BRACCO, ROBERTO. - Playwright and short-story writer, b. in Naples in 1862, d. at Sorrento on 20 April 1943.
Having entered journalism at a very young age, he became one of the most acute and admired theatre and music critics of the late nineteenth century.
He fought his battle, especially in the Corriere di Napoli, for Ibsen and for Wagner, before they became the idols of the cultured public. At the same time he attempted the dialogue short story, from which the step to comedy and drama was a short one. A realist in Una donna (1892), an impressionist in Mauchere (1893), he established himself in the two following years with the crystalline and elegant wit of L'infedele and the dramatic passion of Il trionfo. From then on, every year marks a stage and a success: from La fine dell'amore to Maternità and Frutto acerbo, from Piccola fonte to Nellina and Il piccolo santo (1911), his masterpiece. Powerful in dramatic contrast, unmistakable in delicate or mischievous grace, he throws his figures into relief from life, creates them in a single burst, with irrepressible impetus. Although his theatre is characteristically Italian, often Neapolitan, and at times in dialect (Uocchie cunsacrate, 1916), it nonetheless met with very rapid success in various nations. Such, moreover, was his output as a short-story writer, not independent of the playwright's art: for each story is in nuce a dramatic action, often also scenically lived or theatrically reproducible. B. lacked a sound moral orientation, as is evident from the realism of illicit loves, on which the narrative action often develops. B., impatient of every yoke and constraint in political as in artistic life, died during the Second World War, embittered by the sad reality and by the looming catastrophe, poor as he had lived.
Bibliography6 works
Pier Fausto Palumbo