La figlia di Jefte by Felice Cavallotti is a one-act stage comedy written in the late 19th century. The play centers on marriage, fidelity, and female ingenuity, using the biblical image of Jephthah’s daughter as a metaphor for a young bride’s self-possessed delay and moral test.Count Mario Alberi marries the ingenuous Emma to secure an inheritance, though he is entangled with the glamorous Baroness Arsenia di Villalba. On their wedding night Emma, still a girl at heart with fairy tales and pious stories in hand, asks Mario for two months of chastity, citing Jephthah’s daughter as her model; Mario, uneasy and tempted by Arsenia, agrees. While the witty friend Sarchi observes from the edges, Emma’s seeming innocence masks keen strategy: she gently rules the household, keeps Mario at a distance, and then invites Arsenia to visit. In a dazzling reversal, Emma appears transformed—elegant, eloquent, and ardent—publicly asserting an ideal of total, trusting love and subtly humiliating her rival, until Mario, wholly won, kneels at her feet. After Arsenia departs in fury, Emma quotes the Jephthah story, crowns herself with a “garland of sacrifice,” and embraces Mario, signaling the end of the vowed delay and the triumph of loyal, intelligently guided love. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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