The Commedia dell'arte in Puccini's opera,

Gianni Schicchi : Forms and functions

The Commedia dell’arte has become a privileged object of historical studies

about the origin of the modern "show" or "spectacle", as well as an essential

point of reference for the renewed theoretical interest in the mise en scène and

in contemporary comic opera. The Commedia presents both a living and

contradictory image of making theater that, behind its overtly populist and

grotesque superficiality, shakes and destabilizes the social order.

The composer Puccini and librettist Forzano were looking for
a story which could represent a microsociety just like they
were living in at the beginning of the XX century.
They found it in the one described in Gianni Schicchi.
The composer and the librettist were living a time of change
and transformation, potential containers of creativity and
rebellion, set against the backdrop of a vast staircase – the
year is 1918: that was remembered as the time and epoch of
the avant-garde.
 The theatrical phenomena of interest here sprang from ferments of protest in

the form of popular demonstrations, both during the Middle Ages and the 1900's

avant-garde. In the Opera these protests are developed and legitimated, especially

in Opera buffa, the study of which highlight the linguistic categories formulated

by Michail Bakhtin, and especially his theory of “Carnival” (Bakhtin 1965).

 During Carnival, barriers of social caste, laws, and other restrictions are momentarily

suspended to allow for communication based on “free and familial contact”. In a political

culture in which radical alternatives are immediately contained and "ghettoized", it is not

surprising that the “subversion” often assumes an apparently non-political form of comic

aggressiveness that violates what are considered laws of decorum and decency. The figure and

humor of the clown embody the concept of carnival, and parody becomes a privileged tool for

moral and political subversion.

 Bakhtin lays particular emphasis on the forthrightness of parody, which in the Renaissance found its full

realization and artistic form universally recognized as the Commedia dell’arte. In the Commedia, parody is

not superficial and autoreferential, but rather has the value of protest, in as much as it takes the place of a

tragic situation for which it becomes the comic expression. Parody casts some behaviours and specific huma

and social attitudes in a negative light; and the more tragic the social context, the more powerful the parody

becomes. Here the tragic is always the counterpoint of the comic, as Aristophanes taught. The authors of the

greatest comedies crafted their own comic masterpieces so as to underline - not to ridicule - reprehensible an

unbearable social customs and states of affairs.

 The grotesque needs not be categorized as comical in its

essence. Although, to be tragic, a work must face the comic

aspect, by revealing that irony that has its roots in the

grotesque. The comic, as well as the grotesque, must be

imbued with a very strong tragic moment.

In Gianni Schicchi, the comedic elements are triggered by the exclusion,
contempt, and humiliation of so-called new emerging society class. Only "the
new” could regenerate (refresh) a decadent society such as Florence was in 1299,
according to the descriptions by Forzano's libretto.

The incorporation of Commedia dell’arte elements into opera allowed a stylistic

renewal of that genre, as well as it provided, and still does it, spectators with the
opportunity to reflect upon their own social situations.
2. Comedic subversion

In traditional Commedia dell'arte, the mask is the pivot of the show, in its function of subverting

social hierarchy and moralistic canons. Its parallel in the opera at hand is the personage of

Gianni Schicchi, disguised as Buoso Donati, who plays the “carnivalistic” role of the buffoon-

comedian that twists the order of things. Buffoons and fools are characteristic personages of

medieval comic culture. Says Tessari (1981: 59, my translation): “... the function of the buffoon-

minstrel is to upset the hierarchies in the eyes of the common people, and to upset his own

dignity in front of those who have power."

 Buffoons and minstrels performed at social gatherings, parties, and especially at Carnival,

which during the Middle Ages was a party of subversion by antinomy. Together with minstrels

and buffoons, their direct descendants, "the comedians of art", enacted an utopia of the upside

down world.
 The temporary elimination, both ideal and real, of hierarchical relationships among the

people, created on the carnival plaza a special type of communication that was unthinkable

during normal times. The carnivalized perception of life and circumstance was hostile to

everything established and taken as normal, to all that pretended to be eternal and immutable.

