«Un ballo senza ballo». Salvatore Viganò and the “coreodramma”

Abstract

From an historiographical point of view, Salvatore Viganò could be considered as a figure of transition and his works represent an innovative junction between the Eighteenth-century pantomime ballet and the Romantic ballet. In the Commentarii della vita e delle opere coreodrammatiche di Salvatore Viganò e della coreografia e de’ corepei, published in 1838, the biographer Carlo Ritorni coined a new term – “coreodramma” – in order to underline the uniqueness of Viganò’s choreographic art. Nevertheless, what does the term “coreodramma” effectively means? The aim of this paper is to investigate and problematize this issue, by questioning the meaning of the neologism and the reasons of its creation by Ritorni.