “hybrid” phenomena that give the possibility to preserve the Italian dramatic art and the scenic “technique” of the Italian comic actors, within the plays of French playwrights who have written for this theater: J.-F. Cailhava de l’Estandoux et de J.-P. Claris de Florian. This thesis will provide a rereading of the “suppression” of the Italian genre in 1779, in terms of “rebirth”. Then it will analyze the complete impact of the Italian repertoire and the dramatic art inside the productive context and the representative range of the Comédie-Italienne from the outlook of their evolution during the second half of the eighteenth century.