Marie José of Belgium Claretta Petacci, claimed in her diary that in 1937 the then princess and wife of the heir to the throne tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome. However, Mussolini's son, Romano, claims that the princess and dictator entered into a sexual relationship. In 1943, the Crown Princess involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States; her interlocutor from the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, a senior diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI. Her attempts were not sponsored by the king and Umberto was
The Mistress of the Inn The Mistress of the Inn The Mistress of the Inn ( ), also translated as "The Innkeeper Woman" or "Mirandolina" (after the play's main character), is a 1753 three-act comedy by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni about a coquette. The play has been regarded as his masterpiece. Frederick Davies describes it as Goldoni's "Much Ado About Nothing". Eleonora Duse is one of the actresses to have played its lead role, Mirandolina; she gave a command performance for Queen Victoria at Windsor on 18 May 1894. The play was one of those produced by the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) in