Performing Classics under Fascism

The APGRD's Performing Classics under Fascism project explores the use of classical antiquity in the 'spectacularization' of culture under fascist regimes.

The so-called ‘cultural turn’ in Fascist studies has recently shifted attention to the different national variants of fascism and their relationships with modernism and to fascism’s narrative of national regeneration.

Whilst proclaiming historical and spiritual continuity with ancient Rome, fascism’s revival of the classical past was also an expression of a desire to modernise culture – through new media technologies, modernist architecture, and performance aesthetics.

Archives

Researchers on this project have worked on APGRD’s Leyhausen-Spiess collection, which contains rich material relating to productions in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany before the outbreak of World War 2. Other collections and archival material that feature in this project, and with which members regularly collaborate, include the INDA Archives in Syracuse (National Institute of Ancient Drama, Sicily), Laboratorio Dionysus (Trento), and Fondo Romagnoli at the Biblioteca Civica Tartarotti (Rovereto).

Black and white photograph of a large group of performers, all stood with their right arm raised above their heads

Rehearsal for The Persians, Berlin, 1935 (APGRD Collections)

Wilhelm Leyhausen, silhouetted centre, rehearses his 'Sprechchor' (speaking-chorus).

Future investigations include the role of open-air performances of ancient Greek and Roman theatre and festivals in fascist and para-fascist regimes in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Argentina in the interwar period.

Publications

So far, four publications have developed from the project:

G. Di Martino, E. Ioannidou and S. Troiani (eds), A Hellenic Modernism: Greek Theatre and Italian Fascism, special issue of Classical Receptions Journal 16 (2024) 1.
G. Di Martino, ‘The Ancient Greek Theatre Model and Italian Fascism. Performing Greek Tragedy in the Ancient Roman Theatre of Sabratha (1937-1938)’, in S. Agbamu, E. Giusti (eds), Classics and Italian Colonialism (forthcoming 2024: De Gruyter).
E. Ioannidou, ‘Chorus and the Vaterland: Greek Tragedy and the Ideology of Choral Performance in Inter-War Germany’, in J. Billings, F. Budelmann and F. Macintosh (eds), Choruses, Ancient and Modern, (Oxford University Press: 2013) 327-345.
E. Ioannidou, G. Di Martino, and S. Troiani (eds), (Re)Living Greece and Rome: Performances of Classical Antiquity under Fascism, special issue of Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies 12, No.2 (2023): 107-331.

Dr Giovanna Di Martino has also compiled a table of Italian Classical Productions under Fascism (1922-1942) (PDF)