La figlia del papa

Lucrezia Borgia had a Pope for a father, three husbands, many lovers, eight legitimate children, one illegitimate, and an incredible life… all within 39 years.

When looking for an example of a cruel, corrupt and lascivious woman, the first name that springs to mind is always hers: Lucrezia Borgia. She has been written about by many people: writers, historians, philosophers, and now a Nobel Prize-winner has decided to tackle this extraordinary character, distancing himself from the psychological approach, the adulatory approach and the purely historical essay.
Instead, Dario Fo makes the characters speak, and by reconstructing the historical context and recovering the fascination of the Renaissance era, he makes them come alive. He gives Lucrezia Borgia the floor, along with the other figures who make up this story – Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli’s Prince, who confides in his sister, moved by the memories of their childhood together; the fearful Pope Alessandro VI, remembered as the most corrupt of the Pontiffs; and Lucrezia’s husbands: hunted, killed, and, like her, used as pawns in games of political machination; her lovers; the great Italian courts of d’Este and Gonzaga, and the most beautiful women of the age.
“The Pope’s Daughter” is not just a journey through the beauty of the Renaissance, but more importantly a image of our own era which, seen through the filter of the past, seems even more desolate and corrupt. As we read of the atrocities and betrayals committed in Lucrezia’s time in the name of expedience and political scheming, it seems that nothing has really changed since then, and that we have succeeded in retaining all the negative aspects of those days, while losing those which seemed to offer a hope of regeneration.