• Rating:
I too, in my own small way and for whatever it may matter, once dealt with Luca Cupiello.
Eduardo dealt with those accounts his entire life. From Christmas of '31, when Luca Cupiello first saw the light of day at the Kursaal Theatre in Naples, thanks to the skilled hands of the "Teatro umoristico i De Filippo" company, and then the following year when, to that one-act play, he added a prologue (the first act) and on, until '34 when the epilogue of the third act seemed – seemed! – to put an end to that long travail.
"Triplet birth with a four-year pregnancy," Eduardo himself defined it.
And yet, still in 36/37, and later in '43 and the following years, at least until '62, Eduardo and his Luca continued to face each other. Until, in '77[1], Eduardo allowed Lucariello, in the end, to die.
Luca Cupiello, therefore, is born there, in that second act, with a heart and body already formed of Eduardo's masterpiece, and it is from his true first appearance – I believe – that one must begin to approach him.
Here Luca is presented to us through the contemptuous words of his wife Concetta, the mater dolorosa, and he has already set in motion, through unaware awkwardness, the mechanism that will lead to the final explosion of the family drama, by handing Nicolino the letter in which his daughter Ninuccia confesses her betrayal. Meanwhile, Tommasino – recalcitrat filius – is already quarreling with Uncle Pasquale while Vittorio, Ninuccia's lover, has deceitfully entered the house. Thus, when Luca finally appears on the proscenium, all the pieces, almost as in an Italian opening, are already placed on the board ready to follow the inevitable pattern that the logic of the game has destined them to, starting from the first move, again unaware and awkward, of Lucariello who prevents Concetta from kicking Vittorio out.
So here he is, at last, Lucariello inept and dreamer, a Zeno Cosini without the armor of irony, a prince Myshkin without the light of Grace, an unaware destroyer armed with inexorable and fierce candor ("a child in the body of a man, the man is no longer there, and the child has lived too long," Eduardo will have the doctor say who came to his bedside in the '62 version), a modern Sisyphus who makes and unmakes his "Presebbio" – the real cardboard one and the imaginary one of his family – with tireless obstinacy until that splendid and powerful finale in which the three "adult children" bring gifts to a desperate and catatonic Concetta while, outside, the two men "are killing each other" over Ninuccia, tearing apart, like wolves, what remains of the Cupiello family.
Needless to say, in that cold Christmas of 1931, while the regime's idiocy was playing with the lie of the myth "Fatherland, Family, and Religion," that tragic mockery, that powerful slap in the face of "Christmas at Cupiello's" could not help but leave a mark.
It was a success, the first real, great success (after the ephemeral one of "Sik-Sik, the Magic Maker") for the De Filippo brothers: the comedy remained on the bill until May, and thus, Eduardo decided to expand it.
The first act was easy: a prologue that after all doesn't add much to the elements of the picture. Eduardo merely defines with more care the dynamics between his characters with the usual mastery in the construction of dialogues (with that well-curated and comprehensible 17th-century Neapolitan) and stages the backstory of Ninuccia's letter and how Lucariello gives it into Nicolino's hands.
However, the Neapolitan maestro also scored two masterful strokes. The first is: "Lucarie', Lucarie'… scètate songh'e nnove!." Repeated like a mantra so many times even in our homes, where Lucariello, a new Sigismund of Poland or false Henry IV, appears from the first moment as a mediator between reality and dream, unable to choose between one and the other until the final crash. The second is: "Nun me piace 'o Presepe!" the other mantra upon which is hinged the obtuse and frontal clash between father and son, the true tragic nucleus and blood-gushing wound of the work. A clash fought around that "Presebbio" fetish and symbol of all that could and should have been and that now looms mute and protagonist at the center of the drama.
And "Christmas at Cupiello's" was already perfect like this, a wrenching satire that digs down to the bone; but no: the dramaturgical structure requires a third act and, Eduardo, had still something to say and to have said by "his" Lucariello[2]. So it is here, in this third act, that accounts with Luca Cupiello must be made. The third act reshuffles the cards and changes all perspectives, and whether this is a good or bad thing is all to be decided, as first understood by the all too underestimated Peppino[3] who, for this, quarreled – yet again and many more times – with his older brother and primus inter pares of the family.
