The Mysteries of Ceronetti and Tedeschi

Extract

Ten or twelve spectators attend each performance, and that is too many. The size of the audience is partly by choice, and partly it is forced by the size of the theatre, which is a small living room. The play is called I Misteri di Londra (London's Mysteries). A panorama of Victorian society written, prepared, animated, and interpreted by Guido Ceronetti and his wife, Erica Tedeschi, with the assistance of two young women from the neighboring apartment, it is performed by beautiful marionettes.

Guido Ceronetti is a writer and poet and a translator of ancient texts. In newspapers and periodicals, he is an ironic moralist who doesn't believe in progress and has a pessimistic vision of contemporary society. This is something that is not appreciated by the progressive Roman intelligentsia, who have marked Ceronetti as reactionary. Ceronetti, then, is an isolated and singular character in the Italian cultural field.