In the beginning of the 20th century Dario Niccodemi was known as an outstanding dramatist and a successful theatrical company director in the dramaturgy field. The theatrical genres that he presented met the bourgeois taste of the audience of his period having him rise to fame. He was born in Livorno in 1874, at first he lived in Argentina and then in France up to 1915, year in which he definitely returned to Italy where he died in Rome in 1934. He had cleverly been able to attract the attention of the critics and of the Italian audience by means of texts that had a direct impact. Niccodemi had a preference for pathetic effects along with a remarkable amount of dramatic force that he used while he was composing the plot in order to involve the audience emotionally. As a theatrical company director he was willing to face “revolutionary” and new texts that turned out to be rather difficult to be immediately understood. Indeed, it was Niccodemi who represented the first historical play of the drama “Sei personaggi in cerca di autore” of Luigi Pirandello in 1921 at the Valle di Roma Theatre that puzzled the audience who was not used to seeing theatrical performances that went against the traditional rules and by the ambiguity of the text of the most brilliant Italian dramatist of the 20th century. With this play Niccodemi proved that he had the courage to endorse a writer like Pirandello and to be open-minded enough to experiment new elements on the settings.

Now let’s talk about his works.
In his plays Niccodemi tried to analyse the bourgeois customs of his period, for example in Ombra (1915), Scampolo (1916), La nemica (1916), La maestrina (1917), Prete Pero (1918) and L’alba, il giorno e la notte (1921).

Thanks to the unique and particularly renown play La nemica and to a great theatrical company, Niccodemi became popular all over Italy.
Set in a castle 70 kilometres away from Paris in which the protagonist is a noble family: the Duchess of Nièvres and her sons Roberto and Gastone. The two brothers are fond of each other, they love and respect one another even though according to the traditional dynastical laws only the eldest son inherits the title of rank and the considerable inheritance, while the younger son is just entitled to become a cadet. Everyone likes Roberto, but he suffers tremendously because he feels that his mother, who he adores so much and loves almost with passion, has always thwarted him. On the other hand it is obvious that all the attentions of the Duchess are for Gastone, the younger son, who instead should have a less important role. Roberto pours out his grief for not being loved by his mother without a reason and tells Gastone, who tries to settle the situation as he had already done in the past. But everything is useless because Roberto, without even knowing why, feels the hate of an enemy, his mother, who is voluntarily destroying his life.
In the second act Roberto faces his mother, Duchess Anna, to see if she really doesn’t care at all about him and tells her that he wants to leave for the Indies. After a nerve-racking and exhausting discussion the Duchess reveals the hidden truth: Roberto is the illegitimate child that the Duke had with another woman. Anna accepted him and tried to make everyone believe that she was happy then she started loving him always more, up to the point that she felt that she had been unfair towards her real and only son Gastone. From that moment on she felt resentment against her stepson Roberto and started hating him. At the end of this dramatic outburst between the two, the Duchess desperately begs Roberto to forgive her, after all Roberto still considers her his mother.
The third act leads to the end of the story. The First World War starts: Roberto and Gastone are sent to the front. Gastone is seeking for glory and Roberto for death, which would relief him from his inner struggle. A telegram of the nation that announces the death of the Duchess’s son during a battle is received at the Castle. With the mind clouded by pain the Duchess asks herself who of her two sons has died. Everything is soon revealed by the arrival of Roberto that wounded came to bring her the kiss of Gastone and told her that the last word he said before dying was “mother”.
After this melodramatic surge of affection, which metaphorically reunites the mother with both her sons, the curtain drops. Thanks to a masterly skill, especially in the dialogue and to the presentation of situations that strongly enthral, Niccodemi became one of the most popular and most followed authors, who has been seldom represented even posthumous and his company went on and with the 1943 edition of La nemica christened the debut of Vittorio Gasman.

"Addio giovinezza" of Nino Oxilia (1884-1913) and Sandro Camasio (1888-1917) represented for the first time in 1911 in Milan was another text of the first quarter of the 20th century (which practically corresponds to the same period of Niccodemi’s works) that became famous because it surely was able to entertain the audience. The every day aspects of life, joy and pain are the main predominant constituents of this play. The protagonist is Mario, a young man who is about to become a doctor, along with a few other characters that are about to graduate in Turin. Mario lives in a modest rented apartment, he has a steady girlfriend called Dorina that loves him very much and instead he is constantly looking for the possibility of starting new relationships because he feels that it was going to be a short-lived story. After having finally graduated, this free and easy “gilded” period comes to an end and a new one full of real responsibilities and work starts, he goes back to his home town in his fathers house and finds a good serious girl with which he settles down and has a family. Maybe its thanks to the simplicity and to the straightforwardness of the story, which does not get into the complexity of the inner self of the characters that the spectators had been able to identify themselves in this play having it reach a good rating that not even the authors themselves expected or dared to hope for not even while they were writing it.
(traslated by Interpres).