"The beauty and uniqueness of the place that we have not been able to give up..."
Immagine non disponibile

​Eduardo De Filippo

"The image that people had of Eduardo was of an armored man, a man who also defended himself by playing the part that was assigned to him in life."

English
Cilento lunedì 20 settembre 2021
di Vito Pinto
Immagine non disponibile
Eduardo De Filippo © web

In 1962 Eduardo was looking for a boy to play the role of a hero in the six-part drama broadcasted by the national TV channel, RAI: Peppino Girella. The drama was based on a story written by his wife Isabella, who was inspired by a ten-year-old boy, Giovanni Romano, the young son of Pasquale and Natalina, owners of a bar at the Mulini of Positano. "He was small, thin, and blond-haired, with a shy and radiant smile at the same time, he washed the glasses behind the counter, then placed them carefully on a white cloth.

Eduardo liked the story and decided to turn it into a television comedy, writing the script together with his wife while they were living on the island of Isca. Day after day the work became a choral fresco of Naples and Italy in the early sixties. No longer “a millionaire" country, but still rich in kindness, humbleness and honesty.

Once the script was ready, the search started for the child who going to play Peppino Girella.

Mrs. Isabella recalled: "There were days of exhausting and disappointing auditions at the RAI headquarters in Naples, looking for the character.Children flocked in who did not have the requirements that Eduardo wanted for his character: someone personable, natural, clever and innocent, with intuition and intelligence. Then the great Neapolitan playwright remembered having met in Positano a nice little boy, who he liked very much for his way of doing things; a boy "strangely handsome, an irregular face, large eyes that are distant from each other, thick lips and white teeth, in which when he smiles illuminate the whole face. It was Giuseppe, the son of Antonietta Fusco, "a beautiful woman with eyes as bright as two stars,” who at the time worked in the house of engineer Giulio Mascolo, a friend of De Filippo.

Over the years, the young "Peppino Girella,” of the time, Giuseppe Fusco, grew up and became a professor of mathematics. He married Concetta Mascolo, daughter of Ciccillo, with whom Isabella De Filippo went fishing, and then retired.However, the memory of that experience with the great Neapolitan playwright is still fresh in his mind. He recounts: "It was the summer of '62, I was not even 11 years old, and I used to spend my days on the beach of Positano where Gennaro o' Polese the legendary "vo' fa", worked renting his fishing boats to occasional guests and I often left with these guests to hold the ruder of boat. Eduardo and Isabella and I were on duty for a few weeks, as usual, as helmsman of the boats. I did not know who the guests could have possibly been. At the end of the summer, with my parents permission, they took me to the television studios in Naples for the auditions of "Peppino Girella" that they had written last spring.

It was an exhausting day, I found myself immersed in a crowd of children my age. Taking turns we had to recite jokes in front of the camera. Late that evening, Isabella had left Eduardo at the Colli San Pietro because a gentleman was waiting for him to take him back to Nerano and then to his island. We had been traveling back with his Fiat 600 to Positano. Just before getting out of the car, she told me that I had been chosen to do the part, “Peppino Girella.”

The contract that Rai made to the little Giuseppe Fusco was rather miserable, so much so that Eduardo became angry. For this reason after speaking with his parents, Eduardo decided that he would keep that the little one with him in his Roman house in Via Ximenes, in Parioli, where, along with his wife and the Tata, they would take care of the child for the whole filming period. In that apartment, in addition to living with Eduardo, Giuseppe had met many other actors and remembers when Sofia Loren, "loved to keep me on her lap and kiss me.”

Eduardo De Filippo's relationship with Positano was strong and ancient.He had already been there before, it was before the last war, and some of his friends, such as Vittorio De Sica, Andreina Pagnani, Cesare Giulio Viola, had already bought a house there.Therefore, he also really wanted to buy one as soon as the opportunity arose. The war with its destructions was a painful time, which Eduardo described in detail as the "Napoli milionaria,” and postponed any intention to better times.

Once peace was restored, his dream came true when the banker Vittorio Astarita, a friend of Eduardo, offered him to purchase land off the islet of Isca, off the coast of Marina di Cantone. "The beauty and the uniqueness of the place,” recalled Isabella Quarantotti, “a very pretty little house furnished with the furniture that was on board a luxury English yacht in disarmament.” Its price and its sentimental value was a strong temptation that Eduardo could not resist. It is so, that the De Filippo couple became neighbours with Leonid Massine, who lived on the nearby main island of Li Galli. Relationships of friendship and respect had been created between them, just by visiting each other. It was, in fact, the summer of 1959 when Massine had gone to dinner at the De Filippo's: "He was an enchanting guest, telling an infinite number of stories about Russia and about the artistic life in Paris.” Then, the next day, he invited the two of them for some tea on his island. The De Filippo family went there with the San Pietro, a beautiful fishing boat bought by Eduardo, with a small figurehead representing St. Peter at the bow, carved in wood, darkened with time, on which someone had painted the lips in red.

