"Garibaldi's Women"

Concert-show created and performed by Fatima Scialdone
Stage text by Fernando Pannullo, from an idea of Fatima Scialdone’s

At the beginning we thought it was very difficult to talk about Garibaldi’s private life, on account of its close links with the events of national and international history, which strongly affected it. However, digging and leafing through the multifarious bunch of biographies and legends that have grown around Garibaldi for longer than a hundred years, we have managed to single out some pieces of his private life, not so closely intertwined with his legendary deeds, and we have based on them the four or five stories our show is made of. Tales or short monologues delivered by Rosa, his mother, who tells us something about Garibaldi’s youth in Nizza and his first voyages; Antonietta di Pace who tells us something about his short and troubled stay in Naples; Battistina, his servant as well as wife for several years, who describes the hard and destitute life he led in Caprera, and introduces the most important female friends he ever had, Roberts, an English woman, and Swarz, a German woman, both often involved in war events and diplomacy; and, last but not least, Anita, conjured up in the nightmarish atmosphere of Garibaldi’s agony, who, lovingly poking fun at him, reminds him of their troubled youth and the military adventures in Uruguay. Tales totally disentangled from the chronological order of events, and focusing on some intimate and partly unknown details. This results in a depiction of the great leader, not in the least distorted, but certainly different from what we find in traditional hagiographies. While revealing unsuspected inner thoughts and private scrapes, these stories confirm Garibaldi’s nobility of character, the purity of his aims, his love for peoples’ independence irrespective of latitudes, his opposition to every form of tyranny. They highlight his generosity, his innocence, his absolute faith in liberty, as well as his somewhat rough and naïve character, his love for the land and the home ¾ despite his constant being on the warpath ¾ , his dream of an austere, hard but healthy life, that only at long last became true. He handed down these values, so deeply rooted in his soul, to his children and grandchildren. But most of all his love for women is pointed out here. Garibaldi linked women to the highest values of life, seeing them as earthly goddesses, guardians of essential spiritual values, life and faith companions. He always wanted to have one by his side, as the other half of his complex personality, a regular partner, a housewife, the mother of his children, a comrade on the battlefield, as in Anita’s case. His desire for a close partnership with a woman caused him to make very big mistakes, often choosing the wrong time for his amorous offers. And he did not have much to offer as far as the standard of living was concerned. When he was not on the battlefield, he led the life of a farmer frantically in love with his own land. But he often courted women coming from the highest walks of life, who certainly could not make do with what he offered them. Thousands of women hailed him when they saw him pass by, hundreds followed him as nurses, messengers, sutlers, sometimes losing their lives. Dozens of patronesses from the upper classes, going from town to town in order to raise funds for his military enterprises and promote the ideas of independence and freedom. Women he admired and loved. “I’ve always considered women as the most perfect creatures”, Garibaldi wrote, and he was always consistent with this statement. However, there were also the “victims”, that is, the women of men that died fighting on the other side, the women of rebel peasants who were persecuted like outlaws, the women of the men who were shot by firing squads in Bronte, and then left rotting without burial for a long time, whose tragedy we hear about in beautiful folk songs, since it could not be forgotten.