“The action that gives soul, spirit, and existence to things must be governed by the movements of the body, by gestures, by the face and by the voice, now raising it, now lowering it, becoming enraged and immediately becoming calm again; at times speaking hurriedly, at others slowly, moving the body now in one, now in another direction, drawing in the arms, and extending them, laughing and crying, now with little, now with much agitation of the hands. Our Signora Anna is endowed with such lifelike expression that her responses and speeches seem not memorized but born at the very moment. In sum, she transforms herself completely into the person she represents, and seems now a Thalia full of comic gaiety, now a Melpomene rich in tragic majesty.”
These words are by Giulio Strozzi, published in Le glorie della Signora Anna Renzi romana (Venice, 1644). Translated here by Ellen Rosand and presented in her book Opera in the Seventeenth-Century Venice, 1990, p. 232. See also: Belgrano 2011:36
