Truffaldino (KATMK)

The action takes place in eighteenth-century Venice. Truffaldino, a rascal, is hired as a servant to a gentleman named Federico Rasponi to help him repel an attack. His first master is a disguised woman, the noblewoman Beatrice Rasponi, who, under the name of her dead brother, is trying to find her lover Florindo Aritusi. Under this name she enters the house of the Venetian merchant Pantalone, where everyone is convinced that Rasponi is dead.

This is what is explained to poor Truffaldino, who, according to tradition, is the first to go up to the house to announce the master's visit. After the visit, while the landlord was busy with his business, the hungry Truffaldino served another gentleman... However, he then meets the first ‘dead’ landlord, who has taken up residence in the same inn, and continues to perform his duties without abandoning the second landlord in order to receive double the pay. His second host turns out to be Florindo himself, wanted by the authorities on suspicion of having killed Beatrice's brother in a duel and having fled to Venice.

Thanks more to his luck than his ingenuity, Truffaldino successfully serves both for some time, getting into and out of various tricky situations. Beatrice, under the name of Federico, has to pretend that she is expecting to marry the daughter of the old man Pantalone, who has long since been promised to the late Federico. But this daughter, Clarice, is in love with Dr Lombardi's son Silvio, whom the arrival of the imaginary Federico dashes all hope.In the end everything is resolved happily. Beatrice is reunited with Florindo, Clarice marries Silvio, and even Truffaldino finds a wife for Clarice's maid, Smeraldina.

Features of the production

The version of the famous film «Truffaldino from Bergamo» based on the play by C. Goldoni is more extensive than the real production of ‘Truffaldino’ on the stage of the Karaganda Academic Theatre of Musical Comedy. Both musical and textual material has been revised and partially reduced.

All the scenes, all the plot lines are organically built, with inclusions of today's vision of the mores of the time: the character of Clarice is presented on the verge of a super-modern young girl, Silvio with shades of a softer and more malleable lover, Brigella intricately and slowly refined temperament of a merchant with an inclination to benefit himself from any situation, suitable or not. The scenography is well thought out and fulfils the requirements of both the sophistication of the century described by Goldoni and the completely unusual perspective of the spirit of the time and the setting.

The appearing gondola, the unexpected resolution of the love line in a modern choreographic production, the dynamic set designed for surprise or invitation to action, the work with the audience all create a unique flavour of the era, manners and plot.

The musical features the theatre's leading vocalists, chorus and ballet dancers.