La Locandiera

LA LOCANDIERA (The Mistress of the Inn), premiered in Venice in January 1753 at the Sant’Angelo Theatre, with Maddalena Marliani, considered the best Italian actress of her time and the troupe’s specialist in maid parts, in the title role. The Parisian public discovered the play at the Comédie-Italienne in 1764, but in a very different version adapted by Goldoni himself under the title Camille aubergiste. At the end of the nineteenth century, Duse and Ristori, two prominent Italian actresses, both revived the role and toured the play abroad. Catulle-Mendès, who witnessed the former’s performance, described it as “joyfully exhilarating” but was critical of the dramaturgy, which compared unfavourably with Molière in his view. It wasn’t until 1912 that French audiences saw the play, directed by André Antoine at the Odéon in an adaptation by Julie Darsenne. The same adaptation was also used by Jacques Copeau in 1923 at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Copeau’s staging is a tribute to Duse who wanted Goldoni to be performed with “brio, brio, brio, brio”. The tradition of volubility still had a bright future ahead of it.

In 1952, Luchino Visconti directed the play at the Fenice in Venice. This highly debated version went entirely against the traditional style in which the play was performed, still marked by the codes of commedia dell’arte, imposing a slow pace, sober gestures and vocal delivery lacking the musicality usually attributed to Goldoni. The actors wore close-fitting costumes free of superfluous ornaments, while Visconti and Piero Tosi created a stark set design, inspired by the work of the painter Giorgio Morandi whose influence was also noticeable in the lighting. The production was seen by Parisian audiences in 1956, at the Théâtre des Nations.

The perception of Goldoni was completely transformed by this interpretation: the social and psychological aspects of his work came to the fore at the expense of the traditional picturesque image associated with him. The staging was described as “materialistic” and even “Marxist”. The French critics were quite virulent, Visconti was accused of adopting an excessive realism and renouncing a certain “Italianness”.

While France discovered Strehler’s productions in the 1970s –namely The Holiday Trilogy performed by the Comédiens-Français at the Odéon in 1978– the critics often opposed the two masters, viewing Strehler as offering a less radical interpretation that respected a certain balance between “play” and “reality”.

Jacques Lassalle’s staging of La Locandiera at the Comédie-Française in 1981 reconciled the two approaches.

Alain Françon, for his part, is following in Visconti’s footsteps and emphasising a social interpretation and the portrait of a woman who is aware of her rightful place in a hierarchical and rigid society, which in the end quite closely resembles our own.