Peter Van Bredael (1629-1719) Commedia Dell’Arte Scene in Italian Landscape
Commedia dell’arte (‘Professional comedy’) is an Italian theatrical form that flourished throughout Europe from the 16th through the 18th century. It relied on masks, comedy routines, and stock characters which contemporaneous audiences recognized.
Commedia shows did not have set plots or scripts. They relied on improvisation, and the skill and charisma of the actors, who always played the same character, and many of whom became quite famous.
Performances were bawdy and physical. They were the kind of show that today we would call ‘slapstick’. In fact, the term ‘slapstick’ comes from one of commedia’s most ubiquitous props: two flat pieces of wood which, when struck together, made the sound of a person being slapped. 
Commedia’s most famous characters : Harlequin, Colombina, and Pierrot The stock characters of commedia are still familiar in our day: the dashing and nimble Harlequin; the pragmatic and voluptuous Colombina; and Pierrot (or Pedrolino, ‘Little Pete’), the melancholy everyman whose perpetual bad luck provokes the laughter of the audience (think Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Bean.)Initially a lowbrow entertainment for the masses, by the end of the 19th century Commedia had become a countercultural institution, thanks to its propensity for satire, crude jokes, and violence. As such it was an inspiration for the modernists of the late 19th and early 20th century, who were seeking to replace the illusions of romanticism with unvarnished portrayals of real life (the ‘squarcio di vita’, ‘slice of life’, that Tonio promises in the prologue of Pagliacci.)
 
Picasso’s Pierrot (1919), and David Bowie as Pierrot in 1980.
As Wikipedia notes, ‘the character of Pierrot developed from that of a buffoon to become an avatar of the disenfranchised. Much of that mythic quality (“I’m Pierrot,” said David Bowie: “I’m Everyman”) still adheres to the “sad clown” in the postmodern era.’
Pierrot as the ‘sad clown’ appears in the works of T.S. Elliot, the paintings of Picasso, and the music of Stravinsky and Schönberg. The former’s ballet Petrouchka (‘Little Pete’ in Russian) and the latter’s song cycle ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ (‘Moonstruck Pierrot’) are two of the greatest masterpieces of twentieth century music, their innovation and virtuosity still unsurpassed.
 
Vaclav Nijinski as Petrouchka, and Rudolf Nureyev dancing in Pierrot Lunaire
In Leoncavallo’s 1893 Pagliacci, the character of Pierrot, played by Canio in the fateful play-within-a-play, is even stripped of his traditional name, and dismissively referred to as ‘Pagliaccio’: ‘Clown’. Besides singing, arguably, the most heartbreaking aria in the operatic repertoire, he is the archetype of the sad/mad clown who, after more than a century of reincarnations, recently returned as the title character in Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker.’ 
Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Joker’, and Robert Stahley in Glimmerglass Opera’s production of Pagliacci last summer.
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