Such a perception had to express itself in ways opposite to those of daily norms; it had to be

dynamic, mutable, and always on the move. Parody, profanation, mock coronations and

burlesque dethronements numbered among the ways of producing a view of the "normal“ upside

down world.
 Carnival, setting itself against the parties in power, was a temporary liberation from

the dominant truth and existing regime, a provisional abolition of all rules, taboos,

privileges, and other trappings of hierarchical relationships. Carnival was the authentic

party of the day; it was the party of Becoming, change, and renewal. Opposing the given

order, Carnival turned its gaze to a potential unrealized future.

 Hierarchical relationships were abolished during Carnival. Normally, at
official parties, balls, and other social gatherings, hierarchical differences were
displayed openly and vigorously. Those who attended had to appear with all
the emblems of title, degree, and state, and they had to occupy the place
assigned to people of their specific class. A basic function of such gatherings,
parties, galas, was to consecrate and legitimate hierarchies.
 In contrast, during Carnival all people were considered as equals, and in the
carnival plaza a form of free and familial contact reigned among people who
were normally separated in daily life by insurmountable barriers such as
occupation, age, wealth and social status. During Carnival, these barriers
temporarily disappeared, and one could feel and act like a human being
among other human beings. Utopian ideal and stark reality provisionally
melted into a unique, carnivalistic perception of the world.
 As a literary theorist and proto-semiologist of culture and society, Bakhtin always locates his
theoretical reflections at the edge of dominant ideas and dominant cultural forms; he
advances his views as methods of subversive reaction to hegemonic power. His theories
embody a kind of opera buffa ideology, thus forming a suitable lens through which analyze
Gianni Schicchi.
 Bakhtin juxtaposes centrifugal, margin-oriented energies, such as “dialogism” and Carnival,
against centripetal, hegemonic centralizations of power and habit. Though already present in
his preceding work, Problemy tvorcestva Dostoevskogo (1929), Bakhtin's theory of
carnivalization is better elaborated in Tvorcestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul’tura
srednevekovíja i Renessansa (1965).
 The carnival principle abolishes all hierarchies, classes and social levels to create a new
dimension of life that is free from the rules and limits of convention. The theory of
carnivalization can explain theatrical aspects of the opera Gianni Schicchi, since Carnival was
the birthplace of modern theatre. In addition, carnivalization serves as a philosophical
category for analyzing principles of renewal and social upheavals or reversals. Both the
theatrical and philosophical aspects of carnivalization are present in Gianni Schicchi.
 The leading character represents the “new”; he is a popular figure that introduces himself into
the caste of aristocrats and rich bourgeoisie, who represent the “old”, decadent Florence of
the medieval epoch. In this opera, the “new” sweeps aside the “old”, capsizing social roles by
demystifying and subverting them, and doing so in the guise of the traditional buffoon-
comedian.
  
