A medal commemorating the performance of Viganò’s ballet Prometeo in 1814

A medal commemorating the performance of Viganò’s ballet Prometeo in 1814

Contributor: Lilla Maria Crisafulli

Location: In the possession of the author

Description: This medal, struck in 1817, commemorates the work of one of the greatest dancers and choreographers of  ballet history, creator of the so-called choreodrama, Salvatore Viganò (1769-1821). It reads:

A SALVATORE VIGANO’ / IMPAREGGIABILE COREOGRAFO/ CHE COLLA/  RAPPRESENTAZIONE DEL PROMETEO/  DATA  L’ AN MDCCCXIV/  NEL REGIO TEATRO DI MILANO / IMMORTALATOSI. /TANTA GLORIA. NELLA MIRRA / E NEL PSAMMI / BRILLANTE. TVTTAVIA / SOSTIENE/  GLI AMMIRATORI DEL BELLO/ SACRAVANO MERITATAMENTE/  NEL MDCCCXVII.

[TO SALVATORE VIGANO’ SUPREME CHOREOGRAPHER WHO WAS IMMORTALIZED FOR THE STAGING  OF HIS PROMETEO  IN THE YEAR 1814  IN THE ROYAL THEATRE OF MILAN. MUCH GLORY FOR HIS MIRRA AND BRILLIANT IN PSAMMI. HOWEVER ADMIRERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL PRAISED HIM DESERVEDLY IN 1817.]

Viganò’s Prometeo opened on 22 May 1813 and met with an unprecedented popular triumph. This ballet was one of Viganò’s fantastic-allegorical dances that Ritorni calls pantomimo-dramas, transitional ballets located somewhere between the ballet en action and the danced poem. In all, Viganò composed more than 40 ballets of which 15 were these pantomimo-dramas, heroic dances or grand ballets animated by hero-comic or tragicomic actions. The so-called “passo d’azione alla Viganò“ [pas en action à la Viganò] was to dance what Wagner’s infinite melody was to opera. The ballet entirely danced à la Viganò disappeared with his death in 1821, until, a century later, the Russians rediscovered it, and used it as a basis for their choreographies. Admiration for Salvatore Viganò and his revolutionary dance had a lot to do with Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Italian experience and underlies the expression of his revolutionary poetics in Prometheus Unbound (1820).

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