Carlo Goldoni

It is known that Carlo Goldoni, who practiced advocacy in Pisa, in 1748 met in Livorno Gerolamo Medebach, head of a well-known company of actors, husband of the handsome Teodora, famous for her skill on the stage and for her beauty. It is assumed, even if it is not proven, that he stayed in Montenero, in the latter’s house. Some even suspect that Theodora’s beautiful eyes did not leave him indifferent. It was thus, in any case, that he knew the pleasant village in which he decided to set his “Holiday Trilogy”.

Written and represented in 1761, it is made up of “Le smanie per la villeggiatura”, “La villeggiatura” and “The return from the holiday”. The Medebach company performed in the only theater then existing in Livorno, the San Sebastiano, in via delle Commedie.

Beyond the intrigue of love, and the theme of the passion opposed to the Enlightenment rationality, the topic of the trilogy is the bourgeois desire to appear more high-ranking than one is and the real economic possibilities allow. So one craves to vacation in Montenero, to use carriages, servants, luggage, playing cards, silverware, horses, candles, taking everything on credit, despite the financial difficulties.

Montenero was, in fact, the favorite place for the inhabitants of Livorno to spend their holidays, in the collective imagination of the time, it had to have Arcadian connotations. In “Le Smanie” there is mention of the fact that the protagonists spend more in a month in Montenero than in a year in Livorno, that you can save money in the city but certainly not save…