The Actor-King. Theater in Ancient Rome.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 1387 |
| Format | 14 x 22.5 |
| Détails | 475 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 1986 (2nd printing) |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782251338118 |
Rome, a civilization of spectacles, is known for its circus games, but it is not known that the theater held at least as important a place there. The Romans, from the time of the Republic, went to the theater ten times more than the Athenians. This book therefore seeks to do justice to tragedy, comedy, but also to mime and Roman pantomime. For this theater was also profoundly original. By the place it held in the life of the Roman citizen, as a space of freedoms – political freedom and liberation of the imagination. By the ambiguous status of the actors: true stars, they fascinated the Romans, received sumptuous fees and were followed by crowds of admirers, at the same time as they were branded with infamy and likened to prostitutes. By the musical character of the performances, sung and danced, where we must see the origin of opera. It is impossible to understand what Rome really was if we do not reconstruct this privileged leisure of the citizen, which little by little devoured his private and public life, to the point that Saint Augustine, at the end of the Empire, defined the Roman as a spectator, so to speak, "drugged" by the theatre.
Rome, a civilization of spectacles, is known for its circus games, but it is not known that the theater held at least as important a place there. The Romans, from the time of the Republic, went to the theater ten times more than the Athenians. This book therefore seeks to do justice to tragedy, comedy, but also to mime and Roman pantomime. For this theater was also profoundly original. By the place it held in the life of the Roman citizen, as a space of freedoms – political freedom and liberation of the imagination. By the ambiguous status of the actors: true stars, they fascinated the Romans, received sumptuous fees and were followed by crowds of admirers, at the same time as they were branded with infamy and likened to prostitutes. By the musical character of the performances, sung and danced, where we must see the origin of opera. It is impossible to understand what Rome really was if we do not reconstruct this privileged leisure of the citizen, which little by little devoured his private and public life, to the point that Saint Augustine, at the end of the Empire, defined the Roman as a spectator, so to speak, "drugged" by the theatre.