This chapter explores a key aspect of Pirandello’s relationship with the Fascist regime. In 1926, Benito Mussolini created the Royal Italian Academy (the Academy), to rival the prestigious national academies of other European countries such as France and Britain. Pirandello was the most famous appointee amongst the first thirty nominations of accademici in March 1929. The chapter traces Pirandello’s ambivalent attitude toward the Academy. On the one hand, he considered it just recognition of both his fame as an author and his early support of Fascism. On the other, he was skeptical of the usefulness of a national academy, especially if it bent to the will of the Fascist regime. The chapter reconstructs several episodes showing how Pirandello’s status as an accademico was related to his hopes of taking a leading role in the renewal of Italian theatre. His correspondence with his son Stefano and his confidant and muse Marta Abba reveals Pirandello’s low opinion of the rhetoric and emptiness of Fascist cultural policies, of which the Academy was a prime example.

This chapter examines what it meant to perform translation in Cavalleria rusticana. It examines: 1) the original novella written by Giovanni Verga in 1880; 2) the 1884 stage version adapted by the author and interpreted by a variety of star actors, including Eleonora Duse and the Sicilian dialect players; and 3) the 1890 operatic version composed by Pietro Mascagni and performed by celebrity sopranos, such as Emma Calvé. Through close examination of newspaper reviews and early accounts, it is argued that performing translation meant generating and circulating an exoticized ‘brand’ of Sicilian-ness in and outside the Italian peninsula shortly after political unification in 1861. This chapter thus offers new perspectives into questions of racial stereotypes, and a provides basis for new insights into the Sicilian dialect players, in particular, who, pioneering a physical and bodily form of communication, transcended language barriers and mediated the foreign text through a kind of translation that went beyond the written word.