SOURCE: “Provident Ill-Fortune,” in Alessandro Manzoni, Twayne Publishers, 1976, pp. 55-83.

In the following excerpt, Barricelli offers a thematic and stylistic study of Manzoni's dramas Il conte di Carmagnola and Adelchi.

“The idea of a performance of my things gives me apprehension together with an insurmountable aversion; if, in my two poor tragedies which you deign to look upon so indulgently, I went contrary to the general taste and experienced the displeasure of hearing myself screamed at [by those who read them], I would at least find comfort in the thought that, given their strangeness, they would never appear on the stage. Indeed, you see for yourself how they are put together, without any concern for stage effects, uses, or conventions; there is a multiplicity of characters, excessive length, speeches inhuman for the lungs to bear—and even more so for the ears; there are varied and disconnected scenes...