Dario Niccodemi (1874-1934)



Dario Niccodemi (Livorno, Italy, 1874 – Rome, Italy, 1934) was a novelist and a playwright who was born in Italy.

He spent his youth in Buenos Aires; he met the French actress Rejane in 1900, became her secretary and translated and adapted for her several Italian works. In this way, he learned techniques which he used later on, beginning with L'aigrette (comedy in three acts, 1912).

His comedies represent the bourgeois drama in an ironic and sentimental way, in which his characters are modelled on the society of the beginning of the century.

He founded a theater company in 1921, wrote novels (Il romanzo di scampolo) and two opera librettos, a scampolo with music by Camussi, and another, La ghibellina, with music by Bianchi.

He has written several plays and screenplays, including Scampolo (film, 1928), La nemica, L'alba, il giorno, la notte, La maestrina (film, 1942). About La nemica he said: "The actress Paola Pezzaglia was perhaps the best Nemica on stage". He carried out the first performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello at Teatro Valle in Rome. Among his fans was Leo Tolstoy, who wrote to prefer La nemica by Niccodemi to Pirandello's dramas of and to Verga's novels.

Other works

 * Teatrino, three one-act volumes
 * first volume includes:


 * Lettera smarrita
 * Il poeta
 * Festa di beneficenza
 * second volume includes:


 * Fricchi
 * Le tre Grazie
 * L'incognita
 * third volume includes:


 * Scena vuota
 * La pelliccia
 * Natale.
 * Tempo passato, con 17 ritratti
 * Il rifugio, three-act play
 * I Pescicani, three-act play
 * L'ombra, three-act play
 * Il Titano, three-act play
 * Prete Pero, three-act play
 * La volata, three-act play
 * L'alba, il giorno, la notte, three-act play
 * Acidalia, three-act play
 * La casa segreta, three-act play
 * La piccina, three-act play
 * La Madonna, three-act play