Ulast battle for Mameli – The boy who dreamed of Italy (tonight at 9.30pm on Rai 1). The miniseries by Ago Panini and Luca Lucini tells the story the life of the 19-year-old poet who wrote The singing of the Italiansi, that song that spurred people between 1947 and 1949 to unite for a dream of freedom and of unity. A song that became the Italian anthem.
Spurred from his friend Nino Bixio, Goffredo Mameli wrote the song we all know, but he also fought for freedom, at the cost of his life. In this second episode, after the death of his beloved Geronima, meets a new love, and Giuseppe Mazzini and Garibaldi they rekindle the flame of struggle in him.
Mameli – The boy who dreamed of Italy: plot of the last episode
In August 1948 for the boys of the free society of the young patriots of Genoa the illusions of changing the world evaporate: Milan is reconquered by the Austrians. The only city that resists is Venice. Mameli (Riccardo De Rinaldis) and some battle companions return to Genoa with the weight in their hearts of having killed and lost friends. The poet loses hope, he no longer recognizes himself: the war has transformed him. Nothing of what was promised to Geronima has come true. Perhaps, as his father Giorgio (Neri Marcorè) suggests, should cultivate writing talent. Goffredo returns to study at university.
The death of his friend Francesco, during a demonstration in support of the liberation of the revolutionary Carlin (Giovanni Crozza Signoris), encourages him instead to find himself the fire inside and the desire to fight: «I can’t sit still while they kill my friends». Meanwhile, the members of Entelema suspect that there is a spy within the group. They have to find out who it is.
Mameli start writing articles, and when you know Giuseppe Mazzini (Pier Luigi Pasino) e Garibaldi (Maurizio Lastrico) decides to leave for Rome. Pope Pius IX fled the city and Rome rose up. Garibaldi is looking for men ready to leave to fight and give life to the Roman Republic. Here Goffredo meets Adele (Chiara Celotto)and falls in love again.
Goffredo Mameli and Adele fall in love
Chiara Celotto and Riccardo De Rinaldis. (Rai press office)
Goffredo meets Adele, a tough, independent woman who works in the armory. Their first meeting is not the happiest: “What do we do with a poet in this revolution?”, she comments when she sees him. But then the two understand that they are similar, that they pursue the same ideals. Goffredo sees Geronima again in Adele and falls in love. But Adele is also a gift for the revolutionary poet, Nino Bixio is convinced of this. She will be the one to hold Mameli’s hand until his last breathat just 21 years old.
The birth of the Roman Republic
Goffredo also helps draw up the Constituent Assembly of the Roman Republic in Rome who was born on February 9, 1849. The papacy has lapsed, God is the people. Mameli discusses the articles together with Adele. There Republic must have a democratic government with rules of freedom and fraternity and «must not recognize titles of nobility, nor privileges of birth or caste», she suggests.
Riccardo de Rinaldis. (Rai press office)
Together they also discuss the right to vote which must not only be entrusted to men, but also to women and the popular classes. The Italian Republic was born in 1946 and in 1948 it will become a democracy with universal suffrage: just as indicated in the Constitution of the Roman Republic. Mameli therefore contributed to cultivating the seed of what, a century later, would become our democracy.
Mameli’s death
The landing of the French in Civitavecchia interrupts the idyll of the newborn Roman Republic: it is war, led by Garibaldi. Goffredo, on the front line with his friend Ninois hit by enemies. In July 1849 he died in the military hospital after leg amputation. At his bedside is his beloved Adele. Goffredo will never know that he has left an indelible mark in the history of Italy.
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