 3. Plurisemiosis in Gianni Schicchi 
 Musical theater participates in the essentially representative nature of spoken theater.
Opera as a whole is a representational genre, but with an added, musical dimension. Opera
simultaneously combines different semiotic systems: verbal, visual, gestural, and musical.
The first three may be found in the genre of theatrical plays, while the last one (musical
system) forms its own genre. In operatic communication, two parallel channels of
communication coexist, sometimes in harmony, and at other times interfering with one
another, depending on the oscillation between vogues and styles. This doubleness is only a
potential one, however. In order for it to be perceived by the spectator, the composer uses
the music-specific semiotic system in such a way that it diverges obviously and
independently from the verbal and visual systems.
 In Gianni Schicchi, when Puccini wants to communicate something that the oral and visual
systems suppress, he intervenes with a meaningful musical syntagm. The music of this opera
is, in fact, highly descriptive and narrative; it is not ornamentation or "background" music
that merely underscores the libretto and the representations, but an essential part of the story.
This happens, according to Carl Dahlhaus (1981), because a composer of music can take on
the power of narrator or "teller" who imparts the story. Dahlhaus goes on to argue that this
power links opera to the novel (rather than, say, to the lyric verse) and that it distinguishes
opera from the play by means of the aesthetic presence of the author. “As in the epic-
narrative genre, also in the opera the presence of a 'narrator' that leads and controls the events
is constitutive under the aesthetical profile” (Dahlhaus 1981: 185).
 4. Gianni Schicchi: Between comedy and novel
 4.1. Polyphony 
 The comic (or buffa) opera, particularly, a comedic representative of "open
form", is a genre based on plurilinguism, plurivocity, pluridiscursiveness, and
polyphony. All of these categories are defined by Bakhtin for application to
genres of discourse, even the musical one of "polyphony." In Gianni Schicchi,
the metaphor of polyphony - often used by Bakhtin to describe the tangle of
discourses and social determinations of the characters of a novel - seems to
become a concrete musical polyphony of social classes when different minuets
are played simultaneously.
 Another aspect of Gianni Schicchi links it to the style of the Commedia
dell’arte: the use of a character of inferior social level to point up moral and
ideological situations. This is a subject who doesn't belong to the dominant
classes, and he probably doesn't have the linguistic competence (and social
outlets) to express himself with strength and clarity, and in sophisticated
language. Hence this new operatic character was, in a sense, destined to
silence.
 That is the case, because of the complex rhetorical elaboration of discourse,
appropriate for the tragic characters of grand opera, would be so improbable
coming from his lips, that it would wildly exceed the bounds of probability and
theatrical vraisemblance. The only possible solution is to resort to a certain
degree of narrative mediation, which allows the author to render explicit,
through different means that are not language and words, what the character can
feel only in an obscure and unformalized way, and thus would have monumental
difficulty in expressing consciously.
 In representational genres, the solution might be found in gestural aspects or in the
symbolic semanticization of spaces, objects, and sounds, as in the tradition of the
mélodrame (Brooks 1976). However, only the novel allows us access to the
interiority of the silent character, and what he or she tries but doesn't know how to
express.
 Comic opera, then, requires multiple means of expression: verbal, gestural, and
musical. All these come together in opera buffa, to solve what we might call the
problem of "dialectical impotence"; that is to say, the inability of a character
representing an inferior socio-cultural category to express himself.
 In novels, this kind of character usually remains silent or uses a socially low linguistic
register. In opera buffa, this character - which otherwise would have been silent or would
express himself inadequately - "speaks" eloquently in song that, in the musical register,
preserves a certain socio-cultural humility and acceptability.
 In all this, there is a linguistic (and musical) game, with Puccini as the "author" (in the
literary sense) and as the one who attributes a certain characteristic register to an enunciation
that, by itself, would not require music, since music does not play any part in the scene.  
 4.2. Plurilinguism 
 Plurilinguism is most fully realized in the novelistic genre.
Compared to other literary genres, it is the novel, rather than the
lyric or the ode, most appropriated to stage the plurilinguism not
only among the different languages of characters, but also
between their languages and the “author's language”.
 Generally, opera has something of the "polyvocality" and "polydiscursiveness"
that Bakhtin has theorized as constitutive elements of the modern novel. Whereas
