Abstract
Abstract The project aims at renewing the methodologies and perspectives for investigating the performing arts through dialogue and interdisciplinary cooperation between Humanities (Theatre Studies, Musicology, and Aesthetics) and Social Sciences (Economics and Law) with the help of Informatics. Despite the vast amount of literature about the creative industries, and especially about the cinema, the relationship between the performing arts, economics, public financing, and cultural policies still requires more investigation, both in a historical and contemporary perspective. A major study, dealing expressly with the analysis of primary sources and quantitative data, is necessary. The project aims at filling in this gap of knowledge through the analysis of large and hitherto unexplored archival sources that have been produced by major theatrical entities, public institutions, and single individuals on State, regional, and local level over the last 150 years. This wide documentation is of theatrical, economical, juridical, and political nature, and it represents an uncharted reservoir of quantitative and qualitative data: if correctly processed and analysed, also with the aid of machine-learning technology, it is likely to achieve ground-breaking results in terms of the capacity of reading the historical evolution of the Italian theatrical system from the unification to nowadays. The research activities investigate the evolution of the market on artistic production and consumption from a highly interdisciplinary perspective. The objective is to introduce also in Italy a methodology that has proven to be ground-breaking abroad, as the PI and the LRs have experienced in their previous international research. The project envisages four large-scale case studies, covering the chronological span that goes from the 1840s to the present. Each Unit focuses on a specific case-study, although collaboration is key to the proposal. The business acumen and the entrepreneurial behaviour of two major figures of the liberal age - the composer Giuseppe Verdi and the actress Adelaide Ristori – are investigated by the Units of Palermo and Genoa through the study of uncharted archival sources preserved in Parma, Milan, and Genoa. The Unit of Rome La Sapienza focuses on the cultural policies developed by the fascist government and their tenure during the early republican years through the unexplored documents of the Ministero del Turismo e dello Spettacolo, preserved at the Central State Archive. The Unit of Bologna investigates the contemporary performing arts market, analysing the impact of the State and regional innovations of the legislative framework that have taken place since the 2001 Constitutional reform.
Results achieved
Each unit developed an interdisciplinary research path, focusing on specific historical periods that allowed them to explore the evolution of Italian live performance through key moments in the development of the regulatory system and production practices of Italian theatrical and musical history. The topics examined focused on the nineteenth century of Verdi and Ricordi and the Grande Attore (actor-manager), the transition from Fascism to the Republic, and the contemporary scene. Each of these topics was approached based on extensive documentary research conducted on primary sources, mostly unpublished and often neglected in theatre studies and musicology — such as corporate reports, administrative documents, accounting records, contracts, laws, and provisions — produced by theatres, publishing houses, companies, institutions, and private individuals over a chronological timeframe spanning nearly two centuries, from the 1840s to 2025. These documents enabled a vast collection of quantitative data — hundreds of thousands of records — systematised for the first time using computer systems and data visualisation and analysed using qualitative methodologies and close collaboration between scholars from diverse disciplines, from economic history to administrative law, from finance to commercial law, and from digital information technology. This interdisciplinary exchange enriched our understanding of key moments in the history of cultural policy in Italy, highlighting how the evolution of the institutional and economic framework has influenced aesthetics and performance practices in ways that have long been underestimated. While the literature on the creative industries is extensive, especially in the field of film studies, the research outcomes underly a notion that is certainly not new, but nonetheless powerful: that attention to the economic factors of artistic creation leads to a more complex and realistic understanding of the dynamics shaping the development of the live performance system from the unification of Italy to the present, at times confirming and clarifying, on the basis of renewed documentary evidence, trends already identified by historiography, at other times refuting narratives constructed on ideological or anecdotal grounds. Finally, the project led to the creation of two databases: MIDAS (Mappatura Italiana Dati Attività di Spettacolo / Italian Mapping