Otto Brahm: il dibattito critico sulla scena teatrale berlinese (1881-1892)

Abstract

The research deals with the activity of theatre critic Otto Brahm (1856-1912), a German man of letters and man of the theatre, mostly known, within the theatre studies, for being founder and animator of the theatre association FreieBühne (1889), director of the Deutsches(1894 - 1904) and of the Lessing Theater (1904 - 1912) in Berlin. The study identifies the cultural lines that contributed, through the instrument of theatre criticism, to the diffusion of the naturalist movement in Germany and to the definition of identity of German theatre life in the years between 1881 and 1892. The direct sources used, mainly journalistic articles, essays and letters written by Brahm - and found in Berlin at the Akademie der Künste, the Staatsbibliothek and the Humboldt Bibliothek - are essentially in German. Brahm's thought, which springs from the analysis of the sources, absorbs a series of instances which include the doctrines of evolution and deterministic randomness, the denial of the limits of art, a certain literary antidogmatism which cooperate in the name of progress identified as inevitable and which the critic has a duty to support. The journalistic activity, in an extensive analysis carried out year by year for each newspaper, has proved to be a priceless treasure trove of the principles of a complex figure of man of letters and theatre director whose aim is to guide the public, theatre directors and actors at the end of the 19th century in the distinction between the purely speculative phenomena (the translations and re-elaboration of French piécesbienfaites) and the nascent dramaturgy, embodied in the exemplary cases of Henrik Ibsen and Gerhart Hauptmann. The research work is completed by a documentary appendix consisting of German translations of a significant sample of reviews based on the dramas of Ibsen and Hauptmann, together with a considerable exchange of letters between Brahm and Hauptmann. [edited by Author]