The Bald Soprano^243
Robert MassinIf Robert Massin (b. 1925 ) had not done anything else during his extended
career as typographer, art director, and editor, the frantically kinetic book he
designed in 1964 for Eugene Ionesco’s absurd “anti-play”La Cantatrice
Chauve,which is known in its American edition as The Bald Soprano( 1965 )
and in the English edition as The Bald Prima Donna( 1966 ), ensures his
place in the pantheon. He pioneered a kind of expressive typography that
just two decades later would be common and easy to achieve with the aid
of computer programs, but in 1964 Massin only had the digits on his two
hands to work with. Influenced by the metaphoric and kinetic parole in
liberta endemic to futurism, dada, and constructivism,The Bald Sopranowas
Massin’s attempt to capture what Laetitia Wolff, curator of “Massin in
Continuo,” a retrospective exhibition at the Herb Lubalin Study Center
of Cooper Union, New York (Winter 2002 ), calls, “the dynamism of the
theatre within the static confines of the book.”
Massin loved live performance and saw this play over twenty times.
So, what he wanted was to project in print all the nuances, inflections, and
ticks that the actors experienced on stage. He assigned to each character a