in lyric poetry, according to Bakhtin, the author is always in solidarity or
consonance with the tone of the poem, the language of the novel is multiple and
internally dialogical. And it occurs both when the characters speak in the form of
direct discourse, as well as when they speak in indirect discourse (rigorous or
free), as they take on elements of their "proper" linguistic register. This generates
a continuous tension, a game of delaying tactics, between the position of author
and that of the characters themselves.
 According to Bakhtin, these linguistic connotations are of social types: the
speaking person, in the novel, is essentially and substantively a social being
(1979: 94). Music, in its emblematic appearances in the scena of grand opera,
corroborates Bakhtin's view, by making those appearances pertinent to the
social circles represented. Just as music communicates the position of a group
(ethnic, religious, political, and so on), it can also assume that group's
characteristic linguistic register (though certainly not as clearly as language
does). Music, however, communicates discontinuously and at a much simpler
propositional level than does language.
 This hiatus in levels of discourse characteristically produces the effect of “estrangement” or alienation in
the observer. The latter, confronted with the differences between subjects and the smaller or larger distance
between himself and the language of the characters, takes a position from which he can compare, assess,
and judge registers of discourse.
 All that is due to the fact that opera uses narrative elements according to the novelistic model. To play with
linguistic peculiarities, and to compare the registers of discourse, is already a way of taking a position, a
means of interweaving these registers to play a game based on proximity, on the convergence or divergence
among linguistic styles, and the divergence from or convergence with all those taken together, versus the
language of the author. If every language necessarily expresses an ideology and a world-view, then all
multilinguistic texts implicate interaction and social judgment.
 Anauthor’s world-view and biases are immediately perceptible; they cannot
hide behind a façade of "neutral objectivity.” The comic mode has long played
host to the dimension of satire by, according to Aristotle, imitating people and
groups that are morally, ethically, and socially worse off than we are.
 Thecomic opera, as early as the eighteenth century, was evidencing the
narrative potential of musical theater, in its derivation from the overlap of
semiotic systems and from the consequent break-up of the illusions that it
encourages.
 Just as the language of the opera is by definition improbable and artificial, the
exasperation of characters representing certain social registers can produce
satirical effects. Dahlhaus has argued that opera buffa feds off its parody of opera
seria (serious opera) to an extent never reached by the comedy in relationship to
the tragedy (Dahlhaus 1981: 100). Such is the case because of the small amount of
identification between character’s role and his/her interpreter, which adds an
obvious and “extraneous” layer to the theatrical illusion.
 6. "Estrangement” technique in Gianni Schicchi 
 Generally in opera, vraisemblance - similarity to real life - is enormously attenuated. Opera's
most obvious departure from vraisemblance appears in the fact that everyone sings instead
of speaking. Thus, the mere presence of opera characters alone produces the effect of
“estrangement”, as defined by Bertold Brecht, and which he called Verfremdung ("making
strange"). In Gianni Schicchi, the musical dimension assumes the role of metalanguage, as a
meditation on the language and linguistic mechanisms of the libretto (and this meditation
differs from parody and intertextual quotation). The music, by exaggerating its own
presence, unmasks the conventions of the operatic genre and fictitious nature of the mise en
scène.
 It was from Rossini, above all, that Puccini inherited his treatment of the text, of the
elapsing of time, and of syntagmatic repetitions. In addition, the composer inherits these
techniques from eighteenth-century comedians: mimetic characters that through
exaggeration shaped themselves into inflated concoctions of attitudes and tics typical of the
represented character. We think, for instance, about the repeated gesture of the hanging arm
as a “stump”, which Gianni Schicchi threatens will have the group of the disinherited
relatives if they disclose the fraud in which they, too, are involved. We think also of the
character's "hypermimesis", motivated by the text of the libretto and exhibited in the
acceleration of tempo in pronouncing the syllables of "catalogue" arias.
 In this opera, Puccini systematically uses these elements in juxtaposition with possible
mimetic motivations, such as musical onomatopoeia, to produce a strong relationship with
gestural and verbal onomatopoeia. Such devices appear in scenes where the character
complains of having to weep so much after the deception of the bequeath ; such techniques
