The Other 19th Century of Fanny Sadowski: Problems, Methods, Positions

This paper will focus on the main methodologies of investigation used throughout a PhD project concerning Fanny Sadowski, one of the most beloved prose actresses between 1840 and 1870. The aim of the research was not only to claim the importance of a figure with a compromised historical memory, but rather to explore, starting from the circumstances of Fanny Sadowski, some more general issues of the nineteenth-century Italian theater. The approach, from the very beginning cross-cutting, did not exclude the review of daily newspapers and specialized journals, the analysis of the repertoire, theatrical texts staged, chronicles and biographies, but also of a varied corpus of still unpublished letters.