Ferdinando Fontana e le traduzioni del teatro di Àngel Guimerà in italiano. La "Maria Rosa" di Enrico Golisciani. (II)

Maria Rosa, one of the most famous plays by Àngel Guimera!, had two Italian translations and one into Sicilian. The authorless Maria Rosa translation which can be read at the Biblioteca de Catalunya archive is to be attributed to Enrico Golisciani, a Neapolitan librettist, who in 1897 had got a written permission by Guimerà to translate the play. He probably worked on the Spanish translation partly made by José Echegaray. After having finished his work, he unsuccessfully tried for a long time to have this play staged. After four years Ferdinando Fontana, one of Puccini!s librettist, began to translate the same play and convinced Guimerà to take away the permission given some years before to Golisciani who, in the meanwhile, had arranged with Mauri!s theatrical company the staging of the play. Maria Rosa was actually staged in Rome for a short time before permission were taken away. Some years later Giovanni Grasso and Mimí Aguglia, staged a successful Sicilian adaptation of Maria Rosa. Fontana carried out his translation mostly from Catalan and, by July 1901, it was finished. It is not known for sure whether this version was staged or not.