“THE SERVANT TURNED MISTRESS ” WAS THE WORK THAT ACCOMPANIED THE DAYS IN SAN GIMIGNANO FROM 7 AUGUST TO 11 SEPTEMBER
Visiting San Gimignano is not a unique experience only for the beauty of the area, the sympathy of the inhabitants or the unique traditional cuisine but also for the fascinating part of history and culture that it brings.
Inhabited since the Etruscan era, San Gimignano had its most flourishing period in the Middle Ages where it became a crucial point for communication and trade of the time.
Around 1200 it was embellished by the construction of about 70 towers and from that moment it was nicknamed “the city of towers”. In the most recent 1990, thanks to its beauty and historical roots still evident today, it was named a World Heritage Site by the Unescu.
Representation of work at the Rocca di San Gimignano
To ride this wave and offer its inhabitants and tourists new cultural cues and valid motivations to visit San Gimignano, the administration, in collaboration with Opera Lab, wanted to propose the vision of the work “La serva padrona” to the Fortress of San Gimignano , from August 7th to September 11th, with the funny interlude of GB Pergolesi, achieving great success.
The work in question, represented for the first time at the San Bartolomeo Theater in Naples in 1733, marked the beginning of the Opera Buffa genre.
The plot is simple, intriguing and at the same time amusing: Uberto, a wealthy master, reproaches his servant Serpina, guilty of having reduced the attention and care given to him.
For his part, Serpina is not at all happy with this reproach and in turn reproaches the master, both for the totalitarian attitude and for the too low compensation, according to him.
The servant then stages a plan: she forces another servant, Vespone, to help her marry the master and in this sense she makes him disguise as Captain Tempesta, his hypothetical spouse.
The Master, at the sight of the new husband of the servant, begins to nourish a strong jealousy without however deciding to confess his love, as it would have been a source of great scandal at the time.
Captain Tempesta, then, decides to blackmail the master: he will marry Serpina in exchange for 4000 scudi! The master hesitates until he reaches the final refusal during which he decides and confesses his love to the servant, marrying her and making her, in the twinkling of an eye, a magnificent mistress!
Come and visit San Gimignano and next summer you will be enchanted by the representation of other interesting works in a picturesque setting like the Rocca di San Gimignano!