The comedy of Gaetanaccio, Luigi Magni’s masterpiece that returns to the stage exactly forty years after its debut, is inspired by a character who really existed in Rome, Gaetano Santangelo known as Gaetanaccio, a traveling puppeteer who carried his castle of puppets on his shoulders through the streets, squares and inside thepalaces of the Roman nobility, where he was often called upon to cheer up parties and banquets.We are in papal Rome, the subjugation of the poor, destitution,and fear are feelings that are offset by the indolent, playful, andswaggering character of a people who have always lived with the abuses of power. And so the irreverent and grasping Gaetanaccio,in love with Nina, also an actress in search of fortune, shares his fate with her, finding himself at the crossroads of compromise.As in all his works, Magni paints a Rome that manages to combine love and cynicism, irony and poetry. It is primarily a musical comedy that, also thanks to the presence of musicians on stage, evokes the dreamlike, fairy-tale dimension of the text.The songs, although sometimes accompanied by light and cheerful music, present a bitter and sarcastic background. In the twelve songs that make up the work, the vicissitudes of the protagonist and the community of thespians are narrated, who, due to the ban that prohibits any kind of performance, go hungry forced to invent their lives in order to hope to survive
