The story is set in Venice and begins with the engagement of Clarice (daughter of Pantalone) and Silvio. Their marriage is finally possible because Clarice’s former fiancé, Federico Rasponi, was reportedly killed in a duel. However, the celebrations are interrupted when a servant named Truffaldino arrives to announce that his master, Federico Rasponi, is alive and waiting outside.
In reality, "Federico" is actually his sister, Beatrice Rasponi, in disguise. She has come to Venice dressed as her late brother to collect a dowry and to find her lover, Florindo Aretusi—the very man who killed her brother in the duel and fled to Venice to avoid arrest.
The plot thickens when Truffaldino, constantly hungry and looking to double his wages, secretly accepts a second job serving Florindo, who is staying at the same inn. Truffaldino spends the rest of the play frantically trying to serve both masters simultaneously without either of them finding out about the other.
The "double service" leads to a series of hilarious mishap and the confusion leads both Beatrice and Florindo to believe the other is dead. We Will see if, in the end, he will be able to set everything for the best.
Please take note:
Content Warnings & Cautions:
Some topic could affect some people sensibility; interaction with the audience happens in some moments of the play.
Director
In "The Birth of Tragedy," Nietzsche reflects on the "Bacchae," the final tragedy by Euripides, whose protagonist is the very Dionysus who - according to the German philosopher - had been banished from the stage by the Greek playwright. He asserts that Euripides, after effectively decreeing the death of Tragedy by excluding Dionysus, attempted to resuscitate it with one final stroke, though it was far too late.
For Goldoni, it seemed to me that the inverse occurred: by employing two extra-textual elements (a page from his diary as a prologue and a passage from the Gospel of Matthew as an epilogue), I wanted to highlight the overlap between the author of the theatrical "Reform" - who killed off the masks, replacing them with the types of the rising bourgeois society - and the character of Harlequin himself, the mask par excellence, who is intent on doubling himself in this comedy.
Like Harlequin, Goldoni also possesses a dual identity. The first is the one that, thanks specifically to "The Servant of Two Masters" and its subsequent success, drew him away from the legal career he had taken up in Pisa. The second is that of the man who sought to set aside the characters of the Commedia dell’arte that had led him to that triumph, in order to move beyond those patterns and invent a more sophisticated, complex comedy, featuring more intricate stories and less stereotyped characters.
This "betrayal" (an inevitable one, of course) turns Goldoni himself into another Harlequin, capable of serving both the Commedia dell’arte and the Reform that extinguished it at the same time. However, the masks might not agree with being surpassed, nor be ready to become obsolete, given that "no one can serve two masters at the same time."
The show will be performed the following dates:
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