The three-day intensive programme of seminars and masterclasses is intended for singers, continuo players, actors, musicologists, and composers interested in exploring the relationships between music, the body, gesture, spoken performance, and the construction of performative presence within their own artistic research. The initiative adopts a historically grounded perspective while emphasizing practical applicability to contemporary performance.
Led by Laila Neuman, a specialist in historical acting techniques, an active performer in opera and music theatre, and a leading scholar in practice-based research on historical acting methods, the masterclass offers a rare opportunity to engage with scholarly inquiry, source-based reflection, practical experimentation, and embodied artistic practice.
Research Seminar and Round Table
The opening session, devoted to current perspectives in artistic research, will address key issues concerning visuality, theatricality, and the embodiment of actio between the Renaissance and the Baroque, examined from the privileged perspective of performance. Presentations will bring historical sources, theoretical treatises, case studies, and performance practices into dialogue, not only in relation to music for the stage but also within broader performative contexts in which gesture, voice, bodily disposition, spatial awareness, and the construction of affect contribute to the definition of the artistic and musical event.
Particular attention will be given to the interaction between different forms of expertise—musical, rhetorical, theatrical, and physical—and to the ways in which these dimensions become integrated within the performer, producing a unified expressive outcome that transcends the mere sum of its individual components.
The presentations will be followed by an open discussion with the audience, including critical reflections on the contemporary applicability of both historical and practice-based research.
Masterclass in Historical Acting
The masterclass constitutes the practical core of the initiative, bringing participants directly into the realm of stage action. Through collective warm-ups, individual coaching, small-group work, theatrical and gestural improvisation, guided observation, and micro-teaching sessions, participants will engage with fundamental aspects of performance, including physicality, stage presence, the management of affects and passions, the relationship between musical gesture and dramatic action, the organization of performative space, and the interaction between performer, partners, instruments, stage environment, and spoken text.
The work will be oriented not only towards understanding historical techniques but also towards activating them within the body of the contemporary performer. The aim is to discover new expressive possibilities, refine bodily awareness, deepen engagement with text and music, and develop a stage presence that is more compelling, communicative, and memorable.
Collective sessions are designed to be fully engaging even for participants who do not undertake continuous individual work, while active participants, subject to availability, will receive more personalized guidance and have the opportunity to explore specific tools for developing both dramaturgical and musical embodiment, as well as the profound interaction between the two.
Practical activities will alternate between collective, individual, and small-group sessions, fostering shared learning, mutual observation, and more detailed feedback on individual work. This combination of formats enables participants to progress on multiple levels, cultivating technical awareness, expressive sensitivity, and the practical application of the concepts addressed.
Small-group sessions will focus on specific aspects of stagecraft, including the work of the affects, bodily attitudes, facial expression, character construction, and the organic relationship between imagination, voice, and action. These elements will first be explored separately and then progressively integrated in order to develop a coherent, vibrant, and communicative performative presence.
Particular attention will be devoted to contrapposto and freedom of movement. Through a combination of guided observation—including the analysis of visual sources and historical materials—and physical experimentation, participants will be encouraged to investigate different ways of carrying and inhabiting the body, allowing naturalness, balance, and mobility to become the foundations of stage expression. Attention will also be given to bodily attitudes inspired by both iconographic sources and descriptions found in historical treatises and actors’ testimonies. Once embodied by the contemporary performer, these expressive physical configurations can become powerful dramaturgical devices, capable of evoking historical imagery while communicating effectively to present-day audiences.
Sessions devoted to affects and declamation will examine the complex relationship between bodily memory, emotion, textual articulation, and vocal colour, demonstrating how these elements directly shape rhetorical effectiveness and the quality of stage presence.
In addition, small-group activities will include sessions of theatrical and gestural improvisation aimed at exploring, in real time, characters’ reactions, interpersonal dynamics, emotional transitions, and the possibilities generated by the interaction of word, gesture, and space.
Finally, the small-group sessions, together with those specifically dedicated to doctoral researchers, will place the general principles of historical performance practice in dialogue with work on the participants’ chosen repertoire. In this way, the experience is intended not only as a formative opportunity but also as one that can be transferred directly into artistic and research practice.
Curator
- Livio Ticli
Lecturer
Speakers
- Livio Ticli