The Herla Project: Inventorying Gonzaga’s Italian and European documentation on performance

This paper intends to point out the leading criteria and the methodological or practical questions, which brought to elaborate the Herla database of Mantova Capitale Europea dello Spettacolo foundation. The Herla Project arises to collect the documentation related to the spectacular activity supported by the Gonzaga at the time of their maximum splendour (1480-1630). This kind of material, representing a conspicuous part of the entire world-wide documentation on Renaissance and Baroque spectacularity, is scattered all over the archives of Europe and of the Italian cities related with Mantuan Court at that time. Herla is the database in which these evidences are recorded with a brief abstract, some key words and a sequence of categories useful to simplify the research (on line on www.capitalespettacolo.it web-site). The topic of the research on which the project is based, is meant in its widest sense: not only theatre examined in its literal sense (Court theatre, Commedia dell’Arte, Opera, Hebraic theatre), but also all the events which required stage setting – starting from sumptuous nuptial banquets, in which actors, dancers and musicians took part, up to triumphal entries, funeral honours, carnival masquerades, tourneys. A fundamental part of the job has been dedicated to setting out database and methodological criteria. With a collection of numerous documents samples, representing a variety of typologies, which allowed contemplating a range of cases as wide as possible, we devoted to check the program to set up each detail of the database and to get it to its final aspect.