Mary Rancatre

The sheer beauty of this regal actress carries the entire weight (at times pretty heavy) of this florid Italian soap opera so that her inner life seems the only drama that counts---while all around her play out stories of murder, jealousy, power grabs, the usual horrid brutality of those criminal fiefdoms and all the other expectable cliches... they become just so much background noise. I for one couldn't stop clickig on episode upon episode deep into the wee hours, when I needed to sleep.... Bravo to the entire production; this is a beautiful recreation of an ancient classic, the seductive power of the virtuous woman silently aloof amidst the mad, cheaper passions playing out endlessly around her, while the real drama, the only one that can always enthrall us, evolves quietly, beautiully, in one human heart.