are also evident in the cries and accusations of the relatives in front of both the real corpse of
Buoso Donati and the false one (Gianni Schicchi). Added to various devices indicating
elapsed time, the foregoing techniques emerge in contexts that produce strong effects of
estrangement.
 Estrangement is introduced not only to enliven the character and role of Gianni Schicchi. As
we have noted, estrangement was the artistic and ideological device of the Commedia
dell’arte, employed to reveal a vision or ideology different from that of the represented
characters, thereby establishing a great distance between their world and their principles. In
this opera, the estrangement works in a way that inhibits any form of identification with any
of the characters, and in a way that embodies a world-view or vision that differs from that of
the represented world.
 In Gianni Schicchi, the estrangement always betrays the ordering and judging
presence of the author. In this opera, Puccini's musical metalanguage lays bare
the theatrical devices to the point of making them absurd. Moreover, it is a more
"linguistic" usage of the music than one finds, for example, in the operas of
Rossini, and as such, a more effective one for producing effects of estrangement
in the spectator.
 The estrangement employed by the Commedia dell’arte also involves an attitude
of critical distance between the character and his or her role. This attitude points
up the ethical good-conscience and maturity of the main character, Gianni
Schicchi, in comparison with the avaricious relatives, who are made to seem
ridiculous because of their inability to distance themselves from their own
situation.
 Finally, a device very common in the Commedia dell’arte closes the opera. The main
character speaks directly to the house audience of Gianni Schicchi, a gesture that fully
estranges the opera from the concept of theatrical illusion. Directing himself to the public at
the end of the opera - and without singing - Gianni Schicchi provokes a comic break with
literary fiction. Up to this moment the theatrical fiction concerned only the characters; it
was intra-diegetic. Schicchi's address to the public involves them in the work, too, inviting
them to take an active part in it. With this gesture, the opera becomes extra-diegetical,
triggering both a turnover of roles and a suspension of judgment. Again the effect of
estrangement results from the application of techniques used by the Commedia dell’arte.
 In theory, such a rupture can increase the sense of unreality or fiction; but in practice it
reveals the technique of estrangement. The latter breaks the intradiegetic fiction and, in so
doing, emphasizes and enhances the artistic aspects (literary and musical) of the opera and
the artistic work of its authors, above all of the librettist and of the composer, but also the
work of all those who contributed to the theatrical “mise en scene”. In fact, the ending of
Gianni Schicchi is one of the best examples of the rhetorical devices "captatio of
benevolence", here for the actions of the character (Gianni Schicchi), and "captatio of
applause", for the authors
 The musical dimension suits particularly for breaking with illusion at the end of this opera.
Theatrical communication confines events to a frame (of intra-diegetical fiction), inside
which communication goes from one character to another. Only outside of the frame, taken
in its totality, the show can be understood as an act of communication from the author to
the public: inside the frame, the author doesn't intervene, and the characters alone appear to
be solely responsible for their own enunciations.
 In musical theater, this scheme is enriched by one element - the music - that
is not addressed from character to character, as the words are, but directly
from the author to the public. By contrast, inside the diegetic frame, in the
world recreated on the stage, the characters communicate verbally and
understand each other's enunciations as words, not as a composer's
intruding “voice”.
 The music, on the other hand, is an added “layer”, extraneous to the fiction of
the “living and working characters”. It is something that the composer sends
directly to the spectator, superimposing it over the oral actions of the characters.
Therefore two types of communicative status cohabitate, side by side, in the
same enunciation: internal communication through verbal and self-sufficient
dramatic fiction, and outside communication, which is musical and which
traverses the closed frame, bringing with itself the direct and explicit, aesthetical
persona of the composer.
 7. Effects of the show on the spectator of Gianni Schicchi
 What does the spectator of Gianni Schicchi take home? First of all, a feeling of comfort, the
esthesic effects produced by the music and libretto; the discovery of a new opera, of the
avant-garde (we are in 1918), and of a "cult" composer. At the same time, the spectators
take home the pleasant feelings produced by laughter.
 It is often said that humor implicates a point of view on something. Bakhtin held that
laughter has a philosophical meaning as profound as that of serious or tragic concepts and
