Casanova in Bolzano

Author's note

Given the appearance and behavior of my hero, the reader will no doubt identify the characteristic profile of that notorious eighteenth-century adventurer, Giacomo Casanova.

To identify, for some people, is to accuse, and it is not easy to mount a defense. My hero bears an unfortunate resemblance to that homeless, desperately roguish, and generally unhappy itinerant who, at midnight on October 31, 1756, escaped from the cells under the lead-roof ducal palace, the so-called Leads, let himself down into the lagoon by a rope ladder, and, with the help of an unfrocked friar called Balbi, fled the territory of the republic and took the road to Munich. My excuse is that it was not so much the romantic episodes in my hero’s life that interested me as his romantic character.

For this reason, the only details I have taken from the infamous Memoirs concern the time and circumstances of his escape. Everything else the reader comes across is fable and invention.

S.M.