From the final notes of Traviata, the pale sounds of a late-nineteenth-century Piazza della Scala emerge through an old frame. In the background, a carriage; the driver, holding the frozen reins, talks to himself, so as not to succumb to the cold. He speaks of his world and his troubles. The scene changes, and the Milanese " brümista" transforms into a Roman " vetturino" and then into a Palermo " gnure" : a triptych from which emerges, with the force of a pictorial impression and an at times merciless humor, the historical and social climate of post-unification Italy. Vivid scenes, populated by eccentric and tragicomic characters, rescued for the occasion from the antiquated relics of verismo literature, but no less timely for that.