Celebrazione della giustizia e retorica della libertà: la ricezione milanese di Alfieri

This paper examines the reception of Vittorio Alfieri in Milan. If the Enlightened city of the Habsburg had proved quite insensitive to this poet of «strong feeling», during the Jacobin Triennium, Alfieri’s tragedies were frequently performed on republican stages, and long reviews about his plays, published in the Milanese Jacobin journals, welcomed the creation of a new repertoire worthy of a free people. Even though those highly politicized journalists have long been taken as witnesses above suspicion, a look into some original documents and an analysis of Alfieri’s texts performed, or (often quite surprisingly) not chosen for the scenes, make it clear that the popularity of Alfieri’s works on Milanese scenes was connected to the French establishment and its needs to manufacture consent not less than to a call for a genuine patriotic, revolutionary and republican theatre.