ITALIAN LOVE DRAMA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 913, 5 March 1930, Page 1

ITALIAN LOVE DRAMA

BANDIT SLAYER CAUGHT AFTER 23 YEARS DANCED ROUND DEATH HUT [nii ed J'A.—Bj Telegraph—Copyright Reed. 9 a.m. ROME, Tuesday. Vicenzo De Silvestri, a brigand whom the police have wanted for 23 years for an atrocious murder, is ou trial at last. His crime is famous, because Gabriele D'Annunzio made it the basis of a remarkable play. De Silvestri fell in love with Driade, the beautiful daughter of a well-to-do* farmer. She was twenty years of pge and he was a shepherd, aged 22. The farmer refused his permission for them to marry so De Silvestri kidnapped the girl and fled to the mountains. When the girl escaped, De Silvestri was arrested and sentenced to teu months’ imprisonment. He swore that he would have his revenge. Later he discovered Driade and three women sleeping in a hut near Fondi. During the night the frenzied lover lit the four corners of the thatch. Driade made a hole in the thatch and begged him to save her, but he poshed her back into the flames singing a love serenade and dancing around the blazing hut in a frenzy, while the women were burning to death. A friend who assisted in the crime was arrested and sentenced to thirty years, but De Silvestri terrorised the countryside until November, 192t>, when Carabineers caught him after he had broken his legs in an effort to escape from a surrounded farmhouse in the mountains.

Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, novelist, and dramatist, who in 1924, was created Prince of Montinevoso is one of the most romantic figures among modern men of letters. Temperamental, artistic, and something of a recluse, his writings gripped the imagination of all Italy, and were lent, nil added interest by his famous love affair with the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse, the unhappiness of which is said to have been the cause of the poet entering the Italian Army during the Great War. As a soldier his career was no less colourful and spectacular. He served as an aviator and seemed to court death, but emerged from the conflict with only the scar of a wound to bear testimony to his military prowess. In latter years he has led the life of a recluse. His writings have been unusually versatile and prolific, besides being distinguished by a unique combination of Latin passion and remarkable literary skill.