“Clorilli”: A Pastoral Drama by Leonora Bernardi of Lucca (1559-1617)

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION: MAY 8, 2018, 6.00 P.M., Villa Sassetti
PERFORMANCE: MAY 11, 2018, 7.30 P.M., Gardens, Villa La Pietra

These two linked events offer a discussion and the first modern performance of a rare theatrical text by a sixteenthcentury female author, which survives in a sole manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice and was unknown to scholarship until 2010. Clorilli was written by the multi-talented and well-connected singer, musician, and poet Leonora Bernardi Belatti of Lucca, famous in her day but now almost entirely forgotten. The play offers a fresh and witty take on the courtly genre of pastoral drama, made fashionable by Tasso’s Aminta. Evidence internal to the text suggests that it was performed at one of the Medici villas in the early 1590s, for an audience including the grand dukes of Tuscany, Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine. The play will be performed in English in the gardens of NYU Florence’s own Renaissance villa, by the student theatrical group La Pietra Players, with guest professional actress Elia Nichols, under the direction of Eric Nicholson (NYU Florence), with design by Cameron Anderson (Brandeis University), and research input from Virginia Cox (NYU), Lisa Sampson (UCL), Anna Wainwright (University of New Hampshire), and Emily Wilbourne (CUNY). The text performed is translated by Anna Wainwright and abridged by Eric Nicholson.

The pre-performance round table on May 8 will feature Cameron Anderson (Brandeis University); Emily Wilbourne (Queen College and Graduate Center, CUNY), Virginia Cox (New York University); Eric Nicholson (NYU Florence); Lisa Sampson (UCL) and it will incorporate discussion of Leonora Bernardi’s literary and musical career, and of the experience of adapting and staging the play.