“Natural Decapitation of a Living Man”, “The Impalpable Woman”, “The Infernal Fountain”, “The Diabolical Dawenport Cabinet [sic]”: these are some of the attractions promised by the Eccentric Italian-English Royal Illusionists Company, led by Mister Cesare Watry, which held four evenings of performances at the Teatro Nuovo in Spoleto in the last days of July 1893.
Cesare Watry (stage name of Giovanni Girardi from Ravenna) – was then touring Italy and Europe with his company of close-knit performers – including his wife Delia Gialdi and his friend Cesare Girardo – performing in eccentric, phantasmagorical shows of magic and hypnotism.
The dates in Spoleto are taken from the splendid illustrated posters of the time, kept at the Carducci Library in Spoleto and annotated by Rinaldo Gherghi, the then director of the library.
Cesare Watry was an important figure in the development of the art of illusion in Italy, but he is now almost forgotten, so much so that two reference texts for the history of magic such as “Spettacolo Magico” by Vinicio Raimondi and “La nuova arte magica” by Silvan devote just a few biographical notes to him.
When he came to Spoleto, Watry was a rising star in the world of magic; his sold-out theatre performances really astounded his audience, and he was about to embark on major tours in Spain and Latin America, before ending his career as a theatrical impresario in the 1920s. As well as being a magician and illusionist, he was also a highly regarded mnemotechnician, so much so that he was called ‘the new Pico della Mirandola’.
Spoleto could therefore appreciate a popular interpreter of magic in the last years of the 19th century, in a climate that represents a sort of golden age of the art of illusionism: before the birth of the Grand-Guignol in Paris, Adelaide Herrmann and Harry Kellar worked in American vaudeville, Harry Houdini took his first steps in London, while in Italy the astonishing transformism of Leopoldo Fregoli was a constant source of amazement, a multifaceted personality who shared with Witry the intuition of having fused manipulation and visual apparatus, making use of the first projections of moving images to increase scenic sorcery.
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