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The
Milanese Carlo Bertolazzi (1870-1916), working in the late nineteenth
century, anticipated very modern ideas in his theatrical texts and insistently
emphasised wide-ranging social themes.
The
setting in the world of the less prosperous inhabitants of late nineteenth
century Milan resulted in the choice of the Milan vernacular language
as its logical consequence. “La povera gent” (Poor people, 1893), Bertolazzi’s
masterpiece in four acts, was intended to form part of a trilogy “El
nost Milan”, which, however, remained uncompleted. The author set the
story in 1890 and developed it in various locations characteristic of
the impoverished quarters of Milan. The leading players are, appropriately,
the poor, depicted with masterly skill by Bertolazzi. They do not remain
an anonymous crowd, even though there is no real hero. The choral pattern
subordinates the dramatic action. The first act takes place in Tivoli,
an area of dilapidated huts, where there is a fairground and a circus,
swarming with beggars, thieves and the indigent. The second act analyses
the lottery draw in the Broletto courtyard, which take place amid loud
comments from workmen and carters, where a turning point in life is
being desperately sought. The third act takes place in the Soup Kitchens
at lunchtime, while the fourth describes life in a women’s dormitory.
The whole never declines into bathos, but is conducted with real life
naturalness. Nina is a beautiful girl, daughter of Peppon, a street
actor and fire-eater. Rico, the clown, condemned by consumption, dies
and Togasso, the typical braggart, has got his eye on Nina. Peppon,
however, has warned Togasso to steer clear of his daughter. But she,
subjugated, runs off with Togasso. And the father’s killing of Togasso
is not sufficient to vindicate his honour. The young woman, tired of
that life, rebels against the numerous privations and turns to Martina,
who “places” poor but beautiful girls, forcing them to give their bodies
to rich men in search of new lovers. The author participates with affection
in an affair that seems to be one with no opening for hope, in the inertia
of a condition that seems impossible to change. Another play by Bertolazzi
in Milan dialect is “La gibigianna” (1898) in which the first two contrasting
acts demonstrate the playwright’s great powers of theatrical description.
The first act presents the characters in their rented bedroom, a squalid
place that overlooks an inviting and delightful-smelling restaurant.
The second act takes place in the restaurant and delineates people of
a different social extraction, where the contrast between the two social
realities, the world of the poorest of the poor and that of the notably
rich, becomes strident.
Venice
also has an outstanding representative in late eighteenth century Italian
dialect theatre: Giacinto Gallina (1852-1897).
He
was considered a successor of Goldoni, though he obviously treats the
subjects in a way that updates them from the eighteenth century traditions.
The most successful of his plays from this first phase is “El moroso
della nona” (1880) where the pathetic is inserted into a hilarious and
playful base. There followed a period of silence, of withdrawal from
theatre in dialect, the sign of a crisis of invention. However Gallina
returned to writing in Venetian in “La famegia del santolo” (1892),
which critics consider his masterpiece, this time bringing to the stage
the bourgeois, not the working class environment, which has one of its
fixed points in the essential dialogue of daily life, a clear example
of realist theatre. Gallina thus stands out for the naturalness of his
description of personalities and his replacement of types clearly derived
from eighteenth century origins by psychological elements within the
theatrical action. (traduzione:Interpres sas-Giussano)
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