Release date is 2025-12-17

Barbara Magni (This file was produced from images made available by The Internet Archive)

"La separazione" by Paolo Ferrari is a stage comedy in four acts written in the late 19th century. The play centers on a high-society marital break between Countess Eugenia and Count Leonardo Portanzio, where legal formalities, scandal, and appearances collide with private wounds. Key figures include their impressionable daughter Clelia, the upright lawyer-cousin Rodolfo Corvini, and the fragile marchesa Ernesta, whose past entwines dangerously with the couple’s troubles.

The opening of the play moves from a Turin tribunal to a fashionable spa, showing a failed reconciliation supervised by the stern President Carenzi after Eugenia catches Leonardo in a lie and a compromising scene. Gossip swirls at Andorno as Eugenia arrives to comfort the ailing Ernesta; Clelia appears under the sway of her elegant governess, while Eugenia privately admits a restrained, unspoken love for Rodolfo. Ernesta then confesses a secret affair and a hidden child—linked to Leonardo—whose sudden illness (and soon, death) ignites Rodolfo’s fierce denunciation of his cousin. Back with Eugenia, the men mask their quarrel, and Leonardo admits only that he is politically and financially imperiled, pressing for Clelia’s advantageous marriage and for Eugenia’s help to save appearances. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Milano: Treves, 1887