Abstract

[Violetta, the carnival heroine who brought down the tyrant in the name of a higher natural right]. Violetta is the central character of the centuries-old tradition of the ‘historic’ Carnival of Ivrea. The origin of the legend that features her as a protagonist is subsequent to the French revolutionary and Napoleonic additions that have been documented in written form since 1808 and that enriched the previous carnival celebrations in Ivrea. It was only in 1858 that the ‘Canzone del Carnovale’ was composed by Ferdinando Bosio, celebrating the exploits of the ‘daughter of a miller’. In a romantic atmosphere that mixes patriotism and neo-Gothic aesthetics Violetta, as a new Antigone, claims justice before the law, rejecting the exercise of a ius primae noctis that is referred to with prudery rather than historical rigour. Yet Violetta as well embodies the conflict between natural law and positive law. Conflict resolved in favour of the former, with the violent death of the tyrant and the celebration of the popular heroine who, like Judith, shrewdly annihilates him. If any moral concerns about the violent gesture are averted by the implicit but clear biblical citation, coherence with the spirit of the Italian Risorgimento is guaranteed by the libertarian expectations of Violetta’s action, indebted – also in symbolic terms – to the Jacobin tradition of the Piedmont area.