It is, to be honest, impossible for me to weigh what percentage of contribution to the composition of this masterpiece can be claimed by the two sacred monsters who co-signed it: Goldoni and Strehler. Having before me the two texts, the original and the adaptation, and between them the two hundred years that intervene, beyond the quantitative inequality that differentiates them (since the three works of the original trilogy now correspond to the three acts of a single work), I discern the same dramaturgical wisdom, the same effectiveness of linguistic formulation, the same language of theatrical technique - and above all: the same cheerful tenderness towards the everyday person and the weaknesses that determine his destiny.
For the willful blindness in the face of impending destruction, when the awareness of it threatens to distort the charm of life, the compromise under the pressure of social imperatives that regulate individual behavior, the failures and insecurities of romantic pursuit, all these and many more of the themes of the work describe man, both yesterday and today, throughout his timeless journey.
This identity of vision and approach is what legitimizes the final identification of the two successive forms of the work, bridging the distance from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century.