"We arrived at the Gauls around four o'clock on a splendid summer afternoon, made bluer and more cheerful by the mistral.” They were greeted by two barking dogs; Massine sat under the pines, at a rough wooden table full of papers. He explained that he was working on a choreography for a ballet to be staged in Perugia at the end of September.

Over the years Eduardo spent more and more time in Positano. Here he wrote two plays for the theatre: The first in 1958, “The son of Pulcinella,” and the second in 1973, "The exams that never end,” certainly among the most famous of Eduardo's theater’s pieces.

"The son of Pulcinella" was written at "Casa Passalacqua,” at the top of the Montuori staircase where Eduardo was a guest of his friend Giulio Mascolo.

A few years ago, in an article in a bi-monthly local newspaper, Mrs. Isabella recalled: "Eduardo woke up early and at 6.30, after a cup of coffee, was already at the work-desk. He used to work with a great intensity, stopping himself only for lunch prepared by Gerardina, one of the most talented and brilliant cooks at the private house. Then he would resume work until seven o'clock in the evening.” In the sunset hours, sitting on the terrace at the Casa Passalacqua, together with his wife Isabella, Eduardo enjoyed the air and the wonderful view over the blue sea of Positano.

His wife remembers: "We chatted looking at the sea, listening to the singing of the birds, always greater at sunset and ... waiting. We waited for a country mouse, with its thick golden fur and agile legs, which presented itself every single night very engaged, turning round the left corner of the roof, and then trotting at a good pace it headed for the opposite corner where he would dive into a bush of jasmine and disappear. For the De Filippo era, it was a sign that it was time to go to dinner at one of the restaurants in town, where Eduardo would met many of his friends, including Gennaro 'o Polese, 'o Capurale, Carlino Cinque, Tobia Savino de "Il covo" and the Rispoli of the "Buca di Bacco.” Cesare Feraboli, the unforgettable maitre of the “Buca,” recalled: "Every time Eduardo had come to our restaurant, at the end of the meal he had to go into the kitchen to greet and thank my wife Maria. Once from America he sent me a postcard that said, “It would be really good if you and your restaurant were here too.”

Often while Eduardo was working, his wife Isabella went fishing with Ciccillo Mascolo, a fishing master especially of garfish. Mrs Isabella noted: "Sometimes we brought some garfish from the corporal and ate them all together. Corporal’s beautiful and nice wife, a brunette with bright eyes, cooked them very well: a crispy and golden outside and juicy inside.” With his friends Eduardo often played scopa and sette e mezzo, two well known Italian card games while enjoying teasing and joking around, ”sfruculiamienti.”

After fifteen years had passed, Eduardo, in the exclusive rooms of the San Pietro di Carlino Cinque hotel, wrote "The exams that never end.” Many years had passed, weighing heavily on him: his eyesight had faded and the arthritis in his hands made it difficult for him to hold his pen. But he had been working on this comedy since 1948. "He was obsessed about it” - his wife Isabella recalled. “I used to sit next to him, while he read me the scenes that he had just written and asked me about anything he was unsure about. We talked about his thoughts and enthusiasm provoked in him by the drafting of the ‘exams.' I felt great joy and I was so privileged while listening to him, perhaps even more than I felt later when the comedy was staged even with the success that it had that everyone had known about.”

Pasolini had deeply respected Eduardo. He liked him, because "he spoke the average Italian spoken by Neapolitans (people of Naples), avoiding mere naturalism with a convention that is purely theatrical language.” Searching for adjectives to identify his personality and the versatility of his being a theatre man, was however, a pointless search: he is Eduardo for everyone.

Andrea Camilleri recalled: "The image that people had of Eduardo was of an armored man, a man who also defended himself by playing the part that was assigned to him in life. In 1960 I was worried because one of my daughters had a high fever; I didn't think about what happened to Eduardo's little girl and told him that I was a little worried about my daughter. He said, "I lost a daughter.” Then he told me in detail how he had lived through it and began to cry. It is not something that was easy to bear, seeing Eduardo cry. It was an unspeakable, painful thing. I'm also sorry that I remembered it.”

On 31 October, 1984, Eduardo acted in his last scene: a purple silk cloth and a golden cross in the funeral chamber of the Senate, where he had entered in 1981, nominated “Life Senator" by President Sandro Pertini. Someone remembered one of his phrases: "Theatre means living seriously what others, in life, recite badly.”

Taken from courtesy of Vito Pinto and the Graus Book publisher

Lascia il tuo commento
commenti
Le più commentate
Le più lette