Often referred to as the Italian Molière, Carlo Goldoni is not only the most important Italian comediographer but also one of the key figures of modern European comedy writing. Villeggiatura Trilogy, composed of three interconnected comedies and today most often staged as a single condensed work, belongs to the final phase of his career. This is the work of a mature author distinguished by a deep understanding of human aspirations and follies, both their comic and their dark sides, as well as of a society rife with contradictions and hypocrisy. Although the setting is 18th-century Venetian society, the characters’ emotions and behaviour, as well as the social mechanisms that shape them, resonate today as strikingly familiar and contemporary.

The central theme of this trilogy of comedies is the annual getaway to a more beautiful place; holidaying as an escape from ordinary life, a break from the daily grind, intended to allow us to experience something greater, more intense, and therefore more fulfilling. We are all too familiar with this theme today: we like to plan holidays and trips as the most important part of life, denying that our real life takes place in the often bleak and exhausting routine of everyday existence. Goldoni already knew that this was an illusion marked by vanity and self-deception. His characters set off on their holiday with feverish passion, only to fill it with a desire for self-affirmation, the display of false images of their supposed exceptionality, and a competition for prestige and luxury. Hungry for affirmation and social status, they reach beyond their own capabilities and lose themselves in self-deception. Their luxury is borrowed on credit they cannot repay; their self-confidence is false. They are driven primarily by jealousy, competitiveness and false pride, which will sooner or later confront its own emptiness. Worst of all, love is likewise trapped in this logic. The story revolves around two, actually three, couples of young lovers who might just have found true love, if only they hadn’t gotten caught up in a whirlwind of self-aggrandizement, empty illusions, and social conventions.