I’ll tell you about the great masks ball
The italics on the grand ball of masks
In the Rome of the Pope King, Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli churned out sonnets in his spare time with severe criticism of the corruption then dominant in the Palace, from the Cardinals to the cooks and grooms. THE
his official assignment, however, was to chair the censorship commission.
In this capacity he was aware of many facts and misdeeds and he too, faced with the charm of coins, knew how to please his friends, finding shrewd loopholes.
When Giuseppe Verdi and the publisher Ricordi visited him because the work "Gustavo III" was banned in all the States and Statarellis of Italy at the time, it was he who, in exchange for some courtesy, found the solution: to change the place of the action (from the Kingdom of Sweden to the American colonies) and the title (from the name of a King killed during a court party to the more prosaic one of "A masquerade ball").
Today, whoever wanders around in box 49 of the Plateau of the Campo Verano Monumental Cemetery in Rome, where the tomb of the Belli family is located, hears the whispering, humming, "dancing in masks". It seems that the poet's soul is pouring a sonnet on the tragicomic story of the masks and the supposed bribes (other than a few coins from Casa Ricordi!) That would have accompanied her.
The tragicomic story is all over the papers. A few weeks ago some television newspapers and a newspaper with a large national circulation were interested in it. At that time, the press office of the special emergency commissioner had written a reply, but it was trimmed point by point by the journalists who wrote the investigation.
Now the public prosecutor is interested: eight people are under investigation and seizures for 70 million euros have been carried out. The leader, so to speak, of the suspects says he is a close friend of the special emergency commissioner with whom he exchanged 1,820 messages during the months of the "affaire".
Now the press office of the emergency commissioner does not deny it, on the contrary it confirms when it appeared in the press before the kidnappings took place and it seems other things too. On the contrary, the commissioner and his collaborators claim to be an "injured party" and affirm that they too will take legal action. Just "a masked dance" from the slow and sentimental waltz to the whirling one. Seasoned with "arrests", at least career.
It is up to the judiciary to understand what are the knots of the "ugly mess" denounced by the press for some time. Nobody wants to question the sincerity and honesty of the extraordinary emergency commissioner.
The latter, however, appears as a Forrest Gump who gets fooled by a very close friend, an improvised band of associates and some passing Chinese. It must have been the stress of work, of the constant running from right to left and left to right, and of the pressure to go on the air to inform the educated and the inclined.
Given that Italy does not want to entrust the emergency, the future of Ilva and many other things to Forrest Gump, a period of rest could be useful in his native Melito di Porto Salvo or even better at the serene house of the Daughters of the Church in pretty Arghillà (near Melito). Rested and reassured, he will be able to return to the tasks that the Government will want to give him.
GG Belli from beyond says so too. 47 dead speaking!
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/vi-racconto-il-gran-ballo-delle-mascherine/ on Thu, 25 Feb 2021 09:38:24 +0000.