of Entertainment Activities), which is currently the largest database in Italy, mapping over 65.000 funding records and 12.000 theatre companies in Italy, and the Verdi-Ricordi Accounts Database, which records and maps for the first time, with over 3.500 records, all the revenues Verdi received during his lifetime from the circulation of his works. The project led to numerous dissemination activities, starting with the conference held in Rome on November 5-6, 2024, which saw the participation of, among others, Undersecretary of State Gianmarco Mazzi (Ministry of Culture), as well as discussions with international guests (Virginie Yvernault, representing the Registres de la Comédie-Française research group, Peter Marx, Jutta Toelle, and Thomas Schmidt) and Italian guests (Lucio Argano, Francesca Cantore, Federica D’Urso, Damiano Garofalo, Pierluigi Ledda, Giacomo Manzoli, Mirco Modolo, Paolo Noto, Armando Petrini, Alessandro Pontremoli, Gaetano Sabatini, Emanuele Senici, Gloria Staffieri), whose contributions were essential in defining the evolution of the research from an interdisciplinary perspective. Preliminary findings were discussed in a dedicated session at the annual congress of the International Federation for Theater Research (Cologne, 9-13 June 2025) and at the conference “The Verdi Opera Factory, Yesterday and Today” (Parma, 2-3 September 2025). The AGIS “Giornate dello Spettacolo” (10-11 December 2025), in the presence of the Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli, gave space to research on the contemporary live performance system. The final conference (Bologna, 7-8 October 2025) highlighted further connections with film and music production thanks to discussions with Marco Cucco, Paolo Noto, and Emilio Sala. The international dimension of the project was accentuated by initiating a methodological and epistemological comparison with the research developed by the group led by David O'Shaughnessy (University of Galway) as part of the ERC project “Theatronomics: the business of theatre, 1732-1809”. Dissemination activities also include the creation of the project’s website and the publication of articles for the general public, including one by the PI on the web magazine Ateatro. The PRIN 2022 led to several publications, including 1 edited collection, 5 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, 3 chapters in book, 1 monographic issue of an international review. Some of these works appeared during the project’s timeframe, while others are currently under review or in press (detail below). Published works: - Paoletti M., Cavaglieri L., Locatelli S., Vernazza R., Spettacolo dal vivo, economie, politiche culturali. Italia 1840-2025, Bologna, AlmaDL, 2026, ISBN 9788854972254, ISSN 2421-0722, DOI: https://doi.org/10.6092/unibo/amsacta/8829 [Edited collection] - Cavaglieri, L. – Chichiriccò, E. – Romani, M., Tournée et célébrité. Analyse économique du «giro del mondo» d’Adelaide Ristori (1874-1876), in «Revue d’Histoire du Théâtre», n. 302, 1/2026 [article] - Paoletti, Matteo, Funding theatre in Italy: critical scenarios across the pandemic, «CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW», 2025, 35, pp. 222 – 233 [article] - Paoletti, Matteo; Carbonaro, Alessandra; Roncone, Giuseppe Luca, Politiche di finanziamento pubblico e privato, in: Rapporto AGIS 2025. Analisi, numeri e prospettive del settore dello spettacolo dal vivo tra economia, cultura e occupazione, Roma, AGIS, 2025, pp. 126 – 155 [book chapter] - Giuseppe Amato, Nicola De Pirro, il primo Direttore generale dello Spettacolo. Intervento pubblico tra cesura e continuità (1935-1963), in Nuovi crocevia per lo spettacolo: linee di ricerca e generazioni a confronto, a cura di Cecilia Carponi, Livia Cavaglieri, Giada Cipollone, Fabrizio Fiaschini, Stefania Onesti, Aldo Roma, Simona Scattina, Milano University Press, Milano 2025, pp. 197-208. [book chapter] - Paoletti, Matteo, Emergenze, “resilienza” e squilibri: l’esplosione dei contributi extra FUS/FNSV allo spettacolo dal vivo (2014-2025), «ECONOMIA DELLA CULTURA», 2025, 2, pp. 433 - 454 [article] - Paoletti, Matteo; Celati, Benedetta, Vecchi problemi, “nuovi” player: il ruolo delle fondazioni di origine bancaria nel sistema dello spettacolo dal vivo italiano, in: Arti come Agency. Il valore sociale e politico delle arti nelle comunità, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2024, pp. 106 - 119 [book chapter] - Stefano Locatelli e Giuseppe Amato, Giulio Andreotti e Nicola De Pirro tra compromessi e strategie della Direzione generale dello Spettacolo: Assassinio nella cattedrale a San Miniato e le prime norme sui teatri stabili, «Biblioteca Teatrale», n. 141, gennaio-giugno 2024, pp. 393-418 [article]Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Matteo Paoletti
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento delle Arti
Coordinatore:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Contributo totale di progetto: Euro (EUR) 200.749,00
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 53.560,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
17/10/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
