Traductions, transformations, transmutations du Pygmalion de Rousseau dans les royaumes de Naples et de Sicile

The Rousseau’s Melodrama, Pygmalion, first time staged in 1771 at Lyon, arrived in Naples in 1773 performed in French by a French theatrical company and with the music composed by Aspelmayr. At the same time in the kingdom of Naples, like in northern Italy and in Austria, the first Italian translations and the first attempt to change the original text in an Opera libretto put essential questions about the translation of theatrical texts and especially the change of a dramatic-musical form, a semiotic transmutation. In 1797, in Palermo, according to the historian Pitrè, was staged a Pigmalione or Pigmaglione translated perhaps by Sografi, transmuted in operatic form, put in music by Asioli or Sirotti or Cimador. In Catania, another town of the Bourbon Kingdom, a libretto was printed in 1791 for the performance of a Pimmalione in melodramatic form but in Italian language. The music was by Gluck: so we can read in the libretto; but it’s much more probable that the musician was Aspelmayr, like in Venice, where it was printed the first time Perini’s translation used also in Catania. Many cuts in this translation also perfected the trivialization of the dramatic invention and of the play by Rousseau.