Summer Holiday Fever

“The world is the book from which I have learned the most,” wrote one of the greatest masters of Italian drama, Carlo Goldoni. In his work, this world sparkles and surges with extraordinary force through people, their conversations and everyday situations. By creating simple, genuine, convincing and accessible stories, Goldoni portrays human relationships from within, revealing all their shades and turning them into a metaphor for the world itself. In the eighteenth century, full of uncertain prospects for the future and steeped in inexplicable cruelty, when there was a sense that Europe would soon undergo a turning point that would permanently change the face of society, Goldoni remains profoundly humane, able to envelop people in love and warmth even as he sharply criticises them. In work that transcends its time, the playwright captured the condition of modern people and the concerns that plague them, and highlighted the importance of women who questioned their entrenched traditional role in society. This mastery is beautifully revealed in his magnificent “Summer Holiday Trilogy”, comprising three works: “Summer Holiday Fever”, “Summer Holiday Adventures” and “Returning from Summer Holiday”. This autumn, director Gabrielė Tuminaitė will present the first part of the trilogy, “Summer Holiday Fever”, at Vilniaus mažasis teatras. Livorno. The characters are feverishly preparing to leave for summer holidays at country villas, while at the forefront is Leonardo’s jealousy of his fiancée, Giacinta, who is also being courted by the young Guglielmo. In their desperate haste, they disregard both financial and moral constraints, consumed by vanity. They hope that, once they leave for the villas, in that magical “somewhere else”, they will fulfil themselves as people and the problems they are fleeing will resolve themselves. But it soon becomes clear that the problem lies much deeper: in their complete inability to manage their lives, which are hurtling headlong towards an abyss. As the characters lurch constantly between anxiety, jealousy, outbursts of anger and irritation, the pace never lets up; the momentum builds to madness. As if possessed by this mass evacuation, they abandon their own homes—their theatre—littered, ransacked and ravaged, and rush elsewhere, to a place where things are “better”, hoping to become what they have been promised: more talented, more beautiful and more widely recognised.