Chapter 3 - Mediating Improvisation and Improvising Mediation

Summary

This chapter explores the relationship between improvisational performance and periodical journalism by way of the international reception of celebrity improvvisatore Tommaso Sgricci’s performances in Paris and London in 1824 and 1826. Accounts of Sgricci’s improvised tragedies proliferated in French, German, and English newspapers and literary magazines; when transcripts of his improvisations appeared in book form, they generated further reviews over the next several years. This constellation of live performances and written texts, along with the process of remediation that occurs between them, provokes reflections on the reciprocal relationship between a spontaneous and evanescent form of theatre and the differently time-bound genres of print culture. The international reception of Sgricci’s performances reveals transnational networks between late-Romantic periodicals as well as cultural differences that appear when journalists adapt their reviews to different local readerships.