thoughts. Therefore, in comic opera, laughter assumes the form of a free critical conscience
that decries dogmatism and fanaticism. Says Bakhtin (1965: 77):
 Laughter permits a profound glimpse of world-view; it is one of the most important forms
through which truth is expressed about the world in its entirety, about history, about man; it is
a particular and universal point of view on the world, that perceives reality in a different way,
but for this is no less important - and perhaps is rather more important - than the serious
[perception of reality]; and this is why in the great literature - which, on the other hand, poses
universal problems - we have to assign to laughter the same place we give to seriousness; only
through laughter, in fact, it is permitted to access into some extremely important aspects of
reality.
 In Gianni Schicchi one also laughs at the overturning of roles. According to the
ancient tradition of the Commedia dell’arte, the respectable and the ridiculed
are not always permanent distinctions, but can be reversed. The buffoon - in
this work, the character of Gianni Schicchi - acts in a such a way that he
transforms his ridiculer into the ridiculed. In the best works of the Commedia
dell’arte, the character-masks ridicule and are in turn ridiculed, according to the
situations.
 Ridiculing is always a kind of contempt that intends to manifest the absurdity involved
in taking seriously a person, a discourse, an idea, or an event. The people that appear in
Gianni Schicchi - the relatives, the physician(doctor Spinelloccio), the notary and his
assistants - are ridiculous or amusing in both in appearance and action: body structure,
facial expression, gesture, gait, dress; that is to say, elements that in the play are taken
care of by wardrobe and makeup artists. The personages also are comical in their
physical actions, emotions, desires, states of mind, dialogue, and so on, because all these
things are actual signs of the people with which they are associated in real life.
 Hence, the funeral oration for Buoso Donati (the true and the false one) is
ridiculous because it denotes a complete absence of a sense of humor.
Conversely, an expression unrelated to funerals is, in the same circumstances,
seen as ridiculous. Finally, whatever signifies or resembles the comic - it, too, is
comic. Thus the ridicule in Gianni Schicchi is leveled at the incongruity between
the relatives' painful looks but unpainful feelings.
 A ridiculous person or group is always inferior, in the sense that such a person or
group cannot be taken seriously. In fact, humor concerns people and only
secondarily things; and even in those circumstances, to the extent they are related
to people. The humor in this work derives from ridiculing the shallow emotions
and of shady actions of the relatives, both of which are incongruous with their
social status. Also, more humor is sparked by things considered humorous; for
instance, the wit and talent of the character Gianni Schicchi.
 All these things, however different they are, have a common denominator: a reluctance to
take work seriously. They either reduce it to absurdity, to the negligible, despicable, and
ridiculous; doing so brings them pleasure.
 It seems that comedy began with invectives and personal insults (Rabelais). During its
evolution, it passed from the particular to the universal; that is to say, comedy took aim at
types of ridiculous people rather than individuals themselves. Only subsequently did comedy
turn into a Commedia dell’arte, whose goal was to parody and satirize specific social
categories.
 8. “Cathastasis” in Gianni Schicchi  
 The characteristic that most associates this opera with the Commedia dell’arte
is the attitude of critical distance produced by the laughter instigated by the
whole story, which in turn produces the effect of estrangement, of which we
have already spoken. The process that brings about estrangement is described
by Aristotle as “cathastasis” (relaxation); the latter is opposed to “catharsis”
(purgation), which induces identification rather than distance. In Gianni
Schicchi, catharsis is aroused by the thematics of a love story, displayed in
scenes showing the tendernesses exchanged by Rinuccio and Lauretta.
 The cathastasis, in contrast, reveals the greed, hypocrisy, and astuteness of the
lovers' relatives which,accordingly, produce the effects of distance and
estrangement from audience sentiment. The cathastasis occurs through absurdity
and is more effective when it happens unexpectedly. That is why people laugh
more when they sense absurdity. Absurdity is to comedy what admiration is to
tragedy. The comedy is conventional, but must capsize the conventions and
obviousness of daily life, while absurdity is right the opposite of the obviousness
and predictability.
 Catharsis privileges the tragedy that arouses fear and pity; tragedy excites interest,
which it suitably channels; eventually, it takes the mind to normality by reviving its
ability to perceive painful emotions. Cathastasis concerns comedy, which does just
the opposite: it eliminates worry, by showing us that it was absurd to expect reasons
for happenstance. Tragedy is endowed with values that comedy eliminates. Tragedy