When that curtain reopens two years have passed in the time given to Eduardo but only three days in the life of Luca Cupiello. Luca is stricken but undefeated, agonizing in bed, surrounded by the noisy choir of his neighbors, ready for his last battle.
Luca, the inept, the idiot, the sleeping prince has become Don Quijote, the "builder of dreams" (reclaiming Propp's splendid definition) crashed against the windmills. Reality seems to have won, but Lucariello/Don Quijote is just biding his time; he catches his breath while the doctor distracts audience and choir, and then misleads everyone with the story of the "pasta e fagioli," while with his last breaths he prepares to land the two final blows that will grant him Triumph: first, he saves Ninuccia by definitively destroying her prison-like marriage and then saves Tommasino by offering his body as a sacrificial lamb for the son's redemption. And, when Eduardo/Lucariello, having gathered that final "yes, (I like it)" clutches, mute and triumphant, the son to his chest, it becomes clear that no one, no one ever again, could give flesh and blood to Luca Cupiello like Eduardo.
And it is here, between the two endings (that of the second and that of the third act) that lies the whole chasm between Art and life, all the contradictory restorative power of Beauty, the entire salvific eschatology of that meaning-carrying lie we call Art. Because Eduardo does not yield to the formless chaos of life, he does not merely observe with cynical detachment the pain of the vanquished; he knows that Art must tell the Truth but must also build hope; he knows that in those last, in those people, burns a flame fueled by values of human solidarity and by archaic and powerful awareness capable of overturning even the most obtuse and inhumane social systems.
In short, Eduardo knows, or rather believes – and believes firmly – that artistic creation is always a political act, a tool for redemption: at Gennaro Jovine's house the night must pass and surely will pass, Filumena Marturano's children will grow up "all'equal," Alberto Saporito will unmask the hypocritical "normality" of his neighbors, Antonio Barracano will save Rafiluccio with his sacrifice despite the doctor's rebellion and so forth.
Eduardo too is a builder of dreams. But they are lucid dreams, born of a vision.
A force drives History, but that force needs a little push; we might call that force dialectical historicism, historical materialism, or cunning of Reason, or however we like, but my problem is that to my eyes (and these eyes may be myopic, perhaps), the cunning of Reason of the reluctant Marxist De Filippo[4] is too similar to the "providential misfortune" of the militant Catholic Manzoni.
So here I am sitting on the ruins of my dreams too easily and too often turned into nightmares, reckoning with Lucariello/Eduardo and with that triumph of his that today seems too forced to me, with that redemption that I feel as too optimistic a prospect. The night will not pass; it must be illuminated by the explosion of bombs, Lucariello will save no one, and here I remain, sitting in the second row, listening to Charlie Parker.
And it annoys me to have to end it like this.
Dedicated to that fugitive soul of @CosmicJocker: I spoke of Theatre without ever having truly tested the hardness of the boards; will you forgive me?
[1] The '77 version is the one we all know and have seen, broadcasted by RAI and then transferred to video. I consider it the definitive version and it is the one to which, from now on, I will refer for my considerations.
[2] Much more should be written on the motivations, the rewritings, the labor and doubts from which the third act was born, and my statements should be based on more adequate research and texts (letters, interviews, critical interventions) but this would weigh down these small notes of mine too much, transforming them into an essay that neither I want to write nor you – dear reader – surely want to read.
[3] Peppino probably rightly believed that the excessive pathos of the third act detracted from the perfect tragic and comic mechanism of the play. Peppino understood with acuity the mechanisms of Theatre but did not understand the pathways of his brother's genius.
[4] I know, and I apologize, that attributing "Marxist" to Eduardo is an overstatement: his political position was much more nuanced and even contradictory. One should go from the electoral films of '48 to his work as an independent leftist in the Senate in favor of inmates. But, once again, this would belong more to an essay than to these brief scattered notes. That he was in the anti-fascist camp is certain, that he was leftist – it seems to me – too. I don't know about calling him Marxist, maybe more reluctant than reticent Marxist; there, I like to think of him that way.
Loading comments slowly
