Polichinela de picasso biography

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The quality that best distinguishes Polichinela is his cunning, and it is precisely in his proverbial cunning that he manages to find the ability to solve the most disparate problems that arise, always in favor of the weakest at the expense of the powerful.

He is called to represent the soul of the people and their primitive instincts, he almost always appears in contradiction, so much so that he has no fixed traits: he is rich or poor, he adapts to all trades as well as being a faithful servant, here he is a baker An innkeeper, farmer, thief, and seller of miraculous concoctions, he is either a bully or a coward, sometimes exhibiting both traits simultaneously in mocking the powerful.

With the many names and faces of him, the & # 34;pulcinella & # 34; it is sunrise and sunset of scenic mime. Stravinsky eventually committed, and he quickly understood that he could not recompose Pergolesi, but “that he could only compose the act of possessing.” Stravinsky later explained that he “approached his model not with respect but with love.” As the composer reports, “I began by composing on the Pergolesi manuscripts themselves, as though I were correcting an old work of my own.

Origin of name

Portrait, mask and origin

Figures of the Neapolitan “Pulecenella”

The RAE notes that the name comes from the sound "paolocinelli", referring to Paolo Cinelli, a Neapolitan comedian of the XVI century. Characters included the predecessor of the modern clown (Arlecchino), the military gentleman (Il Capitano) and a character with an extremely long nose resembling a peak, known as “Pulcinella” or “Punch.” With the end of World War I, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev had reconstituted his “Ballets Russes” for performances in London, and in 1919 he designed a ballet scenario based on the “Pulcinella” character.

Igor Stravinsky: Pulcinella, “Overture” (Seattle Symphony Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, cond.)

Igor Stravinsky: Pulcinella, “Serenata” (Gran Wilson, tenor; Seattle Symphony Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, cond.)

Pablo Picasso, 1912

Looking back at a number of highly successful collaborations, Diaghilev approached Stravinsky to provide the music.

Hunchbacked, potbellied, and with a huge hooked nose (physical attributes of his stooped appearance and his deeply wrinkled black half-mask), he is nonetheless an excellent orator and singular singer.

polichinela de picasso biography

Stravinsky's Pulcinella

A beautiful echo of that immortality was Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella, a ballet based on a play of the century XVIII, with the old Polichinela as the protagonist.

Main performers

The modern costume of Polichinela, invented by Antonio Petito in the centuryXIX.

Nicknamed Il re dei Pulcinella (The King of Pulcinellas), Antonio Petito was the best-known Pulcinella of the century XIX, inventor of his modern costume and author of numerous comedies dedicated to this mask, often inspired by current issues of the Neapolitan society of his time.

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This idea was taken up and revised by two expert dancers from the New York City Ballet, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, who staged it on the occasion of the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, with Robbins playing the leading role. “The words of the arias are retained, but distributed differently, with the placing of the songs determined by the action.” For contemporary audiences, Pulcinella sounded like charming, witty, and disarmingly simple 18th-century music.

This form of theatre incorporated specific roles and characters represented by a singular costume and dedicated mask. Popular tradition makes it derive from "pullicinello" (little chicken), hence —or perhaps because of it— that Pullichinela moves like a cackling, short-legged pot-bellied chicken. The Etruscologist Alain Hus, based on a painting in the Tomb of the Augurs in Tarquinia, proposed the origin of Polichinela from the "Pannuceatus" of the Atelan comedy.

Odiaba a Brighella (que iba siempre vestido de blanco y de verde) por ser muy corpulento y fuerte, virtudes de las que Arlequín carecía.


Por otro lado, Polichinela o también conocido como Pulcinello, vestía siempre de blanco y con un gorro puntiagudo.

As a theatrical figure, he has been related as a synthesis of various characters in the Atelian farce, the "Maccus", the "Dossennus" hunchbacked, the "Papus" The eater and the clumsy "Bucco".

Stravinsky provides a shockingly colorful mask, as he uses bygone music, which definitely does not sound like originating in the eighteenth-century. Tenía la nariz aguileña y la barbilla prominente, con voz nasal y de elevado volumen. Another thesis, just as legendary, ensures that the name comes from Puccio d'Aniello, a Neapolitan peasant who, after fighting with some comedians, ended up joining the company.

The ballet action is an adaptation of a commedia dell’arte piece, with the carnal trickster “Pulcinella” outwitting his companions and getting the girls.

Pulcinella Immortality

Statue of Polychinela in the old town of Naples.

Only three "zanni" have achieved 'immortality' beyond the scholarly or professional knowledge of the world of theater and art.

Character

French engraving (about 1650).
L'altalena dei Pulcinella by Giandomenico Tiepolo (1793).

Polichinela, astute and philosopher (physically Socratic and resigned Senequista), is a "zanno" with a special capacity for adaptation and extensive experience in beating and being beaten. It was a look back of course, the first of the many love stories in that direction, but it was also a look in the mirror.