Ajaccio: at Maison Bonaparte, Corsica makes a show

Objects, clothes, archival documents: the Bonaparte house offers an immersion in Corsica of theaters, games and parties. And it proposes to discover a forgotten part of the history of our island.

When did we abandon theater for screens, poetry for networks, opera for streaming? At what time did the Corsicans get tired of their fiery Moorish, this armed dance that united “from the shepherd to the first nobility “ ?

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Sober title Shows and entertainment in Corsica at the time of the Bonapartesthe new exhibition of the Maison Bonaparte is born with the publication by Jean-Christophe Liccia of a remarkable work: Games, music, dance and theater in Corsica (2019). A piece of cultural history, which reveals a Corsica animated by the scene, the party and the games. Between 1769 and 1870, “it was the period when people danced the most in Corsica”smiles the curator and curator of the exhibition, Jean-Marc Olivesi.

Corsica was then a society open to the world, imbued with both the knowledge of the great Italian epics that are Jerusalem liberated and the roland furious, but also the most famous works. The shepherds then call their daughters Clorinda or Armida in homage to Tasso or Ariosto. And “we played Semiramis by Rossini every two years in Ajaccio “recalls Jean-Marc Olivesi.

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If poetry irrigates popular traditions, theaters are the beating heart of cities. In Bastia, at the end of the 18th^And century, the Comte de Marbeuf built the first wooden theater on the island. We give it The Inn of Paisello, the Lucky Jealousies d’Anfonssi and according to Jean-Christophe Liccia, around 200-300 people flock to each show. A century later, it was replaced by a more modern building, designed by the Italian architect Andrea Scala.

La Moresca de Vescovato

One of the treasures of the itinerary is a small anonymous drawing found in the collections of the Museum of Corsica and which depicts the interior of the Bastia theater during the Restoration. “A discovery”Élisabeth Caude is enthusiastic, at the head of the network that brings together the national museum of the castles of Malmaison and Bois-Préau, the two Napoleonic and African museums on the island of Aix and the museum of the house of Bonaparte. “It’s really unique. You can see the three galleries, the suspended mode”says the curator, admiring the brown washes of the small sheet. “There are not many representations of theater interiors from this period”explains who coordinated the exhibition Parties and shows at the Court in 2017, at the Palace of Versailles.

With beautiful cross-sections, the exhibition also brings the late Saint-Gabriel theater back to life from its ashes, whose fire in 1927 left the Ajacciens orphans.

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The course also gives ample space to popular traditions, in the foreground the Moresca, these open-air shows that brought together dozens of actor-dancers and that have so impressed Abbot Gaudin. Made by Michel Raffaelli, the illustrations of the Moresca that he frequented in Vescovato and that he recounted in his Trip to Corsica (1787), transcribes the choreographic effort of the shows.

Quadrille games and automata testify to a society looking for fun. “When you discover objects and make them talk to each other, it is as if they are reworking their own history”, Elisabeth Caude smiles. As for music, her omnipresence materializes in the leading instrument of popular festivals between the 17th^And and 19^And century: cetera.

Edited by Albiana, the catalog is also a gold mine. Written by Antoine-Marie Graziani, Eugène Gherardi, Xavier Trojani, Michel-Edouard Nigaglioni or Jean-Christophe Liccia, the well-documented essays reveal an island rich in culture and little-known parts of its history.

From 14 October to 15 January 2023