depicts important finalities; comedy shows life as incapable of reaching such
finalities, and directs us to trivialities. We can define comedy as the imitation of an
action valueless; of an action represented and not narrated, the effect of which
produces cathastasis, a release from worry by means of absurdity.
 Ifcatharsis sublimates perception and eventually frees the mind from tension,
cathastasis does precisely the opposite. The mechanism of “cathastasis”, in the
mind of the spectator, selects and accumulates the same worries that apparently
amuse him. Representation of the absurdity of these worries initially provokes
laughter, but gradually becomes impressed on the memory. In Bakhtin's view
(1965), the spectator becomes aware of such absurdity, and as time passes by,
the sedimentation of these tensions in the individual, if shared by others, can
lead to the explosion of determinate social strengths and to the subversion of the
established system.
 Moreover, the comic allows a doubling that the tragic doesn't allow. As Dario Fo (& Allegri
1997: 124) points out, the comic is rich in exaggeration and allusion, and provides endless
means of expression. In the tragic, only the single key of compassion is available. The comic
can be played more extensively in social terms. It prompts the spectator both to laugh, then to
feel him to become worried by what made him laugh.
 In Gianni Schicchi, the authorial intent is quite evident: to transmit, by entertaining, the
serious content of social change. Fun is required according to avant-guardist demands of the
first decades of the twentieth century, and by means of artistic forms of the Commedia
dell’arte. As we have seen, these forms involve spectators so deeply that they are lured into
becoming actors in the play.
 Carnival theory suits particularly well this opera the way popularized by the
literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. The grotesque is reflected in the decoration
of one of the versions represented where figures appear with heads of birds
inserted into human bodies.
The aesthetics of carnival can be noted in the makeup of the actors, in the
exaggerated colorful dresses of the relatives, or, to go no further, in the
disguise deployed by Gianni Schicchi to replace Buoso Donati.
In the effort of debunking drama collaborate both ironic discourse and the
parody of an absurd situation.
 In the crossed dialogue between characters from different social classes (peasants,
bourgeoises and nobles), all linked by a common objective, emerges the polyphony,
which makes the most disparate subjects of society share the same space (the stage),
through the interplay of their voices represented in this work. This is an effective
way to subvert the hierarchies of socio-economic and moral character.
At the same time also the marginalized or excluded by the social system here is
emphasized either showing features of popular culture or using obscenities
interspersed in the text. After all, the main character is a humble peasant who
manages to rub shoulders with the aristocracy, and that means the victory of the new,
the modern over traditional, as it breaks the established class boundaries.
Throughout the representation, the plurisemioticity of
the operatic genre is highlighted. The opera is able to
enrich the show by integrating diverse systems of signs
as different as verbal, visual, gestural, and of course the
musical. This last element, far from playing the role of
mere accompaniment, it becomes the most critical part,
by the significance of the work.
 As far as the viewer is concerned, the alienation effect occurs as the
viewer experiences the distance from phenomena like
multilingualism and the variety of subjects on stage. (Although
sometimes the simultaneity of characters exceeds the capacity of
public reception, causing some tension or excitement).
In the opera there’s a constant tension from comic exaggeration to
fake sadness and cry: it makes fun of the values, of the themes, of
the subjects, of the entire situation, through the absurd.
There is no possible identification with the characters, as the
story is not to be taken seriously: you can simply enjoy such
an inconsequential representation. The thematic and
interpretive opposition lasts from beginning to end. It is but
another example of verisimilitude attenuated as a result of
different (and enriching contrasts: sadness / joy,
disappointment / compromise solution;
For example, as far the group of relatives is concerned:
sincerity / false behaviour (by greed, and corruption).
See the false tears of the family for the loss of Buoso
Donati vs real tears after the discovery of the will.
Appearance / reality (impersonation and deception,
also in the same Gianni Schicchi)
 At the end of the scene, there’s a conscious break from
intradiegetic fiction level when Gianni Schicchi directs his speech
to the audience, thus passing to the extradiegetic level, which
reveals the structure of the work; but paradoxically, by doing so,
he also emphasizes the fictional character and the artificiality of
any representation. This effect is unexpected and it succeeds to
impress the viewer.